301.1 Adoption — purchase and sale — accredited nonpublic school pupil textbook services.

1. The board of directors of each and every school district is hereby authorized and empowered to adopt textbooks for the teaching of all branches that are now or may hereafter be authorized to be taught in the public schools of the state, and to contract for and buy said books and any and all other necessary school supplies at said contract prices, and to sell the same to the pupils of their respective districts at cost, loan such textbooks to such pupils free, or rent them to such pupils at such reasonable fee as the board shall fix, and said money so received shall be returned to the general fund.

2. Textbooks adopted and purchased by a school district shall, to the extent funds are appropriated by the general assembly, be made available to pupils attending accredited nonpublic schools upon request of the pupil or the pupil’s parent under comparable terms as made available to pupils attending public schools. If the general assembly appropriates moneys for purposes of making textbooks available to accredited nonpublic school pupils, the department of education shall ascertain the amount available to a school district for the purchase of nonsectarian, nonreligious textbooks for pupils attending accredited nonpublic schools. The amount shall be in the proportion that the basic enrollment of a participating accredited nonpublic school bears to the sum of the basic enrollments of all participating accredited nonpublic schools in the state for the budget year. For purposes of this section, a “participating accredited nonpublic school” means an accredited nonpublic school that submits a written request on behalf of the school’s pupils in accordance with this subsection, and that certifies its actual enrollment to the department of education by October 1, annually. By November 1, annually, the department of education shall certify to the director of the department of administrative services the annual amount to be paid to each school district, and the director of the department of administrative services shall draw warrants payable to school districts in accordance with this subsection. For purposes of this subsection, an accredited nonpublic school’s enrollment count shall include only students who are residents of Iowa. The costs of providing textbooks to accredited nonpublic school pupils as provided in this subsection shall not be included in the computation of district cost under chapter 257, but shall be shown in the budget as an expense from miscellaneous income. Textbook expenditures made in accordance with this subsection shall be kept on file in the school district. In the event that a participating accredited nonpublic school physically relocates to another school district, textbooks purchased for the nonpublic school with funds appropriated for purposes of this chapter shall be transferred to the school district in which the nonpublic school has relocated and may be made available to the nonpublic school. Funds distributed to a school district for purposes of purchasing textbooks in accordance with this subsection which remain unexpended and available for the purchase of textbooks for the nonpublic school that relocated in the fiscal year in which the funds were distributed shall also be transferred to the school district in which the nonpublic school has relocated.

3. As used in subsection 2, “textbooks” means any of the following:

a. Books and loose-leaf or bound manuals, systems of reusable instructional materials or combinations of books and supplementary instructional materials which convey information to the student or otherwise contribute to the learning process.

b. Electronic textbooks, including but not limited to computer software, applications using computer-assisted instruction, interactive videodisc, and other computer courseware and magnetic media.

c. Laptop computers or other portable personal computing devices which are used for nonreligious instructional purposes only.

[C97, §2824; C24, 27, 31, 35, 39, §4446; C46, 50, 54, 58, 62, 66, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, §301.1]

93 Acts, ch 63, §1; 96 Acts, ch 1113, §1; 2002 Acts, ch 1140, §31; 2003 Acts, ch 145, §286; 2004 Acts, ch 1101, §33; 2005 Acts, ch 169, §34; 2006 Acts, ch 1152, §49; 2010 Acts, ch 1077, §1; 2011 Acts, ch 34, §75