John Forbes: Education - A Top Priority

It’s a cliché but contains some truth: making laws is sometimes like making sausage. The process isn’t pretty but usually the final product turns out okay.

The Iowa House started work on one of the biggest issues of the session, education funding and reform (House File 215). Debate began about 6:30pm Tuesday night and went until midnight. The House then resumed consideration Wednesday morning before the bill was approved.

Education is among our top priorities as lawmakers, and in my view this measure falls short.  It still has a long way to go before it becomes law, so I’m going to keep working on it to make it better.  Here are a few of the highlights:

• The bill does, finally, set school funding for next year, but the 2% increase is just half the rate of the measure passed by the Senate, and is inadequate.

• We want to attract the best possible teachers to our classrooms, but this measure cuts back on the Governor’s proposal for teacher pay.  The Governor wanted to pay a beginning teacher $35,000 annually; this bill reduces that to $32,000.

• The bill does little or nothing for early childhood education. Preschoolers are being turned away from classes due to no room in the program. Those first years are so important and research shows education in the early years will raise student achievement.

• The House bill grows the bureaucracy by establishing 19 new positions in the Iowa Department of Education.  This money should go to local school districts, not bureaucratic overhead.

In my judgment, this bill passed by the House does not do enough to improve student achievement, shortchanges our schools and doesn’t do enough to get the best teachers in the classroom. The bill now goes to the Iowa Senate. 

Meanwhile, Iowa school districts continue to watch and wait, unable to set their budgets for next year.  The one thing certain in this debate is that any education reform bill that becomes law this year is going to have to get bipartisan support. I’m going to keep working to improve the bill.

You may have seen a news story last week on WHO-TV, which reported that the Iowa State Patrol is so understaffed that on any given night, as few as 7 troopers are patrolling the entire state.  I found this disturbing. This level of staffing puts the travelling public, as well as the troopers, at risk. 

A woman who saw the story was upset, and wrote me to say that as a businesswoman traveling alone, late at night, the situation made her nervous.  She thought spending some of the State’s budget surplus on additional state troopers made sense.  I tend to agree.  Providing for the safety of its citizens is a basic responsibility of government.

Bishop Richard Pates of the Des Moines Diocese gave the daily prayer last Tuesday in the Iowa House.  It was a privilege to stand with him in the well of the House as we prayed.

In brief remarks before the prayer, the Bishop noted a lot of politics were in play these days in Rome, where the College of Cardinals will be choosing a new Pope.  The Bishop said that while there might be some lobbying going on, you probably won’t see any yard signs popping up in Vatican City!  Amen!

As always, please contact me if you have any questions or concerns. My email is john.forbes@legis.iowa.gov and my phone number at the Capitol is 515-281-3221. I look forward to hearing from you.