Iowa State Education Association files lawsuit against Gov. Kim Reynolds

The football players can’t shake hands. The state’s marching band competition will be online. But Iowa will still have in-person school this fall — unless teachers stop it.

A standoff between the teachers union and governor is overshadowing the return to classroom learning, which teachers insist can’t happen safely during a pandemic, on the eve of the new school year in Iowa.

The Iowa State Education Association, a union representing 30,000 teachers, filed this week a lawsuit calling for an emergency injunction against Gov. Kim Reynolds’ proclamation made in July calling for at least 50% of teaching to take place in physical classrooms, thwarting plans by a number of districts — including Iowa City and Des Moines — that had planned under previous state guidance to open the year entirely with students at home learning virtually.

“By not allowing local school boards to determine quickly” whether to shift to online or hybrid learning, the state could “exacerbate an already untenable situation in providing a safe education to Iowa students,” reads the lawsuit filed in Johnson County District Court against the governor and Ann Lebo, director of the Iowa Department of Education, on behalf of the union and the school district in Iowa City.

Under rules issued earlier this month by the state’s education agency, a county must show heavy student absenteeism and at least two weeks of an average 15% COVID-19 positivity rate among students who have been tested to be eligible for applying for a state waiver to close cafeterias, libraries, and cancel or postpone a range of school events, including popular fall sports like football games. For a school district to be eligible for remote learning, that rate must clock in at 20% average or more.

Critics contend the threshold is far too high. In its lawsuit, the teachers union says a better standard would be 5%, a rate endorsed by the World Health Organization, and one that would find over 70 counties in the state, according to data posted on the Department of Public Health’s website, eligible for at least applying for distance-learning exemptions from the governor’s edict.

At present, no counties reach 20%.

However, on Wednesday, Plymouth County, in the northwestern corner of state currently represented by Rep. Steve King, a Republican, hit a daily positivity rate of over 35%. The county’s 17.4% average over two weeks eclipses the state’s benchmark for applying to close communal spaces: the only problem, they can’t meet the guideline on attendance because school hasn’t started yet.

“They’re [the benchmarks] making it very difficult to allow schools the ability to make the correct choices,” Mike Beranek, president of ISEA, told The Washington Times on Thursday. He said already he’s heard from teachers and staff with preexisting conditions who have called for help. Others have opted to resign or retire early.

Ms. Reynolds, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story, has stood her ground. A Republican who has touted her relationship with President Trump, Ms. Reynolds has echoed calls from the Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to aggressively pursue in-person learning.

“We won’t be able to completely prevent transmission of COVID-19, but taking these precautions can greatly reduce the risk,” Ms. Reynolds said at a July 17 press conference.

The pitched battle between state and county leaders and teachers unions are popping up coast to coast.

In New York City, 133,000 teachers are calling for a strike ahead of the Sept. 10 first day if schools lack the deep caches of testing supplies researchers suggest can curb spread of the virus. In Florida, attorneys representing Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, and the Florida Education Association are sparring in a courtroom over the state’s plan to force in-person learning. That state eclipsed 10,000 coronavirus-caused deaths on Wednesday.

Last month in California, the school board in Orange County sued Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, over a statewide system requiring low COVID-19 spread in a county for 14 days before a school can apply for a waiver to reopen physically.

Back in Iowa, a hearing is set for early September, but many will already be in school by then. Classes start in Le Mars on Tuesday.

“[A]t this point in time, the community of Le Mars does not have significant enough outbreak to warrant hybrid or remote learning, although the numbers are rising,” Superintendent Steve Webner wrote in a letter to district parents on Thursday. He added that the “situation may change quickly.”

In a Midwestern state where reports of masks are rare and the latest presidential polling shows Mr. Trump running right alongside or even slightly ahead of Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden, advocating a return to school is safer political ground than in blue states where the president’s handling of the pandemic has become perhaps the biggest election issue.

Earlier this week, Iowa surpassed 1,000 deaths related to COVID-19, ensuring the pandemic will be on the leading causes of death come the end-of-year vital statistics report. In 2017, the flu caused 578 deaths statewide.

Already, school officials in Des Moines, the state’s largest city, says they’ve requested a waiver to open the year virtually while students can still participate in fall activities and sports. Officials in Fort Dodge had also sought to open the year virtually before plans were scuttled by the governor’s proclamation, The Associated Press reports.

On Plymouth County’s western edge at the Akron-Westfield School District, homecoming was pushed to Sept. 18 due to schedule shifts ordered by the state’s athletics league. When school officials told parents the Akron-Westfield district plans for reopening, it included protocol such as requiring elementary-aged children to eat breakfast and lunch in classrooms, instead of the cafeteria. Library books will be quarantined upon return. And physical education class may go outside a lot, so children should pack weather-appropriate clothes.

The school, however, will enforce mask use.

On Thursday, Akron-Westfield announced they’d not allow fans at a football scrimmage with a school from neighboring Orange City. Instead, the game will be livestreamed.

“Please know that this was a difficult decision,” the district told parents on its Facebook page. “[B]ut we feel it is the best, under the circumstances.”