The Iowa K-12 education budget will see $90 million new dollars next year. Iowa legislators passed the budget in early February that allows for 2.06% growth. Local legislators had mixed reactions on the end result, Senator Rich Taylor felt they could have done better, “I was disappointed in that the schools actually told us if you want us to do any better, we’re going to need at least 3%. And the Governor had asked for 2.3%, which was even quite a bit better than what we got. I was pretty disappointed that we couldn’t even come to the Governors level.”

Representative Joe Mitchell said that he was pleased with how everything played out, “I was super excited that we got that passed and super grateful to get that money out to the schools. Overall, I thought it was great that we got it done and I think it’s good overall.” With the 2.06% in allowable growth, that’ll increase the amount of money K-12 public schools in Iowa receive by $90 million, bringing the total budget to $3.2 billion.