Sioux City School District teachers, through their employee union group, have asked for raises of $1,260, or 3.25 percent, to the base salary in the 2025-26 year ahead.
As some teachers looked on Wednesday, the Sioux City Education Association also asked for an increase in longevity pay, plus also more longevity pay for other workers in the Sioux City Education Support Personnel Association group.
The SCESPA group includes paraeducators, administrative assistants, library and other workers, who asked for raises of $2.15 per hour. A year ago, those workers asked for a raise of $2.10 per hour.
Before any state money is factored in to raise teacher salaries, the current Sioux City District base teacher base salary is $38,756.
Brenda Zahner, who announced the SCEA opening contract proposal, in recent years has asserted that increasing longevity pay is a good way to reduce high turnover in some school district jobs.
Zahner told Siouxland Public Media on Thursday some key points.
“With SCEA, the main issues we are hitting is to stay competitive with SBL and LeMars, and use some of the District surplus on other things, like additional supplemental positions,” Zahner said.
“For SCESPA, our focus is to make those positions more desirable to hire and retain so as to lessen the strain on the system caused by all of the open positions. Furthermore, we have a big concern about new hires earning more money than people who have been long term employees.”
School district officials will give their responding offer in an upcoming March meeting.
Once the opening proposals are unveiled, Iowa law permits the subsequent negotiations to be carried out privately. The Sioux City Education Association represents 1,100 teachers, and 400 workers are represented by the Sioux City Education Support Personnel Association group.
*Additionally, for the fourth time in recent years, Nebraska State Senator Machaela Cavanaugh has introduced a bill that would make lunch free for 100 percent of Nebraska public and private school students.
The legislation would require schools to offer free breakfasts and lunches to students regardless of their federal free or reduced lunch eligibility. The state would reimburse schools to offset the cost of the new requirement, and the bill is estimated to cost $60 million.
Just over 48 percent of Nebraska public school students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture began offering free meals for all schoolchildren, regardless of financial status. After several extensions, that program ended in June 2022.
Since then, states including California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont have enacted universal free school lunch programs.
President of the Nebraska State Education Association, Tim Royers, said the bill could also help address academic and behavioral issues in schools.
*In related news, Iowans who get government-funded food assistance would be severely limited in what foods they could buy, under a bill advanced through a House subcommittee with Republican support.
The bill would have the state seek federal permission to limit food stamps to cover eggs, meat, dairy, fruits and vegetables, and some other categories of food like grains, nuts, pasta and rice.
Luke Elzinga with the DMARC Food Pantry Network says it effectively bans people using SNAP benefits from buying about two-thirds of the foods in grocery stores.
No one spoke in support of the food restrictions in the Wednesday hearing.
If that policy moves forward, the bill would also provide $1 million dollars for a program that incentivizes people to use their SNAP benefits for fresh fruits and vegetables.
*Also in Iowa news, new data shows 76 percent of clinician-provided abortions in Iowa in 2023 were by medication.
Those numbers were reported when abortion was still legal in Iowa up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.
The latest data by the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, also found 29 percent of abortions were provided through online clinics in 2023.
These numbers were both well above the national average among states that don’t have a total abortion ban.
Isabel DoCampo is with the Guttmacher Institute. She said the loss of brick and mortal abortion clinics in Iowa, as well as a law enacted last year banning abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy with exceptions, could drive up these numbers in the state.
