The Iowa Legislature is continuing negotiations between the House and Senate for finalizing its increase for additional funding for k-12 public education.

The House originally proposed 2.25 percent increase in Supplemental State Aid, whereas the Senate passed two percent. District 24 Senator Jesse Green says the difference between the two figures is about $50 million and so he is hoping whatever the finalized decision is not taken lightly. Green’s top concern is how the increase of SSA will impact schools within his Senate district, with varying comments from school district superintendents. He points out that after looking into the school districts that do not have a high unspent balance, most will be okay with a two percent increase, but he is still following up.

“I’m still kind of having those conversations because really if we stick with a two percent SSA there will be about 150 school districts across the state that go to budget guarantee, which that would be indirectly a property tax increase in some of those situations. I don’t know if it would be all of those situations but most of them.”   

Greene County School District Superintendent Brett Abbotts believes that two percent will be ultimately decided and so they are assuming that percentage as they are calculating next fiscal year’s budget. However, he thinks public education has been underfunded for more than a decade. Abbotts says for a school district to be on a budget guarantee is not necessarily a good thing because that means there is less student enrollment, meaning less money from the state to continue to provide education to students.

“That enters some really nervous times for educators but also for business managers and superintendents alike of, ‘Now what?’ And “How are we going to absorb this? What is this going to look like?’ And go through the process of identifying areas where there can be some budget cuts without it impacting people. Since we know that 75-80 percent of our budgets are people. That’s the way it is.”    

Abbotts adds that since the Greene County School District had a 17 student jump in its certified enrollment, they should be fine for next fiscal year and making whatever the SSA rate happens to be, but he cautions that with fluctuating enrollment figures every year, that will not always be the case.