Changes to education have been at the forefront of the 2023 Iowa Legislative Session, and a local senator has been driving many of those proposals through the first six weeks.

District 19 State Senator Ken Rozenboom is chair of the Iowa Senate Education Committee — a group that helped drive passage of a contentious bill that in three years expands a publicly-funded scholarship equivalent to public per-pupil funding to every student attending a K-12 private school in the state borders, which he called a major victory for the state, despite its many detractors.

Rozenboom also said he championed a change to the Iowa Senate’s initial proposal of state supplemental aid from two to three percent, a number that has been signed by Governor Kim Reynolds.

“The money approved in Senate File 192 will dedicate an additional $107 million in state aid, another historic high. Total funding for K-12 education is $17,068 per student in Iowa, with $7,635 coming from the state general fund in SF 192.”

With those two major pieces of legislation signed, Rozenboom’s committee work has been focused now on a variety of bills that aim to restrict lessons related to gender identity for elementary students, make it easier to remove books from school libraries, and even ban the use of nicknames for students unless parental permission is given.

Hear more from Rozenboom about the Iowa Legislative Session on today’s Let’s Talk Pella.