DES MOINES, Iowa — The House Education Committee spent three and a half hours caucusing before discussing a long list of legislation for almost two hours, passing a number of bills backed by House Republicans.
The meeting began looking at legislation (HF 2329) that would instruct the Department of Education to conduct reviews over the state's high school graduation requirements, core curriculum, core content standard and educational standard.
While House Democrats strongly favored reviews over education in the state, one specific concern they had was over the possible elimination of social emotional learning (SEL).
"I would definitely invite you to go into a classroom and see how students handle themselves and see if we wouldn't want to have programs that would help them be able to better regulate themselves," said Rep. Sue Cahill, D-Marshall County.
However, House Republicans disagreed with this argument, say it was a conversation for later on, and that it is not the main goal of the legislation.
"So if we want to rehash those discussions, I am more than happy to do it on the floor, though I don't think that's appropriate to get into right now when we are just talking about basic review of our educational standards," said Rep. Skyler Wheeler, R-Lyon County. "This should not be turning into a partisan nonsense mess."
Another bill that passed through the committee was legislation allowing charter schools to purchase or lease school district property that is not currently in use. HSB 673 would also restructure state funding to charter schools by adding various payment requirements from the state when a student enrolls.
Democrats argued this legislation should only apply to students in Iowa, not students coming from out of state.
"When we passed the charter school bill a couple of years ago, if you recall, this was kind of a compromise to make sure that in those charter schools that they had Iowa people invested in the charter school, not people from out of state, so and this puts it right back in," said Rep. Sharon Steckman, D-Cerro Gordo County.
Another bill that raised a lot of discussion would codify Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) directives issued by the Iowa Board of Regents. HF 2327 allows the Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House to appoint two nonvoting members to the Board of Regents.
The legislation also constructs a review of DEI resources and makes sure they are available to all students, something those in opposition say could create "unintended consequences".
"If we are making sure these are broadly available to all students and employees, are we gonna need bigger offices? are we gonna need more staff?" Cahill said.
All pieces of legislation that passed out of committee are now eligible for debate on the House floor.