Senate Republicans advanced Gov. Kim Reynolds’ suggested 2% increase for base per-student funding.
House Speaker Pat Grassley is calling for a 2.25% bump. They also included increases for some other school budget areas and one-time money to help districts deal with higher costs. He says House Republicans want to provide more funding than Reynolds and the Senate would.
“But we also have been hearing from our school district things that are important to them, like operational sharing, like cost per pupil, like transportation costs that they’re seeing, other inflationary costs. So we tried to come up with more of a menu that suits—each district would be impacted by them differently.”
Democrats say that’s not enough to keep up with rising costs in schools. They’ve called for a 5% school funding increase.