In December the Department of Education notified school districts that they will no longer automatically grant waivers for the school start date requested under Iowa Code. Moving forward, the Director of Education or designee will only consider a school district's request for a waiver if the district has adequately demonstrated that starting on or after the earliest start date specified would have a "significant negative educational impact".
Iowa Code 279.10(1) states the requirement that "school shall begin no sooner than a day during the calendar week in which the first day of September falls". For many years now districts have had the local control option of requesting waivers to this section of the code. It is likely that this will no longer be the case.
School districts now await guidance from the Department of Education as to the new criteria for waivers. Based on the direction provided from the DE the school start date for next year would be August 31, 2015. We will be working on the school calendar in the next couple of months.
