Following Governor Kim Reynolds’ Condition of the State Address earlier this month, Iowa lawmakers are hard at work on some of the topics from that speech.

District 24 Senator Jesse Green says one of the forefront subjects was the governor’s proposal to ban students from having cellphones in a public school classroom. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio there are about 75 percent of the schools across the state that have some kind of a cellphone policy and that the legislature would give minimum guidance for the remaining schools that currently don’t have a policy.

“I think everybody agrees that during instructional time, that’s not an appropriate time for students to be on their cellphones or have cellphones. They need to be focused on the teacher and that instruction time.”   

Another aspect that resonated with Green was the governor’s proposal to establish a loan repayment program, much like the successful veterinary program, to increase the number of medical physicians, especially in rural areas, to help with student loan debt.  

“That’s going to be my number one priority of being the chair of this ed(ucation) budget (subcommittee) is to see how much we can expand these programs. So like last year for example, on the teacher side of things, we honed in on having an increase on starting pay. And I think we can follow up with that this year by expanding those loan repayment programs both, not only for physicians – that’s going to be the governor’s (plan) – and I’m with her on that, but I also want to take a look on the teacher’s side of things as well.”   

Finally, Green also supports the governor’s plan to create a State Department of Government Efficiency to help trim down even more areas, which he believes is a good practice to do on a regular basis with any company.