Legislation that Affects West Fork Community School

A few weeks ago I sent out a legislative update about some very important bills and how they could have a negative impact on our school. I had asked you to reach out to your representatives and I could tell from the response I received that many of you must have done so. Never before have I had the number of responses that I received this time from legislators, and I believe the reason these legislators responded to me is because of the number of people from our district/community that reached out to them. Your voice was heard and it makes a difference! To those that did reach out on behalf of the school, thank you for doing that.Many of the things we discussed before are still on the table and we could use your continued support in reaching out again. They did set the Supplemental State Aid at 2.4% and that has been signed by the Governor. However, the Omnibus Bill that I mentioned last time is still alive and action may be taken soon as we head into the first funnel deadline. That Bill, SF 159, was approved by the Senate that includes vouchers, charter schools, and a slew of other items. The House has broken the bill up into pieces and introduced legislation this week. If you reach out to them and ask them to vote no on the voucher bill, they will know what you are talking about. Again, public funds should stay with public schools, not charter schools and not private schools. SF271 is a Bill that I hope passes. It is a bill that would bring equity to schools across Iowa on the amount of At-Risk/Drop Out prevention funding that we get. If this bill were to pass, it would provide about an additional $95,000/year to our district for at-risk students. They’re obviously getting the bills ready for committee action later in the week to beat the funnel. So it is still not too late to let your representatives in the House know that they should vote no on the Voucher Bill and yes on the SF 271 for At-Risk Funding.