By O. Kay Henderson (Radio Iowa)
The first day of school in most Iowa districts is just three weeks away and the Iowa Department of Education has recently issued guidelines outlining how Iowa educators may discipline students who are disruptive or violent.
Iowa schools must have written policies outlining when students can be kicked out of a classroom and under what circumstances they may return. The teacher and their principal must have a meeting about each student’s removal and a teacher may refuse to let the student back into their classroom.
Representative Skyler Wheeler of Hull, chairman of the Education Committee in the Iowa House, worked on the legisation. “I think we’ve gone about as far as we can go of trying to draw a very clear line between protecting the teacher, ensuring the student is getting the best education they can, making sure all the other students in the classroom are getting the best education they can and continuing to make sure that administrators and everybody else is involved,” Wheeler said during House debate this spring. “We’re trying to bring everybody together, make sure everybody’s on the same page.”
Senator Lynn Evans, a retired superintendent from Aurelia, spoke during Senate debate of the legislation. “Student behavior, including aggression and violence, is a significant growing factor in Iowa’s special education turn-over rate,” Evans said. This spring, Evans noted there were nearly 200 job openings in special education classrooms in Iowa on the “Teach Iowa” website. That ballooned to over 600 late last week.
Senator Molly Donahue of Marion works part-time as a special education teacher at Cedar Rapids Kennedy High School. “One student’s persistent disruptive behavior — abusive language, threatening, bullying, violence — can derail the education for every single student in that classroom and, sometimes, in the building,” Donahue said. “When that happens day after day without meaningful intervention, it harms not just that teacher, but every student who came to school ready to learn.”
The new law ensures teachers get at least three days of paid leave if they’re physically injured by a student. It also makes it mandatory for teachers to read updates to the Individual Education Plans developed for any student they’re teaching.
