{"id":3675,"date":"2013-08-02T20:12:55","date_gmt":"2013-08-03T01:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=3675"},"modified":"2013-08-02T17:19:03","modified_gmt":"2013-08-02T22:19:03","slug":"board-of-education-punts-on-school-start-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2013\/08\/board-of-education-punts-on-school-start-date\/","title":{"rendered":"Board of Education punts on school start date"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Iowa Board of Education can’t even agree <\/a>to have discussions<\/a><\/em> about the creeping earlier start date for the school year. What makes it worse are the quotes from the board members.<\/p>\n

Sioux City Journal:<\/a> \u201cI\u2019m personally upset we\u2019re put in a position where we have to make a choice like this,\u201d said board Vice President Charles Edwards. \u201cThis needs to go back to the Iowa Legislature.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Des Moines Register:<\/a>\u00a0\u201cThis needs further discussion than the state Board of Education can give it,\u201d said board member Diane Crookham-Johnson. \u201cI think this is a legislative issue; I think this is something that the Legislature needs to decide if they want to address.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The Legislature already decided \u2014 it put the issue in the hands of the director of the Department of Education<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Here’s Section 279.10 of the Iowa Code (PDF).<\/a>\u00a0It has not been updated to reflect the law changing the cumulative time from days to hours.\u00a0Paraphrasing 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0“would have a significant negative educational impact.”<\/em><\/strong> (emphasis added)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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: \u201cI\u2019m personally upset we\u2019re put … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3675"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3679,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3675\/revisions\/3679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}