Letter To The Editor: School Funding falls short….again

Editors Note: The views and opinions expressed in this editorial are not necessarily the views or opinions of Oskaloosa News.

By now many of you have heard that Governor Branstad vetoed the $55 million one-time funding for all the public school districts in Iowa for the 2015-16 school year. What impact will this have? And why is this happening? These are two good questions and all those who care about the education of our kids should be concerned about. During the past six years the “Allowable Growth” or now called “Supplemental State Aid” has averaged an increase of 1.875% per year. This is not enough to keep up with the minimum step increases in the contract with teachers, not to mention large cost increases we have seen in health insurance, energy costs, transportation, property insurance, school buses, curriculum supplies and many other items. Oskaloosa’s portion of the $55 million veto was $274,406.11, which, the school district will not receive. Spending cuts have been made each year to accommodate the lack of sufficient funding and now Oskaloosa, and all other Iowa School Districts are being forced to make difficult decisions. These decisions will affect all of the nearly 2,400 students in Oskaloosa. Classroom sizes, classes offered and extracurricular activities are just some of the items that could be impacted. That’s just a start regarding the impact on our kids. Regarding the “Why?” …if you follow the news media you will find that Republicans, Democrats, the Iowa House, the Iowa Senate and the Governor will all blame each other. The fact is that they are all elected to make decisions in the best interest of the people of Iowa. My challenge to anyone reading this is to contact your state politicians and ask them how important education is to them. Ask them how many hundreds of millions of dollars in state reserves is enough and when will spending on education keep up with inflation? Ask them how much longer educators will be asked to add more to their plate without resources to pay for them? As Presidential candidates make their way to Iowa this is an opportunity to share Iowa’s commitment and concerns for Education to be shared with politicians at the State and Federal level. We owe this to our kids.

Tom Richardson

Oskaloosa Dad and

Oskaloosa School Board, Vice President