Suspended, bullied, or censored in an Iowa school: what state law promises you

Iowa Code section 299.1A sets compulsory attendance, the ages when the law requires you to attend school, at 6 through 15, measured on September 15. If you turn 16 on or after September 15 while enrolled, you stay covered until the end of that school year. A 5-year-old who is enrolled also counts unless a parent withdraws the child in writing.

Suspension and expulsion come from Iowa Code section 282.4. A school board can let a teacher, principal, or superintendent suspend a student temporarily, and written notice of that suspension must go 'at once' to the president of the school board. Expulsion, meaning removal from school for a longer period, takes a majority vote of the school board itself. The section does not set a maximum number of days for a suspension, so check your district's handbook for that number. It does say a student cannot be suspended or expelled if doing so would violate the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

The U.S. Supreme Court added the floor every Iowa school must meet in Goss v. Lopez (1975): before even a short suspension, a public school must tell the student what they are accused of and give them a chance to tell their side. The Cedar Rapids sophomore is owed that conversation. Ask for it.

Iowa Code section 280.28 requires every public school district and accredited private school to have an anti-bullying policy. The law defines harassment and bullying as repeated, targeted electronic, written, verbal, or physical conduct that creates an objectively hostile school environment, for example by putting a student in reasonable fear of harm or substantially interfering with their schoolwork.

The policy must name, by job title, who receives reports. Once a school official receives a report that a student may have been bullied, the official must notify that student's parents or guardians within 24 hours. The superintendent or a designee must investigate promptly. The law also protects anyone who reports in good faith from being sued over the report, and it bans retaliation against a victim or witness.

A Waterloo eighth grader whose parents never got a call after a report has a specific question to ask the principal: which job title in your policy was supposed to make that call?

In December 1965, 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker, her brother John, 15, and Christopher Eckhardt, 16, wore black armbands to their Des Moines schools to mourn the Vietnam War and were suspended. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court held that students do not lose their free-speech rights at the schoolhouse gate, and a school may punish expression only when it can show a material and substantial disruption of school, not just discomfort with the message.

Iowa then went further than most states. Iowa Code section 280.22, passed in 1989, says public school students have the right to free expression, including in official school publications such as the newspaper and yearbook. Student editors assign and edit the content. The school may not review material before publication (no 'prior restraint') unless it is obscene, libelous, or encourages breaking the law, breaking school rules, or substantially disrupting school. A teacher who protects a student's lawful expression cannot be fired or disciplined for it. Every school board must adopt a written publications code and give it to students and parents.