Spirit Lake School Board Meets With State Legislators
Spirit Lake School Board Meets With State Legislators
June 21, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Spirit Lake)– The Spirit Lake School Board Monday voiced concerns to State Representative John Wills and Senator Dave Rowley during a special meeting. School safety was at the top of the list. Wills told board members he’s advocating for certain school staff members to be armed, saying law enforcement simply can’t respond fast enough and that staffing every school with officers isn’t feasible…
“I believe, and house majority Republicans believe, that that’s already something that can happen, it’s already something that state law allows for. And I know the schools maybe don’t think that is right. So we need to clarify, we need to really step in and find out is this true, is this, how can we do this, so that we’re clarifying the law if there is a clarification that needs to be done. The Governor’s $100 million is just one small portion of this because every kid should be safe. Every kid should feel safe.”
Rowley says he feels the $100 million being allocated to school safety by the Governor will go a long way toward “hardening” schools by helping provide risk assessments and electronic monitoring…
“Some how we’ve got to look at what are approaches that we can take whether it’s all through Iowa or each district take a hard look. I’d like to think that there’s some commonality there so that that money can go to single risk assessments to provide at all the schools.”
School funding was another topic of discussion. Wills told members the state should not be dictating how districts spend money from SILOS, or school infrastructure local option sales tax funds…
“I look at schools and I see that some of them have these huge great big reserves and then when you ask them they’re like well these SILOS, you know, we can’t, yeah, we’ve got a big reserve but we can’t spend that money over here. I would like to just get rid of the SILOS. You guys are school board and you’re elected by local officials. Let’s let you deal with those dollars.”
On another topic, board members said private schools receiving vouchers, or “educational savings accounts”, should be held to the same level of transparency requirements as public schools.
