Butter cow beats local control

Here's a novel idea.

Each year, on a rotating basis, an Iowa school board should get to approve Gov. Terry Branstad's calendar. They decide when his Condition of the State Address is delivered, when he can jet off on trade missions and how much time he has for all that ribbon-cutting.

That's preposterous, of course. What would a school board know about a governor's calendar? Why, it's as preposterous as some governor thinking he can set the calendars of every school in Iowa.

But nothing is preposterous when you've got power. So Gov. Terry Branstad has delivered marching orders to his Department of Education, instructing officials to no longer provide automatic waivers allowing school districts to set their own August start dates.

It's true that Iowa law says schools can't start before Sept. 1. But it's also true that it has long been the practice of the department to grant waivers to the roughly 98 percent of districts that want to start before September. The thinking has been local officials know more about crafting a school calendar for staff and students than state bureaucrats.

A refreshing bit of restraint from our mandate-makers in Des Moines, but no more. Districts now will have to prove a 'significant negative educational impact' to deviate from a later start and all the scheduling and calendar complications it will yield.

The governor's friends in the tourism industry and at the Iowa State Fair have convinced him August start dates are hurting their bottom lines. The judgments of elected school boards across Iowa are no match for the allure of the Butter Cow.

Look, I love summer as much as the next Iowan with sweet corn juice on his chin. My family happily treks to the State Fair every year. We travel around Iowa and spend plenty of dough.

So do a lot of other people. Annual tourism spending in Iowa currently stands at $7.75 billion, up from $4.6 billion a decade ago. In 1985, the Iowa State Fair drew 668,000 people, a record at the time. It now draws more than 1 million people each August.

These are not declining franchises in need of an emergency wielding of gubernatorial clout.

Recently, our governor expressed an affinity for separation of powers and legislative prerogative. Over the last 15 years or so, bills seeking to do what the governor is doing have failed to pass. Maybe they clear the House, maybe the Senate, but there is no legislative consensus on messing with start dates. Last year, the State Board of Education voted 5-2 to reject an effort to force districts to start later.

I, personally, don't like school in mid-August. But what I dislike even more are mountains of mandates from on high, straitjacketing local schools and stifling the spirit of innovation. I'm also not a fan of all of the wholly artificial allegiance cynical politicians pay to 'local control.' We like to hear it, but, news flash, they don't believe it.

In Branstad's case, he hasn't met a local government decision he's not willing to undercut, second-guess and replace with state wisdom. It's become a trademark of his long tenure.

And unless lawmakers push back, it will happen again and again. Mark your calendars.

• Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com