Actions show education is less of a priority

Actions show education is less of a priority

This month, the Legislature is well underway with the 2016 session. As usual, people around the Capitol Building are talking about priorities. In fact, there are a lot of discussions and debates about priorities. The conversation usually includes one person saying, “This needs to be our state’s highest priority,” “If this isn’t our first priority, what is?” or “This issue is my district’s top priority.”

Over the course of my working years I have heard a lot about priorities. In the Army, my commanding officers would spend a lot of time discussing them. They would say things like, “Troops, during the operation, maintaining fire superiority is top priority,” or “Taking this key piece of terrain is my first priority.”

In dealing with institutions such as businesses or government organizations, I have been told that if you want to learn an organization’s priorities, look at its budget. The issues or programs that are the highest priorities are the ones that receive the highest funding. By way of example, look at the federal budget. In 2015, defense took up to 54 percent of the discretionary spending. One could argue that defense and security are the federal government’s first priority, and the budget pie chart (nationalpriorities.org) certainly supports that argument.

In Iowa, the budget analysis shows that education has traditionally been the state’s top priority. Typically, Iowa spends roughly 55 percent of its budget on education. This percentage used to be even greater. Many politicians in the Statehouse still claim that education is our top priority. Though education is our biggest piece of the budget pie, I beg to differ.

If something really is a high priority, that issue should also be given special consideration. For instance, Iowa law requires the education budget to be set by the state early in the session. Iowa law also requires state education funding assistance dollars to be set a year in advance. These two things haven’t happened in recent years. Accordingly, education funding is thrown in the mix with other programs like water quality and economic development.

The fact that the Legislature hasn’t set funding on time, and makes education funding compete with other programs, degrades education’s status as a top priority.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word priority as “something that is more important than other things and that needs to be done or dealt with first.” By this definition, education has not been a priority in the Iowa House of Representatives for quite some time.

This needs to change. Schools are the focal points of our rural communities. We in the Legislature need to fund education now—we can’t have a repeat of last year’s prolonged education debate.

Rep. Todd Prichard

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