How to contact Iowa state legislators about education policy

The school district here is encouraging people to go to Des Moines on Tuesday, February 17 to talk up the district’s legislative priorities. Contact Chace Ramey (ramey.chace@iowacityschools.org) if you’re interested. (H/t Julie VanDyke.)

The district’s main priority is to convince the state to provide more supplemental state aid, which I’m all in favor of. While you’re up there, though, you might also speak up against the proposal to spend eight times as much (or more) on standardized testing. Low state aid + expensive new tests = more cuts to school programming.

I assume the district’s central administrators generate the list of the district’s legislative priorities. My sense is that school administrators think very differently about standardized testing than the average person does. I wish I knew what our board members thought about spending that much more on the tests.

You can also contact legislators by email. Here are some handy lists that you can cut and paste.

Senate education committee members:

hcqbach@gmail.com, brian.schoenjahn@legis.iowa.gov, amy.sinclair@legis.iowa.gov, jerry.behn@legis.iowa.gov, tod.bowman@legis.iowa.gov, robert.dvorsky@legis.iowa.gov, rita.hart@legis.iowa.gov, rob.hogg@legis.iowa.gov, david.johnson@legis.iowa.gov, kevin.kinney@legis.iowa.gov, tim.kraayenbrink@legis.iowa.gov, liz.mathis@legis.iowa.gov, jason.schultz@legis.iowa.gov, mary.jo.wilhelm@legis.iowa.gov, brad.zaun@legis.iowa.gov

House education committee members:

ron.jorgensen@legis.iowa.gov, tedd.gassman@legis.iowa.gov, patti.ruff@legis.iowa.gov, ako.abdul-samad@legis.iowa.gov, timi.brown-powers@legis.iowa.gov, josh.byrnes@legis.iowa.gov, dennis.cohoon@legis.iowa.gov, cecil.dolecheck@legis.iowa.gov, greg.forristall@legis.iowa.gov, joel.fry@legis.iowa.gov, ruthann.gaines@legis.iowa.gov, curt.hanson@legis.iowa.gov, maryann.hanusa@legis.iowa.gov, jake.highfill@legis.iowa.gov, kevin.koester@legis.iowa.gov, mary.mascher@legis.iowa.gov, norlin.mommsen@legis.iowa.gov, sandy.salmon@legis.iowa.gov, david.sieck@legis.iowa.gov, art.staed@legis.iowa.gov, quentin.stanerson@legis.iowa.gov, sharon.steckman@legis.iowa.gov, cindy.winckler@legis.iowa.gov

Johnson County delegation:

joe.bolkcom@legis.iowa.gov, robert.dvorsky@legis.iowa.gov, david.jacoby@legis.iowa.gov, vicki.lensing@legis.iowa.gov, mary.mascher@legis.iowa.gov, sally.stutsman@legis.iowa.gov, bobby.kaufmann@legis.iowa.gov, kevin.kinney@legis.iowa.gov

Full names of the Education Committee members are here. You can find your own representatives here.
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