The Iowa Republican House and Senate have agreed on additional spending for k-12 public education.

The Legislature passed the State Supplemental Aid rate of 2.5-percent, or over $155 million of new funding, for the 2022-23 school year. Iowa Democrats countered with a five-percent SSA increase to be more in line with the higher inflation and cost of living rate. However, District 24 Senator Jesse Green of Boone cautions following that trend when it comes to budgeting.

“If we’re just going to focus on Washington, (D.C.) and their problems, and inflationary issues from year to year like that’s just going to create unpredictable funding here in the state. Eleven years ago that under Democrat control (in the Iowa Legislature and governor’s office) is a ten-percent across-the-board cut to education. We don’t want to put ourselves back in that situation. Basically, it comes down to, do we want to fund kids or do we want to fund buildings and administrative costs, and you got to balance those things out.”     

Green says there are other means to fund education, including transportation equity, a $1,000 incentive pay for teachers from the governor’s proposal and federal COVID-19 money.

“I know that overall that $15,400 per pupil that all of the tax dollars are going towards for education, that was the number prior to last year, now that number is over $17,000. I just want to remind people that there are some other money out there that is still unspent, and we’re trying to work through that as to, can we figure out a way to allow that to be more flexible, so that we don’t have to just keep upping the SSA.”     

The Iowa Legislature is required to set the SSA for public schools within the first 30 days of the legislative session.