Teachers’ union supports 6 percent state boost in K-12 funding

DES MOINES - The head of Iowa's largest teachers' union Friday said her 34,000-member organization wants to see Gov. Terry Branstad and state lawmakers increase state supplemental aid to K-12 school districts by about $200 million for the next school year.

The 6 percent boost in base budgets for Iowa's 338 public school districts is needed to make up for lean funding years during recessionary years and to provide high-quality educational opportunities that elected officials touted as a top priority in the just-completed 2014 campaign, said Tammy Wawro, president of the Iowa State Education Association.

'I think that 6 percent is a fair and just number,” said Wawro, a Cedar Rapids educator who expected the ISEA board to finalize the fiscal 2016 request during its weekend meeting.

Iowa schools are struggling with higher heating, utility and transportation costs and districts in both rural and urban areas are experiencing higher student-to-teacher class size ratios that are straining resources and requiring cutbacks in art, music, physical education and other offerings that impact educational quality and create access disparity for academic programs across the state, she said.

The governor and Legislature had provided 4 percent growth for state's supplemental aid to schools in recent years but Branstad and top lawmakers are calling fiscal 2016 a challenging budget year because commitments made to tax relief and education reform along with rising Medicaid costs are exceeding the nearly $350 million in increased revenue that budget-makers will have to work with during the 2015 session that begins Jan. 12.

'The governor said education is a priority for him and I think this will let us know whether it really is a priority or not,” Wawro said. 'When we're looking at tax relief versus funding our schools appropriately and trying to make sure that everyone has what they need regardless of what ZIP code they come from, it's imperative.”

David Roederer, director of the state Department of Management and Branstad's budget director, said it is unrealistic to expect a 6 percent increase for K-12 education when net revenue for the fiscal 2016 budgeting cycle was estimated to grow by 4.9 percent.

'I know that some people have been asking for 6 percent and when you're revenue doesn't grow at 6 percent,” Roederer said, 'it's like anybody with a family income, if you're income isn't as great as you thought it was going to be, you don't go and spend more than you're bringing in.”

Wawro said multiyear education reform commitments made in 2013 must be treated separately from new state aid for K-12 schools in the fiscal 2016 budget and she opposed a repeat of past agreements where schools were given 4 percent more funding but half was via one-time sources than did not carry over to future years. That approach is a poor funding method because ongoing programs cannot be funded with one-time money, she said.