Here’s what Iowa schools want to be addressed by lawmakers

Iowa school leaders this legislative session want state funding to provide free, full-day 4-year-old preschool programs to families, policies that aim to recruit and retain educators and improved children’s mental health services.

Topics that lawmakers say they expect to be addressed this session include a statewide policy possibly barring students from having cellphones in the classroom and a continued look at Area Education Agencies, which provide special education services and support to educators and students in Iowa’s K-12 school districts.

Republican and Democratic legislative leaders spoke with The Gazette for its legislative preview series exploring topics likely to come up this session, which starts Monday at the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines. Gov. Kim Reynolds declined to be interviewed for the series.

Legislative preview series

Sunday: Property taxes

Monday: Citizens’ guide to the Legislature

Tuesday: Voting

Today: K-12 education

Thursday: State agency proposals

Friday: Agriculture/environment

Saturday: Hot-button issues

Sunday: Higher education

Monday: Demographics of the Legislature

4-year-old preschool

An ongoing priority for Iowa schools is for full-day preschool for 4-year-olds to be fully funded by the state.

Today, Iowa’s Statewide Voluntary Preschool Program provides funding to offer free, half-day preschool to 4-year-olds. But half-day programs can be a barrier for working families who are unable to find child care beforehand or afterward, or provide transportation for their kids.

Students with access to 4-year-old preschool are less likely to repeat a grade, less likely to be identified as having special needs, more prepared academically and more likely to graduate from high school, backers say.

“Most parents can’t manage to transport kids during the day. The benefits (to full-day preschool) are enormous for kids and parents who can work,” said Iowa Senate Minority Leader Janice Weiner, an Iowa City Democrat.

Weiner said she’s hearing different approaches to how the state could fund full-day 4-year-old preschool, including providing it for families at 185 percent of the federal poverty line.

Iowa House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights, said fully funding 4-year-old preschool should be a nonpartisan issue. “If we’re making data-based decisions as a state, 4-year-old preschool meets the goal and then some. Kids read better years into school if they have 4-year-old preschool available to them. I think the need for it is clear.”

But, Konfrst said, “I think cost is going to be the issue.”

“We seem to have no trouble spending $400 million on private school vouchers” — a 2023 educational saving accounts law Democrats opposed — “but not willing to invest in public education and preschool,” she said. “What I would like to do is compare the cost of 4-year-old preschool to the cost of remedial reading programs for third-graders.”

Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford, said lawmakers over the years have worked to improve the availability of child care across the state. He’s concerned pulling children out of child care and into free 4-year-old preschool would create problems for child care providers.

“If that’s the path the Legislature wants to go down, it has to be sustainable from a funding standpoint. I think some people think it fixes the child care problem, but there could be some unforeseen consequences,” Grassley said.

In 2022, the Cedar Rapids school district opened the Truman Early Learning Center, funded with federal pandemic relief dollars — the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief — over two years. The district has been saving state funds over that time to continue the full-day programming for the 2024-25 school year after the federal money ran out. There is no tuition to attend Truman.

Cedar Rapids district Superintendent Tawana Grover said without more funding from the state, Truman might have to cut back to offering half-day preschool to families.

There are four full-day preschool classrooms in the Iowa City Community School District, but families must pay tuition of $650 a month. Students of eligible families are able to attend at no cost.

Iowa City school leaders have a goal of offering full-day preschool to families in every elementary building next school year. Already, there are free half-day preschool options available at every elementary school with before- and after-school child care available for a fee.

“There’s no stronger academic piece we could add into our student experience than preschool,” said Matt Degner, superintendent of the Iowa City district.

Recruiting and retaining educators

Educators across the state would like to see state policies that help schools recruit, attract and retain educators, according to the 2025 legislative priorities of the Urban Education Network of Iowa — a consortium of Iowa’s largest school districts.

According to the Iowa Association of School Boards 2025 legislative priorities, this could include:

Educators say a new law signed by Reynolds last year that increased funding for school districts through the Teacher Salary Supplement — a per-pupil categorical fund — was a start in attracting and keeping educators in the profession. The law set new salary minimums of $50,000 for new teachers by fall 2025 and $62,000 for teachers with at least 12 years’ experience.

A continued investment into the teaching workforce is needed, however, Degner said.

“A lot of times we finally see a salary boost when things become mission critical, rather than a sustain plan,” Degner said.

More mental health supports needed

Similarly, Iowa school leaders want the support of the Iowa Legislature to attract more mental health professionals to the state.

State policies are needed that establish comprehensive school and community mental health systems to offer preventive and treatment services, according to the 2025 legislative priorities of the Iowa Association of School Boards. Supports also are needed for the mental health of educators and other school staff.

Last session, Reynolds signed into law a plan to overhaul and combine Iowa’s delivery system for mental and behavioral health services. The legislation aimed to provide equitable statewide access to services with a focus on at-risk populations, including children.

Reynolds also signed into law legislation that provides enhanced Medicaid reimbursement rates to licensed psychiatric medical institutions for children.

Supporters of the bill, including Republicans and Democrats, say it will help address a shortage of youth mental health services in Iowa.

Iowa Senate President Amy Sinclair, R-Allerton, said the Legislature has spent “a lot of time working to get mental health services to kids.”

Weiner, however, said there “remains a huge need” and children’s mental health still is a “largely unaddressed issue in the state.”

“They supposedly have this system in place, but we don’t have anywhere near the number of providers we need. Kids are not just little adults,” Weiner said.

Konfrst said there are families in her district sending their children hours away — even across state lines — to receive mental health services.

“Republicans are nibbling around the edges and putting out Band-Aid solutions when we need to have a wholesale look at children’s mental health, the services we’re providing and the services needed,” she said.

A statewide school cellphone policy

Reynolds announced in November a proposal she plans to present to state lawmakers that would bar K-12 students from having their cellphones in the classroom.

Many Eastern Iowa schools have been exploring adopting new policies around cellphones, mirroring a national trend of school districts — and even states — restricting students’ cellphone use in schools.

Legislative leaders agree the state should set a minimum requirement for cellphone policies in schools that allows districts to implement more restrictions as needed.

Sinclair said school districts already are “stepping up” and trying to work with families to implement cellphone policies.

“We want uninterrupted learning. We want kids to have the opportunity to set aside distractions and focus on what makes them the best person they can be,” Sinclair said.

“School districts are spending a lot of time on this,” Weiner said. “They’ve sent out surveys. Thousands of people have responded and many have crafted their policies based on that. I would hope any proposal takes account of that.”

Last month, the Iowa City school board approved a cellphone policy that requires phones, earbuds and headphones to be “detached from the student’s body” during instructional time.

The Cedar Rapids district also is researching cellphones in schools and potential policies, Grover said.

Iowa City and Cedar Rapids school leaders both say that they would be supportive of a statewide cellphone policy as long as it is flexible.

Enforcement of a statewide cellphone policy is “going to be an issue,” Konfrst said.

"We can’t give teachers one more thing they have to do in the classroom that is outside of teaching. Of course, we can support kids not on their phones in the classroom. It’s all about the details,“ she said.

But, Konfrst said, “if we think this is going to fix bullying, problems with social media and address student mental health, that is simply not going to happen.”

Grover said a statewide policy could take some of the pressure off educators alone to enforce the rules.

“Having something statewide we’re all embracing could be helpful,” Grover said. “At the end of the day, I would hope there still is room for local control where our educators and administrators can weigh in.”

What’s next for AEAs?

Statehouse Republicans and Reynolds last year approved legislation that shifted some funding from Area Education Agencies to school districts and moved oversight of special education from the AEAs to the state Department of Education.

Last month, a task force created to make recommendations about Iowa’s AEA system decided to wait until February to give members time to gather more information and receive more feedback on the impact of the new state law.

Iowa’s nine Area Education Agencies provide special education services, support and training to the state’s K-12 school districts.

John Speer, chief administrator of Grant Wood AEA, which serves a seven-county region including Linn and Johnson, said the system needs time to “stabilize” before any further changes are made.

“Any time you make substantive and massive changes, time is needed to implement those with fidelity and reach a new normal,” he said.

Sinclair said she doesn’t “anticipate” further legislation on AEAs this session. “I think what we passed last year was a big bill that afforded accountability and transparency in a really big system working with our most at-risk students,” she said.

“Let’s get some data to see if we moved the needle before taking further action,” Sinclair said. “Let’s see if we’re impacting the achievement of students most in need and getting more personalized educational services in districts because districts are controlling those dollars.”

Grassley said he doesn’t want to see more changes passed within months of the new law being implemented.

“If there’s some real recommendations, real concerns from the task force and our local school districts, that doesn’t mean the Legislature should ignore those. I don’t want us to be purely reactionary within a few months of starting down this path,” he said.

Weiner said the task force should have been formed to make recommendations before the bill was passed. “They put the cart before the horse,” she said.

Two rural school districts in Linn County cut back on the services they receive from the Grant Wood AEA, but their share of the cost this academic year is going up roughly 30 percent under the new state law.

Meanwhile, the Cedar Rapids district — the second largest district in the state — is saving $1 million and keeping the same level of services.

“I hope they take a good hard look given the changes made so far and how it’s impacting different school districts across the state and the ability of children to get services. Larger districts can have access to and get a speech pathologist or whoever else is necessary. Smaller districts, rural districts, are going to have a much harder time because they don’t have as much money,” Weiner said.

Konfrst said the AEA bill Republicans passed was “a cobbled together mess.” The task force needs to address the loss of staff at AEAs across the state and explore whether staff remaining with the agencies have the resources and time to do their jobs, she said.

Grant Wood AEA, for example, had about 100 of their 520 employees leave voluntarily over the summer.

Comments: (319) 398-8411; [email protected]