Washington school board talks legislative priorities

WASHINGTON — Members of the Washington school board at a meeting last week faced the difficult task of narrowing down their list of legislative priorities, provided to various education advocacy groups in the state.

The district’s official five-item list, chosen from topics provided by the Iowa Association of School Boards, includes teacher recruitment, teacher professional development and retention, Supplemental State Aid, school safety, and mental health.

Another group, Rural School Advocates of Iowa, asks districts to assign a point value between one and seven for a long list of items, with higher numbers for more important issues.

“We just need to give them an idea of whether we think it’s a high priority or low priority,” Stone said.

Members of the Washington school board said they hoped to prioritize practical goals over ideal ones, even as they held strong feelings about several items on the list.

“Because it just passed last session, it doesn’t matter how much they beat it this session, they’re not going to change it this soon,” Board Chair Troy Suchan said of the group’s potential advocacy against Education Savings Accounts. “There’s a zero-percent chance they’re going to get any traction on it. I mean, I want it to be a seven, but it’s not going to be.”

Suchan said choosing battles would be essential for education lobbyists.

“Everything can’t be a seven,” he said. “If we give them all high priorities … they’re not that huge of an organization, they don’t have the resources to go after every single one of these.”

Items from the IASB top five list ranked highly on the district’s response to RSAI as well, with SSA, student mental health, safety training and staff shortage solutions getting high points.

“Opportunity Equity/Resources based on At-Risk Need” scored closer to the middle of the road for Washington’s decision-makers, with Suchan saying the metric favored urban schools over rural ones. “Quality Preschool” also hovered around the five-point mark for the district.

Another moderate goal was “Sharing Incentives,” referring to the district’s ability to share some staff with others in the area. While officials said they didn’t expect that option to go away anytime soon, they said it was important enough to keep away from the bottom of the list.

“There was a time when there was talk that these were going to go away,” Stone said. “What that could do for districts our size and smaller could be somewhat devastating, especially districts that are smaller than us.”

Transportation equity and bond issue authority ended with some of the lower point totals.

“Local School Board Authority” and opposition to unfunded mandates scored poorly as well with Board Member Eric Turner saying, “It probably doesn’t matter,” as members of the board agreed such points were important, but likely to prove losing battles.

With the next school year on the horizon, board members said they hoped to work closely with area legislators in the coming months. Turner said the district planned to meet with State Rep. Heather Hora at an upcoming work session. The representative from State House District 92 is a member of the legislative body’s education committee.

“She has a lot of information, a lot of working knowledge,” he said. “It’s pretty good to have our representative be on the education committee.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com