Educators working to balance laws, students’ well-being, Iowa City school official says

IOWA CITY — As Iowa lawmakers continue to focus their efforts on legislating K-12 education, Iowa City schools Deputy Superintendent Chace Ramey says it is educators’ jobs to interpret the law in a way that allows them to provide safe, supportive and welcoming environments for students.

  Buy Photo

Ramey spoke Thursday to about 20 people at an event sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Johnson County at the Iowa City Public Library. During his hourlong presentation, which included taking questions from the audience, he talked about providing education in an increasingly political landscape.

“I don’t believe our legislation — whether we agree with it or not — is something to be feared. It is something we have to try to understand because we’ve been entrusted with the community’s most valuable assets: our kids.” said Ramey, who began his career in education as an elected school board member in the North Kansas City School District.

“We’ve seen politics being played further and further into education, (school board) candidates running on a specific ticket. When I was on the school board, that didn’t happen. Education wasn’t red or blue, it was simply for students,” Ramey said. “What we’re seeing now is schools becoming laboratories, battlegrounds. It’s becoming more and more political.”

Some of the most recent proposed legislation would allow districts to drop their local area education agency and provide services for special education students in another way — by hiring their own specialists, contracting with a private company or switching to another AEA. Some have worried that this would lead AEAs to charge a fee to districts for their services.

Ramey said the proposal in the governor’s House Study Bill 542 could affect rural school districts more than larger districts like Iowa City. About 10 percent of students in Iowa City schools are in the special education program, he said. That’s more than the total enrollment of some rural districts.

Iowa City, for instance, could hire its own speech pathologist to work with students — a service now provided by the Grant Wood Area Education Agency. But smaller districts wouldn’t have the need — or the resources, Ramey said.

“That’s one of the beauties of the conglomerate that is the AEA. They’re able to provide services to a number of districts in a way that helps maximize resources, which is good for everybody,” Ramey said.

There are about 470 students who live in the Iowa City Community School District taking advantage of the state’s education savings accounts. The program — championed and greenlit last year by Reynolds — allows students to receive their public per-pupil allocation of about $7,600 to pay for a private school tuition and related costs.

The majority of those students already were enrolled in private schools. However, an additional 110 students enrolled in Iowa City schools last year left the district for private schools, Ramey said. That loss would cost the district about $900,000 for the 2024-25 school year, he said, but the law also provides districts with new money for students who live in the district but don’t go to its public schools.

“We talk about the best way to prevent people from leaving the district is by providing a top-notch education, and I believe that we do that,” Ramey said. “Here in Iowa City, we believe the best choice for families is to come to us because we believe we provide the premier education for the students in our area. That’s OK if families make a different decision.”

Schools are in “a state of limbo” as they await a decision on Senate File 496, which bans books and curriculum from Iowa schools with depictions of sex acts and prohibits teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation through sixth grade. In December, a federal judge temporarily blocked a portion of the law, allowing Iowa City and other schools to re-shelved books this month

The Iowa City district released a list of about 70 book titles in October removed from schools to comply. The titles were determined by a team of administrators, curriculum coordinators, teachers and teacher librarians who reviewed library and instructional materials in regard to the new requirements.

“As we wait for a new round of legislation or for a decision to be made, we try to maintain business as usual for our students. Support them, welcome them and help them learn and grow in our schools,” Ramey said.

Remaining in effect is the portion of the law that requires a parent or guardian be notified if a student requests an accommodation related to gender identity.

Educators are also seeing laws go into effect right away after they are signed, Ramey said, such as last year’s Senate File 482, which requires public schools to maintain separate bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, dressing areas and overnight accommodations for biological boys and biological girls.

That was a challenge for the district that had been “following a national trend to move to more gender-neutral restrooms,” Ramey said.

"To make (students) feel welcomed and supported, we talk to them about what’s going on, and when something happens suddenly, we lose that ability to have conversations with our kiddos and help them understand it,“ he said.

Comments: (319) 398-8411; grace.king@thegazette.com