Rep. Henry Stone of Forest City talks school safety, cost of college, farm-to-table meat sales

The following is a legislative update from Republican Representative Henry Stone of Forest City, representing portions of Emmet, Kossuth and Winnebago counties in Iowa House District 9:

HSB 47: School Safety Enhancement

House Study Bill 47 is one of the bills I served on the subcommittee for this week. After passing the subcommittee, the Education committee passed HSB 47 to build upon Iowa House Republicans’ efforts to make our schools as safe as possible. HSB 47 requires schools to create a multidisciplinary threat assessment team to intervene when a student is exhibiting threatening behaviors. This bill encourages the collaboration between schools, law enforcement and mental health professionals to ensure the safest environment possible for our students and staff in schools. Under this bill, schools and government agencies are allowed to share information on students struggling with mental illness. It also provides immunity from civil liability for individuals who report credible threats.

HF 117 and 118: National Guard Scholarships

We also had our first week of debate in the Iowa House. Two of the bills we passed were to honor and improve the lives of our National Guard members for all they do. House File 117 creates the National Guard Service Professional Qualification Scholarship Program. This scholarship would cover the cost of certain educational programs approved by the adjutant general and administered by a community college, regent university or private institution. This could include programs leading to certifications in cyber security, IT, emergency medical services or others relevant to their service in the National Guard. The bill requires the adjutant general to publish a list of approved programs for this scholarship.

HF 118 makes improvements to the National Guard Service Scholarship Program by allowing the amount to be calculated on the actual tuition costs and the financial aid received. This will improve efficiency in the distribution of funds and potentially free up dollars for more recipients. I was honored to serve on the subcommittee and to run HF 118 on the House floor during debate.

The Cost of Higher Education

The cost of college is going up, but what is included in that cost and what are some of the reasons behind it? One is the rise in administrative support versus instructional staff. According to US News, at public four-year schools in 2010, 32.1% of expenditures were for instruction and 23.7% were for academic support, student services and institutional support. In 2021, 27.4% was spent on instructional spending and 22.9% on academic support, students services and institutional support. US News states that the steady growth in these administrative and non-teaching staff positions is in part due to DEI initiatives, as well as mental health, entertainment, intramural sports, and workforce preparedness and initiatives. Jay P. Greene, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s center for Educational Policy said: “A university is not an all-service commune with full-service, soup-to-nuts care for every need, as if students were children. The core mission of a school is teaching and research, so those should be the priorities, as well as limiting the cost to families and taxpayers. But that’s not their priority. Their priority is to expand empires.”

Many agree with the sentiment that there is administrative bloat. Andrew Gillen, senior policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation; Gregory Price, a business professor at the University of New Orleans; Benjamin Ginsberg, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, Todd J. Zywicki, professor at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, and Christopher Koopman, executive director of The Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University, to name a few, have all spoken out about the issue or published research on the issue.

Iowa Regents data on Instructional vs Non-Instructional Staffing pulled from the IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) database is below.  As you can see, the non-instructional staffing numbers are much higher than instructional staffing numbers.The graph below shows what that split is for the top 25 endowed universities. Again, there is a large gap between instructional and non-instructional staff.

While there could be reasons as to the overwhelming disparity between instructional and non-instructional staff, the increase in non-instructional staff cannot be separated from the discussion of the continually rising costs of college.  With Iowa tax payers sending tens of millions of dollars to our regent universities, they should be made aware of how those dollars are being spent and how could they be more efficiently used.

House Ag Committee Approves Measure to Facilitate Farm-to-Table Meat Sales

On Tuesday, January 28, 2025, the House Agriculture Committee passed House File 32. The bill creates a new type of food processing entity that is licensed and inspected by the Department of Inspection, Appeals and Licensing (DIAL) agents that can store officially processed packaged meat or poultry raised by the licensee and offered for sale at a farm or a private residence on a wholesale or retail basis. The bill legalizes the on-farm storage of processed inspected packages and allows the sale on wholesale or retail basis for such packages by the producers. The annual license/inspection fee level to be assessed upon on-farm meat and poultry production operations with wholesale or retail packaged sales is $75. The measure further in a Code renumbering process strikes and replicates existing provisions applying to ‘small food processing premises’ that specify annual license/inspection fees of:

a) $150 if gross sales of processed and marketed meat is less than $200,000;

b) $300 is gross sales for is at least $200,000 but less than $2-million; and

c) $500 for operations with gross annual sales exceeding $2-million.

This legislation builds on recent legislation HF 661 and HF 2257 that have been promulgated and enacted in recent sessions to create regulatory path that will facilitate the proliferation and growth on-farm meat and poultry production that is processed and packaged under state inspection and stored under DIAL license that is sold on a wholesale or retail basis.

(TOP PHOTO of Rep. Henry Stone with Troy Thompson- Forest City School Board President)