There was quite a bit of debating on both the House and Senate floors this week; however, most of what was debated did not include education bills. There was only one education bill that was debated and that was the Statewide Assessment.

SF 240, Statewide Assessment, passed out of the House, and has been sent back to the Senate. They will most likely adopt the House’s amended version and the bill will be on its way to the Governor. The bill requires the Department to issue a Request for Proposal by July 1, 2017, for the selection of a statewide assessment to be administered in the 2018-2019 school year. The assessment will align with Iowa Core academic standards and measure English language arts, including reading and writing, mathematics, and science. It also requires that students enrolled in grades 5, 8, and 10 be administered the science assessment, which was a recommendation of the Iowa Assessment Task Force. Potential vendors and assessment providers can collaborate to meet the requirements.

HSB 196 – Career and Technical Education Programs and Partnerships – was introduced this week in Appropriations and was assigned to a subcommittee. The bill changes the way funds are distributed to the Regional Planning Partnerships, shifting from a reimbursement process to a disbursement process. The bill also clarifies that certain consumable supplies are an allowable use of partnership funds.

This week the House and Senate released their joint budget targets for fiscal year 2018. Budget targets are an overall amount for individual departments or state agencies such as Education, Health and Human Services and Justice. For education, their target is $908.41 million, which is $11.8 million below the Governor’s budget.  We anticipate that the breakdown of budget numbers will be released early next week and those number will show the financial landscape for fiscal year 2018.

Next week we should see more education bills being debated and moving through the legislative process. We should also see the breakdown of the joint budget numbers and will have a better understanding of the impact on the Department and specific programs.