The Greene County School Board held a work session Wednesday, where the Board discussed several school-related legislative topics with State Representative Chip Baltimore.

Baltimore started the meeting by reviewing topics that were handled in the previous legislative session. The lawmakers re-worked collective bargaining and Baltimore says the idea was to allow school boards more flexibility in terms of how to handle staff and faculty packages. They also relaxed some of the regulations on School Infrastructure Local Option Sales Tax (SILO) funds. He pointed out that he doesn’t expect anything to happen with Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System (IPERS), other than monitoring it, in the upcoming legislative session.

A main discussion point was about possibly making changes to the state-wide penny sales tax. Baltimore said he is “not a fan” of just extending it. Before he can vote on extending it, he wants to see changes made to how the money is spent. He believes rural school districts should get funds from sales tax, whereas more urban districts shouldn’t, since they have a higher tax base to draw from for projects and infrastructure needs. Another main topic was transportation. It was mentioned that since Greene County Schools are the eighth biggest district geographically in the state, the Board wanted to see more time allowed for transportation and more funds directed toward transportation costs.

There was no action taken by the Board during the work session.