Controlling health care costs and trimming other areas of the state's budget will help pay for policy changes proposed to reform K-12 education in Iowa, Gov. Terry Branstad said Saturday.

The state's top executive promoted the strategy at a Van Meter town hall meeting - one of about a dozen gatherings planned throughout Iowa to gain public input on a plan that would raise the pay of first-year teachers, require third-graders to pass a literacy test and reward innovative schools with extra money.

Although Branstad has yet to release a price tag for the reforms, education advocates say the plan could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

"I think we need to look at other things we can do to try to control costs so that education - which already receives 58 percent of the budget - gets a growing share of the state budget," the governor told a crowd of nearly 70 people gathered inside the town's high school gymnasium. "When I left office (in 1999) ... Medicaid was only 12 percent of the budget. Now it's almost 24 percent of the budget.

Filed Under : K-12 Education