With the first funnel of the year happening last week, Iowa House Representative for District 23 Ray Sorensen is glad that some bills in his committees were able to make it through.

Sorensen says that one bill, House Study Bill 206, comes from the Education Committee. He mentions that the bill will help teachers in the classroom, and give them some protections as well, including some protection when it comes to disciplining a student. Sorensen tells Raccoon Valley Radio that another protection for teachers would keep them from being unduly punished by administration.

“One of the things that’s been happening is if there’s violence in the classroom, or let’s say a teacher is even beaten up or struck or hit, or maybe it’s both the teacher and (a student), whatever your scenario is, there’s violence in the classroom. They’ve often been encouraged to cover it up by the administration because it becomes kind of a black mark on the school’s record that there was violence in the classroom. And so when teachers are being encouraged to cover it up or hush some of these things down, then we can’t solve some of the problems that may be going on in schools.”

He adds that one other thing that the bill currently does is require teachers to contact a student’s parents within 24 hours of the student being involved in an altercation. Sorensen advises that HSB206 is far from being finished, and will most likely see quite a few amendments made.