The Iowa House recently passed a bill to assist public school districts with additional expenses due to the pandemic.

House District 47 Representative Phil Thompson says he voted in favor of House File 532, which allocates $27.2 million of additional funding to k-12 public school districts that provided classroom instruction this school year. He explains the formula for districts to receive funding.

“The way that’s calculated is based off the number of in-person school days that you had. So Greene County had 75 in-person days and Paton-Churdan had 90 in-person days and it’s dived out (as) per pupil (funding).”

Thompson estimates about $80,000 for Greene County and P-C about $18,000. He describes what these funds can be used for.

“We know that there’s more cleaning costs and there’s all kinds of challenges that school districts had to overcome all kinds of obstacles to get those students back in the classroom. We acknowledge that and we just wanted to give a little bit of help to the school districts that were doing that the whole time.”

The bill passed the House 71-26 and is now in the Senate for consideration.