Sunday Talk: Stone on Passed House Measures

Iowa House Passes Bill Empowering Parents, Strengthening School Choice

Last week, the House passed a bill that empowers parents and strengthens school choice options in Iowa. It helps public schools, preschools, charter schools, nonpublic schools, and homeschool families.

Charter schools have been growing in Iowa. Currently, the State Board of Education is the only charter school authorizer in the state. In other states, there are multiple authorizers, and many have one of their state colleges as the authorizer. This bill adds the University of Northern Iowa as an additional charter school authorizer. If a charter school wants to use UNI that is now an option. All charter schools in Iowa are public schools and charter school teachers should be treated the same as other public school teachers when it comes to IPERS. This bill makes sure that is clear. Charter school students should be afforded the same opportunities as public school, homeschool and nonpublic students by being able to participate in athletics and activities at the public school if their school doesn’t offer it. Charter school students also need to have access to driver’s education and concurrent enrollment courses. Charter schools are not funded the same way as public schools and therefore don’t have access to as much funding from the state. This bill allows the Teacher Salary Supplement money to flow to the charter school from the public school and follow the student.

For nonpublic schools, it puts protections in place to make sure that nonpublic schools who aren’t progressing towards their accreditor requirements, cannot accreditor hop. No one wants bad actors in our nonpublic schools. Legislators have heard from families that they would like to have a second enrollment period for Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). Families don’t always know prior to the school year that they plan to enroll in a nonpublic school. Sometimes a public school setting ends up not being a good setting for a student after the school year begins, and this gives families the option to move.

Preschools are important to Iowa communities and schools. Unfortunately, with the passage of the ESA bill, some of public school districts and nonpublic preschools haven’t been able to productively work together. Currently, to be a Statewide Voluntary Preschool program, a nonpublic preschool must partner with a public school district to receive the state preschool funding. Some public schools unwilling to continue those partnerships or begin new partnerships. To avoid this, the bill allows the preschool to apply directly to the Department of Education to become a preschool.

For public schools, and teachers in general, it creates a task force to get recommendations on the schedule of teacher trainings and licensure renewal requirements. Legislators are constantly told teachers have far too many unnecessary trainings and requirements outside of just teaching. This task force helps determine what’s needed and what schedule the trainings should be on. This helps teachers do what they do best – teach.
Republicans Pass Bill to De-Woke Iowa’s Education Code

On Tuesday, the House passed a bill that updates Chapter 256 in Iowa Code, which is the main education code chapter. Upon first inspection, the bill may not look like major changes, however, the actual bill removes woke requirements that have slowly but steadily crept into public education over the years. The bill continues to align the educator code chapter with what Iowans have prioritized over the last few years.

The subject of Social Studies through K-12 has emerged as a key flashpoint in the pushback against wokeness in classrooms. House Republicans have prioritized social studies for multiple years but some districts seem to not think that social studies is as important as math, science, or English language arts. That changes now. Social studies is being added to the statewide assessments. Students need to know how uniqueness of how the United States came to be, where it is today and what the future may hold.

The bill removes language that had teachers acting like mental health professionals instead of just teaching. Forcing teachers to act as therapists not only distracts from academics but confuses children. Most students, especially the youngest, are simply engaging in normal childhood behavior and asking teachers to apply therapeutic techniques in which they are not trained is likely counterproductive. Trained mental health professionals should do their job while allowing teachers to teach.

Additionally, the bill strikes multicultural, gender fair, and global perspectives language the Code. This might raise questions from some but these terms are entry point for destructive ideologies like DEI, Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other woke ideas into classrooms. When parents ask why their school is engaged in these kind of practices it often traces back to these terms being included in state law. Now they are removed.

The bill adds physical fitness and nutrition to health curriculum. Every day Iowans of all ages learn more about taking stronger control of their own fitness and nutrition. Healthier children are better and more successful students. To read the full bill, you can view it here:  HF 2670
House Amends MAHA Bill, Ensures More Physical Activity

This week, the Iowa House passed legislation titled the Iowa Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) bill. HF 2676 passed 61-31, with all Democrats unfortunately voting no for the second time. This comprehensive bill ensurse that taxpayer funds are not making Iowa’s children obese and creating poor health outcomes for life, while also focusing on the reality that physical movement helps not just physical health, but mental health.

Iowa currently ranks 11th in the nation for adult obesity. One in six children in Iowa are considered obese. Obesity leads to high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and, as many of the members of this legislature are concerned, several types of cancers. These obesity related diseases often disproportionately affect lower-income individuals at a higher rate. The leading cause of death in Iowa is heart disease.

SNAP Healthy Standards – This bill prohibits soda and candy from being purchased under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The legislature would like to emphasize the nutrition aspect of this taxpayer funded program to assist low-income individuals. According to a 2016 USDA study of foods purchased with SNAP funds, 20 cents of every dollar was spent on sweetened beverages, desserts, salty snacks, candy and sugar. This bill ensures that taxpayer funds are not going to fund poor health outcomes that do not alleviate hunger.

School Nutrition – This bill prohibits schools and vendors from serving breakfast and lunch that contain blue dye 1 and 2, green dye 3, potassium bromate, propylparaben, red dye 40, yellow dye 5 and 6. This section is the first step to ensuring that taxpayer funds are not harming Iowa’s children and setting them up for a future healthy lifestyle. For example, blue dye 1 has been linked to behavioral difficulties, red dye 40 has been linked to ADHD symptoms and yellow dye 5 has been linked to sleep disturbances.

Technology in Schools – This bill recognizes the harm constant use of technology has on children’s learning, attention span, and mental health. The bill reasonably limits K-5 digital instruction to 60 minutes per school day while also allowing parents to opt-out of all digital instruction. This bill prohibits the use of cell phones during recess, when children should be playing rather than sitting behind another device. This bill also requires school districts to go through their device policy and see if one-to-one devices are really necessary for education and evaluate if there should be additional limits placed on grades 6-12.

Physical Activity and Presidential Fitness Test – This bill requires 10 additional minutes per day of physical activity for kindergarten through 4th grade. That change will lead the nation in physical activity for children. This bill also requires the presidential fitness test for grades 1-12.

Physician Nutrition Education – This bill requires medical schools in Iowa to require at least 40 hours of coursework on nutrition and metabolic health to graduate. This bill also requires nutrition continuing education for certain doctors and physician assistants. These initiatives aim to ensure that our medical community is focusing on their patients leading a healthy lifestyle and becoming more personally responsible for their own health outcomes.

This bill additionally allows pharmacies to offer ivermectin over-the-counter, allows for nasal epinephrine delivery systems in schools, and allows the state to participate in the psychology compact to attract more psychologists to Iowa. This amendment can now be considered by the Senate.
House Amends Welfare Bill to Focus on True Safety-Net

This week, the Iowa House passed SF 2422 with an amendment. This bill focuses Iowa’s public assistance programs on caring for disabled Iowans and preparing able-bodied adults for life after welfare. This bill builds on the work of the legislature the last several years with work requirements for able-bodied adults, healthy food standards for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and asset testing for SNAP. These bills set reasonable expectations for taxpayer funds, ensures dignity in work while not limiting individuals growth out of public assistance. The bill reemphasizes that safety-net programs for low-income Iowans are not intended to be forever government dependent programs.

SF2422 as amended does the following:

• Helping the Disabled:
  • Makes the following changes to the Medicaid for Employed People with Disabilities Program:
    • Expands eligibility from 250% FPL to 300% FPL.
    • Strikes limits on DHHS charging premiums
    • Requires DHHS to maintain a website for individuals to pay premiums electronically
    • Requires a study and annual reporting on Medicaid Exceptions to Policy
    • Requires DHHS to provide adequate Medicaid reimbursement to allow for the transfer of high-needs individuals from ChildServe to On With Life

• One Big Beautiful Bill Implementation:
  • OBBB requires states to cost share in SNAP costs if payment error rate exceeds 6% beginning in FFY2028 and removes the ability for a state to waive erroneous excessive payments under Medicaid if they exceed 3% error rate.
    • This bill requires DHHS to submit quarterly reports to the legislature detailing SNAP and Medicaid error rates.
    • This bill seeks multiple waiver requests regarding the SNAP error rate including excluding individuals under 22 years of age from income, allow for automated sources to determine eligibility/benefits, require benefits to be used within 3 months, and only attribute the errors of DHHS to the SNAP error rate
  • Requires SAVE or other citizen verification systems to be used to verify eligibility to receive public assistance
  • Codifies that the financial resources and income of all household members shall be used to determine eligibility and benefit allotment in SNAP, even if they are ineligible individuals.
  • Codifies federal changes to SNAP eligibility to be citizens and other lawfully admitted individuals
  • Restricts retroactive Medicaid eligibility to 2 months for pregnant women, children, and residents of nursing facilities, and prohibits any other retroactive Medicaid eligibility for any other population.

• Welfare Reform: Allows DHHS to require proof of at least 12 months of residency in Iowa on applications for public assistance. This section exempts individuals receiving Social Security.

• Ensuring Legislative Oversight: Requires DHHS to do a cost neutral analysis prior to submitting a waiver request for Medicaid to CMS. If the waiver is determined to be not cost neutral to the state, DHHS shall not submit the request unless approved by a majority vote of both chambers of the legislature.