Iowa Lawmakers should try transparency before they impose it on teachers

Iowa lawmakers are still kicking around the idea of requiring public school teachers to post, online, an extensive array of course materials they plan to use during the school year.

How heavy-handed the requirements will be remains up in the air in the legislative session’s final weeks. Be on the lookout for fast-moving amendments to budget bills that may strike in the dark of night.

Among the most stringent concepts being considered are provisions that would require teachers to post all of their course materials online, from book titles and articles to videos and online links to materials, twice during the school year, in August and January. School districts that violate the rules could have their state funding docked for each day of non-compliance. Wanted: Clairvoyant social studies teachers capable of predicting how world and national events might affect their curriculum.

Non-partisan budget analysts have concluded the requirements would cost school districts $27 million annually. Never mind that any parent can already speak to a child’s teachers about curriculum and materials now. A state edict, apparently, is a far better approach.

Proponents, Republican lawmakers and Gov. Kim Reynolds, argue it’s all in the interest of transparency. Iowa parents should get a heads up. Otherwise, who knows what sinister agenda these teachers might be hiding? Critical race theory? X-rated books? Socialist indoctrination? Actual U.S. history?

But getting a lecture on transparency and the need to give Iowans a heads up from this Legislature is exceedingly rich. The Golden Dome of Wisdom is about as transparent as a blizzard.

If teachers are required to tell us what they will do, I’d offer a friendly amendment requiring state lawmakers and the governor to do the same before elections and legislative sessions.

Because this is a majority Republican Party that rarely reveals its true agenda during election campaigns and even in the weeks leading up to the Legislative session. Many GOP candidates run on empty platitudes and avoid venues, such as candidate forums and editorial board meetings, where they might face questions about what they actually plan to do once elected.

We’ve seen it happen over and over.

In 2014, former Gov. Terry Branstad ran for re-election on a slate of bite-sized initiatives but never mentioned he planned to privatize the state’s Medicaid program.

Before the 2016 election, Republican lawmakers talked of “tweaking” the state’s 40-year-old collective bargaining system for public employees. Once in power, they gutted the bargaining law with a bill they introduced and passed in a week.

In 2018, Gov. Kim Reynolds ran mainly on an online magazine article that ranked Iowa as the best state. This year, she’s running on culture war misinformation, attacks on President Joe Biden and promises of more “freedom.” Like being freed from telling us what she would actually do in the next four years.

This is a Legislature that routinely springs surprises in the final hours of legislative sessions, including measures making it harder to vote, denying Medicaid-funded care to transgender Iowans and handcuffing the attorney general’s ability to join national legal actions. Last year, lawmakers and the governor banned school mask mandates in the middle of the night, leaving parents to wonder what the hell happened while they slept. They didn’t deserve a heads up then, apparently.

We have a governor’s office that slow-walked open records requests to the point of facing a lawsuit. Remember how they mucked up COVID data and wouldn’t disclose meatpacking plant outbreaks unless reporters asked them specifically to share information? Questions go unanswered and interview requests are denied. This is a governor who refuses to say publicly where she stands on legislation moving through the Legislature.

Add all this to the bipartisan legislative tradition of making major decisions on the budget and other issues affecting hundreds of thousands of Iowans behind closed doors.

So yes, by all means, let’s be more transparent.

Let’s require lawmakers to post, online, all of the bills and amendments they plan to pass during the next legislative session by Dec. 1, giving Iowans a timely heads up. Let’s require candidates to disclose their actual agendas and face questions. Failure to comply would cost lawmakers their daily expense payments.

Impossible, lawmakers would say. How could they possibly know what challenges and issues will arise during the course of a legislative session?

Just ask your nearest clairvoyant schoolteacher.

(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com