(Photo by Getty Images)
House Speaker Pat Grassley said House Republicans are pursuing a slightly higher increase in state funding package for the public K-12 system than the governor and GOP senators.
Speaking with reporters Thursday, Grassley said the House GOP caucus is proposing legislation that sets the State Supplemental Aid (SSA) rate at 2.25% in the upcoming fiscal year — a slightly higher proposal than the 2% proposed by Senate Republicans and the governor. Additionally, the House proposal, House Study Bill 138, includes other public school funding components like an increase for school transportation equity payments and changes to schools’ operational sharing budgets, and a one-time increase of $22.6 million for per-pupil funding.
The total package represents a $149.2 million funding increase from fiscal year 2025 for Iowa’s public K-12 schools. Grassley said the package is meant to address issues that House GOP lawmakers have heard from their school districts.
“The governor and the Senate were at 2%, we wanted to try to be higher on that, but we also have been hearing from our school districts things that are important to them — like operational sharing, like cost per pupil, like transportation costs that they’re seeing, other inflationary costs,” Grassley said. “So we tried to come up with more of a menu that suits (each district).”
The Senate Education Committee approved a bill with the 2% SSA rate increase in late January. Education advocates have called for a 5% increase to per-pupil funding, a proposal supported by Democrats in the Legislature. At a subcommittee hearing on the Senate proposal in late January, Sen. Molly Donahue, D-Cedar Rapids, said that the current proposal would result in more school districts ending up on the budget guarantee process — a funding mechanism that allows schools to use property taxes when supplemental state aid does not keep up with decreased enrollment.
Donahue also said that a 5% increase would represent an amount on par with the funding going toward private schools through the Education Savings Account program that provides public funds — $7,826 per student for the 2024-25 school year — to use for private school tuition and associated costs.
While Reynolds and others have said the ESA program will incentivize public schools to improve through competition, Donahue said public schools “can’t compete if we don’t have the funding that we need to at least meet inflation and increase our purchasing powers.”
A subcommittee on the House legislation is scheduled for Feb. 10.