Legislature Working on Key Measures to Affect Local Schools

Area educators and administrators are keeping a close eye on the activity in the Iowa Legislature. A key senator says priority issues are included in an education bill House Republicans just expanded to include things like alternative pathways for teacher licensing and defining what would be considered age-appropriate school library books. Senate Education Committee chairman Ken Rozenboom from Oskaloosa says rolling those other bills into one 40-page package is how the legislative process often works.

Rozenboom’s optimistic House and Senate Republicans will settle on a final package soon.

The bill in its initial form came from Governor Kim Reynolds and GOP Senators approved the bill two weeks ago after some tweaks. Rozenboom will be meeting with the governor’s staff to review the House changes and additions. Representative Skyler Wheeler of Hull is chairman of the House Education Committee. Wheeler says Republicans intend to help parents assert their rights in schools.

The bill would require an administrator to notify a parent if a student asks to be known by a different name or pronoun at school. It also forbids instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through sixth grade classrooms. Democrats say the bill has a number of flaws. Representative Sharon Steckman from Mason City is a retired teacher. Steckman says letting people become teachers after taking an online course should not be included in the package.

Representative Sue Cahill from Marshalltown objects to changes in the Board of Educational Examiners, so there’d be an equal number of parents and licensed educators on the board.

The board is currently made up of nine teachers or school administrators and just two public members along with someone from the Iowa Department of Education.