The Iowa Board of Education can’t even agree to have discussions about the creeping earlier start date for the school year. What makes it worse are the quotes from the board members.
Sioux City Journal: “I’m personally upset we’re put in a position where we have to make a choice like this,” said board Vice President Charles Edwards. “This needs to go back to the Iowa Legislature.”
Des Moines Register: “This needs further discussion than the state Board of Education can give it,” said board member Diane Crookham-Johnson. “I think this is a legislative issue; I think this is something that the Legislature needs to decide if they want to address.”
The Legislature already decided — it put the issue in the hands of the director of the Department of Education.
Here’s Section 279.10 of the Iowa Code (PDF). It has not been updated to reflect the law changing the cumulative time from days to hours. Paraphrasing Subsection 1, school “shall begin no sooner” than the week including Sept. 1 unless Sept. 1 is a Sunday like this year, in which case school can start as early as Aug. 26.
Subsection 4 deals with the waivers, which are to be made by the school and granted by the director of the DoE. The request is based on the determination that starting later than the date in Subsection 1 “would have a significant negative educational impact.” (emphasis added)
If the director (or, at the moment, interim director) of the Department of Education is granting waivers without school justifying the early date, then the director isn’t following state law.
If the board wants the Legislature to “solve it,” then perhaps the Legislature should solve it. Amend and strike the first two sentences in Subsection 1 to state “The school year…shall begin on a weekday no earlier than August 25.” There. Make it Aug. 20 if you want, but no earlier.
Edwards, quoted above in the Sioux City Journal, told Radio Iowa that he “has gotten more e-mail and comments on this issue than anything he has ever been associated with.” It sounds like the start date of school has become the fourth rail of Iowa politics. (The third, on the state level at least, is school consolidation.)
Meanwhile, kids who want to show animals or otherwise do things through the entire State Fair will just have to get advance make-up slips.