Back to school -- but are they back too soon?

Labor Day weekend still draws a flurry of activity to the Iowa Great Lakes, but tourism advocates think the practice of early school start dates in Iowa may be cutting the summer vacation season too short. FILE PHOTO

But the transition comes a little too early for tourism advocates like Stacy Rosemore. The Okoboji Tourism Director maintains that millions of dollars are lost throughout Iowa when early athletic practices and school start dates cut the vacation season short.

"We've been working on this very hard for the last couple of years now -- enforcing the current law regarding school start dates," Rosemore said. "One thing that we're working on is that schools don't have the ability to file for a waiver to start earlier. Ideally, what we'd like to see happen is have it so school could not start until that Tuesday after Labor Day weekend."

Under current Iowa law, schools aren't allowed to start until the Monday of the week Sept. 1 falls on. The date has become a false deadline over the years, however, because districts throughout Iowa routinely go through a local public hearing process, board vote and Iowa Department of Education waiver application to start earlier. Those early start requests are rarely turned down at the state level.

Mary Gannon, an attorney and lobbyist for the Iowa Association of School Boards, said school districts want to start early because administrators try to get their first semester done before Christmas.

School districts incorporate teacher inservices throughout the school calendar, she adds, and many school districts try to have students out of school by Memorial Day.

"Probably one of the main reasons, is to allow teachers to start classes the first part of June to work on their master's or work on just take additional classes," Gannon said. "So, if schools were to start two weeks later, then schools would go two weeks later and teachers would miss out on the opportunity to go to summer school. Plus, professional development is spread out over the school year. It's not like it used to be, where teachers would go in a week early and get all of their professional development done prior to the start of school."

In order for schools to obtain a waiver, administrators are required to have a public hearing and get the support of the community, Gannon maintains.

"We think there's already enough local control in the process that, if a local school district wants to start later, they can choose to do so," she said. "And if the community doesn't like it, they can say something or they can take out the board in the next election."

Okoboji Superintendent Bob Miller serves on an Okoboji Tourism Board. As a school administrator, he submitted a waiver request and started school on Aug. 24.

He said the issue of tourism is larger than just the schools of Dickinson County.

"A lot of the tourists who come to the Lakes area are from Des Moines, Omaha, Sioux City, Sioux Falls -- they all started school before we did," Miller said. "So even if we waited until Sept. 1 or whatever, we're the people who live here year round -- they aren't necessarily, in my mind, going to make that much difference. If the state said 'you can't start before Sept. 1, no ifs ands or buts,' (statewide) we would probably go along with that -- we would probably even support that."

State Sen. David Johnson, an Ocheyedan Republican serving the Iowa Great Lakes, has pushed for the reform or elimination of the Department of Education's early waiver process.

"We had an unsuccessful attempt last year to move the school start date back to late August and do away with the waivers," he said. "The waivers have just become a rubber stamp approved by the Department of Education. My information is, the department would like to get rid of the waiver process altogether, so I don't know why the legislature hasn't been responding to that."

Costing schools money?

Rosemore of Okoboji Tourism said the early start impacts the overall state budget because families are no longer spending money on vacations and adding to the state's sales tax revenue.

"By extending our summer, essentially, and having kids start school after Labor Day, you're adding three more weeks of tourism," she said. "These businesses are able to thrive. We're bringing in money. People are able to travel during those three weeks ... when you have school starting that early, then you have sports starting even a week or two even before that, it really does kill the month of August for a lot of areas in the state. Our county is losing tax dollars and our state is losing tax dollars. That money can go back into the education system. We're really losing millions of dollars by starting schools as early as Aug. 12."

Without hearing Rosemore's comments, Gannon of the Iowa Association of School Boards said: "I don't think you can depend on another part of the state for your livelihood like that."

"You can't tell Des Moines what to do. You can't tell Davenport what to do," she said. "It's a local decision made by local district, based upon what their local needs are. They're not going to make it based upon what somebody's needs are 200 miles away."

Johnson disagrees, saying it makes sense for schools to collectively agree to start school later in August, then benefit from the additional revenue generated by vacationing families.

"The statewide tax for school infrastructure has been very popular among school

districts and now that it is in place statewide, the schools get a significant amount of infrastructure money from those sales tax revenues," he said. "It would make sense to me, if I were a member of a school board to say, 'look, the state given us this opportunity to maintain and improve our infrastructure, I think we

should work in cooperation with the Legislature and have a longer summer."

He continued: "I know not all school officials agree with my position on this and I respect that, but at the same time, I'm going to listen to those constituents who are counting on the extra opportunity to have families stay at their resorts, stay at hotels and spend money within communities they're visiting."

More lobbying planned

Johnson said Okoboji resident Jeff Smith, the GOP nominee for the Iowa House District 6 seat held by Mike May is "is in agreement with trying do

something to halt these early school starts."

"Representative May and I tried every avenue we could in both the senate and the house to move the issue and we were unsuccessful on that," Johnson said. "What we did, for the second year in-a-row is propose a compromise that was actually put forward by the Speaker Pro-tem in the House - Polly Buktah."

Under the compromise, school couldn't start any earlier than the fourth Monday in August, although schools would still get an ability, if they were setting up a innovative school calendar like a year-round model, there would be nothing to prevent that from happening.

"It was beaten down heavily in the senate by the Majority Leader Mike Gronstal of Council Bluffs on the floor as I brought these issues up," Johnson said.

Rosemore and Johnson agree that the Nov. 2 election will shift the political landscape in Iowa.

"Last year we did have quite a bit of progress, unfortunately, with some of the things going on at the capital as far as big cutbacks, the number of days they were in session -- they were working very hard on the budget," Rosemore said. "I think this year, being an election year, it's going to be a lot more work for us because we're going to have to educate a lot of new legislators about what we want to see done. That's going to be the toughest part."