Sioux City School Board members have discussed an Iowa legislative proposal to raise the minimum teacher salary in the state to $50,000 annually, noting that a new teacher could be paid nearly the same as one with several years of experience.
The board members reviewed the salary proposal in a Monday meeting in which they discussed its impact on the budget that will be set by April for the next school year.
Board member Dan Greenwell said 163 of the 1,080 Sioux City School District teachers make less than $50,000 in salary, and would be impacted if the teacher pay measure gets enacted. Greenwell said those impacted teachers would get a combined $465,000 in extra salary money coming from the state.
Board member Treyla Lee noted that if the minimum salary goes to $50,000, many district teachers with up to five years of experience will be making close to the same amount as the newer teachers, a dynamic that Greenwell called “compression.”
Currently, teachers in the Sioux City district make a combined $74 million dollars in salary, with millions more once benefits are tacked on.
The district will soon begin the collective bargaining process to set salaries and other details of union contracts with teachers and other employee groups. The employees are represented by the Sioux City Education Association and one other union group, who will start the process by making an opening proposal on March 5.
Down in the Iowa Legislature on Tuesday, two bills that would enforce age restrictions online were advanced by the Iowa House Judiciary Committee.
One proposal would require social media companies to have permission from parents before allowing minors to create accounts. Parents would also receive access to see what their children are posting.
The other bill was amended to require users to prove they’re over 18 years old before they can go on porn sites. Similar measures have passed in several other states in recent years, such as Louisiana and Utah, where they have drawn First Amendment legal challenges.
Both bills can now come up for debate in the Iowa House.
Additionally, a bill advancing out of an Iowa House subcommittee is aimed at financially supporting more full day preschool programs across the state.
Currently, a school district receives half of the regular state cost per pupil for each student in preschool.
Republican Rep. Henry Stone says his bill would provide full funding for the low-income students in those programs.
The bill is now headed to the House Education Committee.
In one additional legislative matter, Iowa Senate Democrats have proposed four bills aimed at addressing issues around safety and accountability in Iowa’s nursing homes.
They’d add more nursing home inspectors, raise the wages of direct-care workers, create a board for nursing home oversight, and raise the personal needs allowance for long-term care residents on Medicaid.
Democratic Senator Claire Celsi said she got input from advocates all over the state to help craft these bills.
Senate Republicans have rejected previous requests by Democrats for an oversight hearing about nursing homes, and it is not likely that they will move these bills forward.
