Senate File 2323 — FY2017 Education Appropriations

Senate File 2323 is the education budget bill for FY 2017. The bill appropriates $1.0098 billion to the Board of Regents, Department of Education, College Student Aid Commission and other agencies.

The funding amount is an increase of $17.6 million over FY 2016. Much of the increase is because of the Child Development appropriation ($12.6 million) being shifted into this appropriation from Standings. The additional increase was $4.9 million. Among the funding changes in the bill are:

College Student Aid Commission

• $526,233 increase for the Iowa Tuition Grant

• $3,000,000 decrease for the National Guard Educational Assistance Program — The program has $2.5 million carry-forward from FY16 — combined with the FY17 appropriation this will meet expected need.

• $200,000 decrease for the Rural Nurse/PA Loan Repayment program — The remaining FY17 appropriation is expected meet demand.

Department of Education

• $250,000 decrease for the DE’s Administration funding

• $25,000 decrease for council and commission support (zeroes out the line)

• $1,500,000 decrease for Iowa Learning Online — this program receive $1.5 million for three years as agreed upon in 2013’s Education Reform initiative.

Community Colleges

• $3,015,958 increase for the community colleges

Board of Regents

• $300,000 decrease for the Regents Board Office — the board supplements this appropriation by charging the universities.

• $6,299,000 increase for the universities

• $1,300,000 increase for the University of Iowa (0.6 percent)

• $2,218,000 increase for Iowa State University (1.2 percent)

• $2,781,000 increase for the University of Northern Iowa (2.9 percent)

• $213,958 increase for the Iowa School for the Deaf

• $89,205 increase for the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School

In addition to the appropriations, the bill also contains a few policy provisions:

• Delays the early literacy third grade retention policy and summer school requirement by one year.

• Delays the implementation of the Smarter Balanced Assessment for one year.

• Adds clarification language that teaching for three years as a shared visions teacher or head start teacher meets the mentoring and induction requirement for an initial teaching license.

• Allows preschool funding to be used for transportation expenses, an oversight from a bill passed last year.

• Adds a new fine arts mentoring program, which helps new fine arts teachers receive mentoring from experienced teachers, funded partially in this bill and with a one-to-one match by non-state funding.

While this is not the entire bill, it does include some of the highlights and changes that both the House and the Senate agreed to. As always, please feel free to contact me should you have any questions.