Final stimulus bill may cost Iowa schools millions

What the House giveth, the Senate taketh away.

That’s the story of Iowa’s public schools and President Obama’s stimulus bill. In the federal economic stimulus package that was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in January, Iowa school districts would have received just over $255 million for low-income students, construction and special education. The funds would have been a much welcomed patch to cover pending state budget cuts.

But Senate Republicans, saying there was fat in the House bill, decided education was the best place to start cutting.

Iowa school districts were poised to receive between $24,300 (Prescott Community School District) and $25.5 million (Des Moines Independent Community School District) over a two-year period, according to House Education and Labor Committee estimates. Additional provisions in the House bill increased federal student aid programs, funded modernized existing education facilities and created a state stabilization fund to prevent education-related layoffs. Early education benefited as well, with $2.1 billion allotted for Head Start programs.

The House bill, which passed on a party line vote of 244 to 188, made investment in education a top priority, according to U.S. Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat and chairman of the House Committee.

“We cannot let our whole education system collapse as the economy falters,” Miller said when the legislation was approved. “[T]hese investments will meet the most urgent challenges we face: creating new jobs that can’t get shipped overseas, and mitigating strained state and local budgets. We must make sure that students are not the latest victims of the economic crisis.”

But Senate Democrats need Republican votes for final approval and the Republicans have slashed 43 percent of the original House allotments for education.

The Senate passed its version of the stimulus package today. From there, the two bills will be merged into a mutually agreeable package by a conference committee. While no one knows what compromises will emerge, few expect education spending to return to the levels approved by the House, although some portion will likely be increased.

Chris Bern, president of the Iowa State Education Association, is hopeful that the conference committee will revisit the education cuts and possibly reverse some.

“Not only here in Iowa, but at schools throughout the nation, students are going to continue to come through the doors,” Bern said. “The governor is proposing a 6.5 percent budget cut, but that doesn’t mean that Iowa schools are going to have 6.5 percent less students.”

If the Senate version stands, Iowa students and schools are estimated to receive $349.9 million less than what was allotted by the U.S. House. Low-income students, school construction and special education funding would drop by nearly half to roughly $109 million. Although the exact formula for distribution of stimulus money to the schools is not yet known, applying the same percentage deduction to the estimated House allotments per district has the Prescott District dropping from $24,300 to $13,924. Des Moines Public Schools would drop from $25.5 million to $14.6 million if the same percentage deduction is applied.

The worst-case scenario for Iowa schools would be the unlikely decision by the conference committee to scrap all education funding. In that scenario, and with schools still reacting to state budget cuts, Bern believes it would only be a short time before parents and students are directly impacted by tough budgetary decisions.

“The impact would likely start with the loss of support professionals,” Bern said, indicating that such support staffers are important components for students and parents. “Students have to have bus drivers to get to school. Schools and students need people to cook the lunches and help in the special ed classrooms as well as in general classrooms. These individuals are very important. But these will likely be the first areas that schools look at when they are facing budget cuts.”

When support staffers have been cut to bare minimums, schools in need of more budget cuts are likely to look at curriculum and teachers.

“How that would be decided — which programs and/or teachers might be selected — I don’t know,” Bern said. “It will likely depend on the individual circumstances of the particular district. It could result in the loss of some programs.”

The bottom line, according to Bern, is that Iowa students deserve better.

“It is not [Iowa students'] fault that they are going to school in 2008 or 2009. They didn’t pick when they would be going to school,” Bern said. “The students who are going to school today deserve a quality education just as the students going to school five years ago or 10 years ago did. Likewise, the students who will be going to school 20 years from now, when we are hopefully not in this recession, will also deserve a quality education. We need to keep all of the programs together that we can.”