Des Moines, Iowa — Governor Kim Reynolds has approved legislation providing a nearly 90 million dollar state funding boost to public K-12 schools in Iowa.
One bill increases the state’s per-pupil spending on public schools by just over two percent. In the other bill, per-pupil spending in 170 districts is boosted by five dollars per student, to correct an inequity in the state’s school funding formula. There’s nearly 8 million dollars in that bill as well to increase state spending on school transportation budgets to help rural districts struggling to pay for busing students to and from school.
School boards are required by law to certify the budgets for the next academic year by mid-April. A state law requires the legislature to make the basic decision on school funding by mid-February, but there’s no penalty for missing the deadline. Lawmakers have often been tardy in taking final votes on school spending plans, and school administrators in northwest Iowa have said that they sometimes wish they knew what they had to work with before certifying their budgets.
