A key legislator says the state budget’s in such bad shape Iowa’s public schools will never recover the money cut from their budgets this November.A four-point-three percent across the board cut in the state budget slashed state aid to schools in November. School officials were hoping that money would be restored next year, and then an already-approved four-percent increase in general state aid for the next academic year would be added on top of that. Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Jeff Lamberti says schools will not get a more than eight percent increase in general state aid.In addition, Lamberti says legislators will probably change the state law which guarantees school districts won’t get less from the state in the next fiscal year. It was a provision intended to help stabilize the budgets of small schools with declining enrollment and therefore declining state aid.If left on the books, that budget guarantee would apply to every school district in the state.
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