04-04-2025
Iowa Senate Education Committee moves several bills ahead of funnel deadline
The Iowa Senate Education Committee moved ahead a number of bills focused on K-12 and higher education Thursday. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
The Iowa Senate Education Committee advanced a number of bills impacting both K-12 and higher education on Thursday, ensuring they will remain active as the session's second funnel deadline looms.
Sen. Lynn Evans, R-Aurelia, said during the committee meeting the group will have one more meeting early next week, but will focus on appointments instead of policy.
The first bill discussed during committee, and one of the most contested of the day, was House File 884, which would allow public and nonpublic school districts to bring in a chaplain to work with students. It states in the legislation that schools cannot 'require or coerce a student to utilize' chaplains' services and bars chaplains from being used as guidance counselors.
An amendment from Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, D-West Des Moines, to prohibit chaplains from proselytizing on school grounds, failed. Sen. Mike Pike, R-Des Moines, floor manager for the bill, submitted an amendment to require chaplains be mandatory reporters and 'have a certification from a nationally recognized school Chaplain professional credentializing organization,' he said, which passed.
Senate democrats voiced concerns about the amendment limiting who would be allowed to work with a district as a chaplain, with Trone Garriott saying the only organization providing the necessary credentials is a Christian advocacy group that would not allow those who don't follow its goals to receive credentials.
'State sanctioned Christian indoctrination,' said Sen. Sen. Molly Donahue, D-Cedar Rapids. 'That's what this is about.'
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Once passed, the bill as a whole also caused worries for Trone Garriott and others. She said being a chaplain is hard work that is not for everyone, and this legislation would allow 'untrained, unvetted, unsupervised individuals' into their children's schools and gives them a title and authority.
'It is a groomer's dream to have access to our children this way, to have this authority, and then to be able to come in and operate with no guidance and no guidelines and no oversight,' Trone Garriott said.
Pike said the bill would give control back to local school districts, and to the communities within them, to decide for themselves whether they'd like to have a chaplain working with students.
'If the parents and the district chooses not to be involved with the chaplains, then they're not going to be,' Pike said. 'But if the district chooses so, then they will, with the agreement of the parents. The parents always have a say in their school board.'
House File 785 would modify rules for charter school boards to allow no more than one board member to reside outside of Iowa, but would require that all members be U.S. citizens.
Sens. Mike Zimmer and Herman Quirmbach expressed concerns that allowing people living outside of the state could take control away from the people who utilize the school.
'I do believe that one individual from outside of the state sitting on that board could have an undue influence,' Zimmer said.
Sen. Jesse Green, R-Boone, said in closing comments the legislation will be useful to the charter schools located close to Iowa's borders. There are no such constraints in place for nonprofit boards, he added, calling into question why school boards should need one.
'There's only three states right now that have restrictions on board memberships, and so we're pretty unique in that we're requiring only in-state board memberships,' Green said.
The committee moved the legislation ahead with a vote of 11 to 5.
House File 189 would set requirements for public school districts with nonpublic school students wishing to participate in extracurricular athletics. Sen. Tim Kraayenbrink, R-Fort Dodge, said it would require school districts to allow students living in the district but attending a nonpublic school to participate in athletics provided by the district but not the nonpublic school in the past two years.
Trone Garriott called the legislation a 'one-way bill,' as it does not allow students from public schools to join sports only offered by the nonpublic school in the district.
'It's really inappropriate that even though we're funding both school systems, only one student gets to pick and choose from all of the available opportunities while our public school students are shut out,' Trone Garriott said. 'This is inherently unfair.'
The legislation passed with an 11-5 vote.
Four pieces of legislation were passed unanimously during the committee meeting, aimed at making those allowed to direct students with concussions to sit out of activities and school district budgets more flexible.
House File 471 would add those with a doctorate in psychology and specialized training in concussion management or neuropsychology to the category of licensed health professionals who can direct a student to be removed from an extracurricular activity due to showing signs or symptoms of a concussion or brain injury.
House File 579 would allow the modified supplemental amount ratio school districts can levy for dropout prevention programs to go up to 5%, Sen. Tom Shipley, R-Nodaway, said, if approved at an election. It cannot increase by more than .5% every fiscal year.
House File 316 would make changes to career education and exploration in K-12 schools, Evans said, including expanding career planning curriculum to fifth and sixth grades and adding additional criteria for career education in seventh and eighth grades.
The bill would also have the Iowa Department of Education form a list of industry recognized credentials, create a seal and provide it to schools to add onto student transcripts and other documents if they have earned a credential before graduating.
House File 315 would make school districts impacted by a natural disaster eligible for an additional year of budget guarantees, Evans said. No districts would have need of this adjustment the majority of the time, he said, but it would help those who have.
Sen. Cindy Winckler, D-Davenport, said the bill needs to move forward and urged its adoption. A similar version of the House bill, Senate File 64, has been assigned a subcommittee in the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
House File 295 would prohibit higher education accrediting bodies from taking negative actions against state universities and community colleges for following, or refusing to violate, state law, like eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programming that an accreditor may require.
If an accreditor does take an action against an Iowa university, the institution can seek authorization from the Iowa attorney general to file a civil suit against the body.
Winckler and Quirmbach pointed out the removal of any mention of the Higher Learning Commission, an accrediting body they said provides accreditation to 51 colleges and universities in Iowa, from the legislation, and said taking it out allows for universities to use lower-quality accreditors.
'I can't support the bill. I think it dumbs down our higher education system,' Winckler said. 'I think that with the possible elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, it puts us and any of our higher learning institutions in a very precarious situation.'
Sen. Kerry Gruenhagen, R-Walcott, agreed with Winckler that accreditation is important, and added that this bill will protect it. Names in the bill aren't important, he said, as new accreditors may come down the line later on.
It passed 11-5 and will head to the Senate calendar for debate.
House File 401 would set new general education requirements for Iowa's public universities, mandating a certain number of credit hours be taken in English, math and statistics, American and western heritage, natural and social sciences and the humanities.
While the bill states instructors' academic freedoms and the freedom to discuss ideas in the classroom will not be infringed upon, it also states general education courses cannot 'distort significant historical events or include any curriculum or other material that teaches identity politics or is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States of America or the state of Iowa.'
Lawmakers said in a subcommittee meeting Wednesday they anticipate amendments will need to be added to the legislation.
Quirmbach said universities are perfectly able to set their own standards for general education, and the Legislature would probably do a much worse job at it. Echoing comments he made in the subcommittee meeting, he said including 'identity politics' without a definition would throw educators into 'complete chaos.'
He would also like to know what is expected to be excluded from education due to the section about systemic oppression, bringing up slavery and its inclusion in the Constitution as an example.
'Our history is one of institutions that have supported sexism and racism, oppression and privilege, and if we are going to require a course on American heritage, we cannot, we cannot, honestly avoid those topics,' Quirmbach said.
If the argument from the subcommittee persists that the language is in the present rather than the past tense, Quirmbach said it could then bar instructors from speaking about the Legislature removing transgender protections from Iowa Civil Rights code this session.
Sen. Jeff Taylor, R-Sioux Center, provided his own definition of 'identity politics' — 'identity politics politicizes certain demographic traits, thereby defining people by their sex, race, sexual orientation and so on, and prioritizing public policy issues on that basis.'
While there were systems of sexism, racism and oppression in the U.S. 200 years ago, Taylor said that is not the case today and that is why it is barred in the bill.
'I'm not saying that there isn't racism, that there isn't sexism, that there isn't oppression or privilege — all of those things still exist, but they are not institutionalized,' Taylor said.
The bill passed with an 11-5 vote.
House File 440 would direct the state higher education system to study the pros and cons of implementing a tuition freeze for first-year students so they won't see increases during their first four years of study, as well as set tuition prices for the upcoming year by April 30.
Universities would also be required to develop three-year baccalaureate degree programs and work study programs for students working part-time while attending classes paid for by their employer.
An amendment introduced by Quirmbach to provide an exception to the April 30 deadline if the Legislature has not yet approved higher education appropriations failed to pass.
Green thanked Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, for his work on the bill in his closing comments, and it moved ahead to the Senate calendar.
House File 856 would bar state entities from spending any money, from public funding or otherwise, on opening or maintaining DEI offices or officers. Community colleges are included in the legislation as well as private universities, who would risk Iowa Tuition Grant ineligibility if they do not comply.
Sen. Ken Rozenboom, R-Oskaloosa, introduced an amendment to strike the division dealing with private universities from the legislation, which passed unanimously.
Quirmbach and Zimmer reiterated concerns during the meeting they expressed on the Senate Floor during debate on Senate File 507. Zimmer said the use of the word 'promote' could bar local and state government departments from encouraging good initiatives aimed at getting more women into male-dominated fields, and Quirmbach said entities could potentially be stopped from celebrating Black History Month and other established events.
'This bill, more than anything else I think, suppresses freedom of free speech, it suppresses freedom of opinion…,' Quirmbach said. 'It's one of the saddest pieces of legislation I've seen coming along.'
Rozenboom said this legislation is in line with others considered last session, and it 'addresses a problem that needs to be addressed.' While the definition of DEI in the bill is a wide-ranging one, and one he said that is 'what you make of it,' but added it is well thought-out and gets to the core of the issue he sees.
'It is not the proper place of a state entity to promote ideologies and opinions as their official role,' Rozenboom said.
The legislation passed with an 11-5 vote.
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