The old way of calculating a school’s capacity no longer applies in the 21st century, a consultant for the Iowa City school district said Monday night. That means how many students a school should hold also has changed, Sam Johnson of BLDD Architects, told a district committee made up of public and community members. That [...]

University of Iowa medical student Shady Henien will meet with Gov. Terry Branstad next week to promote a plan that Henien thinks could help ease student loan repayment burdens after medical school. Henien, 27, already has met with several U.S. congressman in Washington D.C. to discuss his plan, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from [...]

Next year, students across Iowa probably will stop counting down the days until school ends. Instead, they’ll have to count down the hours. Lawmakers are poised to approve legislation this year that does away with the 180 instructional days requirement school calendars are based on and change that to 1,080 instructional hours. Proponents say the [...]

The Iowa Senate wants all school employees to undergo training to recognize when a student is suffering from trauma or contemplating suicide. The bill, prompted by the recent suicides of two students in Johnston, unanimously passed Wednesday. School boards would be required to select a program to train school personnel on recognizing the symptoms of [...]

UDPATE: The Iowa House pushed through Gov. Terry Branstad’s education reform package on a party-line vote Wednesday, moving the debate over how teachers are recruited, paid, evaluated and promoted to the Iowa Senate. The Republican-controlled House voted 52-44 on a $157 million plan that made several changes to the governor’s original proposal. Key changes included [...]

Policies and procedures of the state Board of Regents were put under the legislative microscope at an Iowa Senate hearing Wednesday, with opposing forces commending and condemning those in charge of overseeing Iowa’s three public universities. Nearly two dozen Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) members spoke in support of a Senate bill seeking to [...]

Gutted. That’s what Democrats said happened to Gov. Terry Branstad’s education reform initiative last week when House Republicans took the centerpiece of the plan and made it voluntary. Under the proposal, districts could choose to raise starting teacher salaries from $28,000 to $32,000 and create new teacher designations of lead, mentor and master that come [...]

The Iowa Supreme Court says farmers who host educational tours are not shielded from personal injury lawsuits under Iowa’s recreational use law. The court ruled 5-2 on Friday that the owners of a dairy farm can be sued by a chaperone injured when she fell through a hole in a hayloft during a kindergarten class [...]

DES MOINES – Majority Democrats in the Iowa Senate voted Thursday to approve a 4 percent increase in state aid for K-12 public school districts for the2014-15 school year. Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, floor manager of Senate File 162, said the action to boost state aid by $114 million in the fiscal 2015 state budget [...]

House Republicans want to make the centerpiece of Gov. Terry Branstad’s education reform package optional. That means school districts wouldn’t have to adopt the career ladder plan, which creates classes of lead, master and mentor teachers, nor would they have to adopt a new minimum wage for teachers. In addition to making it optional, House [...]