More work was recently done on school transportation from the Iowa Senate.

District 24 Senator Jerry Behn says the Senate passed legislation to add $14 million to the budgets for k-12 public school districts across the state. Current state law allows for a maximum of 60-minutes a student can ride the bus and Behn says the bill gives school boards the power to make those decisions.

“We made that a more local decision so that they could handle their individual needs. Right now it’s an arbitrary number. We said, ‘there may be some particular instances where it would make sense to expand that a little bit.’ And if that’s something that the parents, and the school board, and administration wants to do, we thought that they should have that flexibility.”

Greene County School Board member Sam Harding has been a long-time advocate for increasing ride times on buses.

“It really is a local control issue. If we feel like we could save a whole bus route by lengthening a kid’s ride for five minutes even, boy that seems like it’s worth it. But that’s a community decision. I’m excited that it’s finally grown some legs down at the golden dome and it’s finally moving.”

The Senate and House have both passed their respective bills on school transportation. However, a final unified decision must be made by both Chambers before the legislation can go to the governor’s desk to be signed into law.