Rep. Dean Fisher.

We have finished the tenth week of the session, which was the second funnel for when Senate bills had to be through a House Committee. At last count, the House had passed roughly 175 bills over to the Senate so far, and the Senate has sent the House about 60 bills.

The House continues to press for improvements in school safety. As horrific as the events at Perry earlier this year were, it has spurred a productive conversation about a multi-pronged legislative approach to making our schools safer. This week, we passed House File 2652. It requires schools to conduct a safety review of their ability to keep students and staff safe and share their review with law enforcement; establishes a task force to put together a gold standard of school safety building codes; requires districts to focus on improvements to school safety before building or renovating athletic facilities; creates a pilot program for gun detection software that works with existing school cameras; and uses federal ARPA money to ensure every school building has an emergency radio.

Also, House File 2586 passed last week, focused on having personnel able and ready to protect students in the event of an emergency. This bill allocates money for schools to provide stipends or cover the costs for staff members who go through the extensive training and receive the new permit to carry in schools if they choose. In Perry, law enforcement responded exactly how they were supposed to. And it took seven minutes to arrive. A lot can happen in seven minutes. Our entire point in creating this permit program is to lower that response time to seconds. These two bills will give schools more tools to keep their students and staff safe.

This week we passed HF 2401 to protect our local pharmacies facing unfair practices from Pharmacy Benefit Managers, the middlemen known as PBMs. A few years ago, we passed a bill that allowed the Iowa Insurance Division to regulate PBMs. Since then they have received over 70,000 complaints about PBMs from Iowa pharmacies. We are seeing rural pharmacies close down at an alarming rate. Without local pharmacies, Iowa families and older Iowans have a harder time accessing the care they deserve. HF 2401 will help Iowa pharmacies be reimbursed at a fair price for services they perform and drugs they administer.

This week, House Republicans passed HF 2547 in a bipartisan manner to ensure kids are in the classroom and ready to learn. To get kids in the classroom, this bill ensures every school district establishes a plan to address chronically absent students. It requires that schools send notice to parents when a child becomes chronically absent and creates a process for a school engagement meeting if a student is absent 15% of the time. In this meeting, an absenteeism prevention plan is agreed to. If a student and their parents fail to follow the protocols laid out, the school official may refer the situation to juvenile court or the county attorney for prosecution.

To ensure kids in the classroom are ready to learn, this bill also requires school districts to have a cell phone policy that restricts use of cell phones during classroom instruction. We have heard from so many teachers that cell phones are a huge distraction preventing kids from learning. It’s time for kids to put down their phones and schools must have and enforce this policy.

As always, I look forward to seeing you at the capitol, or in the district.

Dean Fisher, a Republican from Montour, represents District 53 in the Iowa House of Representatives including the communities of Clutier, Garwin, Gladbrook, and Lincoln.