School Board Sets 2010 Legislative Priorities
The Sioux City Community School District set its legislative priorities for the 2010 session of the Iowa Legislature at the July 20 school board meeting. The district school board determined the following priorities to be critical to the students and taxpayers in the Sioux City community:
- Strongly supports the need for the state to develop a plan and pass legislation to address property tax inequities remaining in the foundation formula, and other levies including the physical plan and equipment levy, debt levy, instructional support levy, management levy, cash reserve levy and other local resources that differ significantly based on per pupil taxable value and student needs.
- Supports changes in collective bargaining requiring arbitrators to first consider local conditions and ability to pay. Once the arbitrator determines the district has the ability to pay, then the arbitrator should determine comparability.
- In order to help us with our use of more spending authority, we support methods to include, but not limited to the following: increase allowable growth; increase the amount allowed for at-risk students; allow us to spend supplementary funds as if they were fully funded by the state; supports a school foundation formula that recognizes and adequate funding changes in demographics, including declining and increasing enrollment challenges (spending authority issues); adequate funding for ELL students until they are proficient; increases the at-risk student weighting and includes drop-out prevention in the foundation formula, and full funding of the state’s portion of the instructional support levy.
- Funding to support preschool for all four-year old children.
- Supports continuation of or restoration of state categorical funds for education, such as the reading instruction/class size or teacher quality funds, with the eventual goal of including categorical funds in the foundation formula.
