The Iowa House Education Committee has been getting a workout during the early part of the 2021 Legislative session.
District 47 Representative Phil Thompson serves on the committee and floor managed the bill that eventually was signed by Governor Kim Reynolds to give parents the option to have their child be in the classroom 100-percent. Due to the pandemic, public school districts have gone to various different modes to deliver education, while others have kept full, in-person learning. The new law takes effect February 15th and Thompson points out an additional bill to provide supplemental funding for districts that have provided full classroom instruction.
“We floated the idea of having as supplemental appropriation based on the number of days that schools were in-person. School districts that were doing that the whole time, trying to get their kids back in the classroom, and make sure that they were losing as little ground as possible through this last year. We’re going to be able to do something to reward those schools that really were trying to keep kids in the classroom and not losing a lot of ground this year.”
The House bill passed out of the education committee earlier this week.
As for the State Supplemental Aid for K-12 public schools, the House passed 2.5-percent and the Senate passed 2.2-percent. Thompson believes the increase in state aid for public schools should be more aligned with the governor’s proposal of 2.5-percent.
“I’m a proponent of getting that number up to 2.5-percent. We’ve got a lot of reduced pupils, there’s a lot of students that aren’t enrolled this year. It kind of affects the algorithm in a lot of ways. So I’m a staunch advocate of getting that number up to about 2.5-percent, I’d like to come right about where the governor is at.”
The Legislature is required to set the SSA percentage within the first 30 days from the beginning of the session. Click the link below to see the full House bill