A flurry of high-level negotiations at the statehouse on Wednesday may have yielded a tentative agreement on how to resolve the impasse over state funding of public schools. According to the Facebook post of an eastern Iowa legislator, the tentative deal would give K-through-12 schools a one-and-a-quarter percent increase in general state aide for the next school year — the Republican bargaining position since January — along with a one-time boost of 55-million dollars in state support — so the total amount of new money for schools would equal what Democrats in the legislature had been seeking.

Brian Schoenjahn — a Democrat from Arlington — is a former educator who leads a subcommittee that’s been wrestling with education funding issues. “From our perspective it is absolutely necessary to keep our rural schools open,” Schoenjahn says. “I think this is serious funding.”

School officials, by state law, had to certify their districts’ budgets for the next school year by April 30th. Since legislators had failed to make the decision on school funding by then, Iowa superintendents issued more than 11-hundred layoff notices to teachers and staff last week.

(Radio Iowa)