Professional Educators of Iowa

10/27/2026

They hired one teacher… but built a job for eight people.

Lesson planner. Counselor. Tech support. Behavior manager. Nurse. Parent liaison. Security. Paperwork machine.

Then people wonder why teachers are exhausted.

Teachers can do amazing things, but they were never meant to do everything alone.

If we want better schools, we need to support the people holding them together.

10/26/2026

"Only one student dressed up. She wore a belt." — Lynette B.

COTSWORTH HIGH SCHOOL — Administrators confirmed that Wednesday's Spirit Week Pajama Day produced no discernible change in student attire, with a hallway audit finding 94 percent of students in sweatpants, pajama pants, or house slippers, a figure unchanged from the previous Wednesday. Student council advisor Mrs. Bettencourt said judges for the $50 Best Pajamas prize spent the morning unable to determine which students were participating and which were simply attending.

The day's only identifiable costume belonged to sophomore Kynzlee, who arrived in jeans, a tucked-in blouse, and a belt because her sweatpants were in the wash. She was intercepted by front office staff, handed a substitute lanyard, and assigned to cover chemistry.

Administrators have since amended the dress code to prohibit belts, tucked-in shirts, and pants with zippers, citing the risk of students being mistaken for substitutes.

10/23/2026

"I prepared for everything except them having eyes." — Dana S.

SNICKERDOODLE MIDDLE SCHOOL — An anti-bullying speaker hired by the district left the school's gym in tears Tuesday, 19 minutes into a 45-minute assembly, after 640 middle school students noticed her shoes. The speaker, Ms. Starling, wore a pair of lime green clogs that a seventh grader in the front row reportedly pointed out at the 6-minute mark, after which word reached the back bleachers in under 90 seconds.

Ms. Starling attempted to turn the moment into a lesson on empathy but never reached her slide titled "Words Matter." The district paid $3,500 for the assembly, which served as the centerpiece of the school's Kindness Week.

On a follow-up survey asking students to identify the assembly's main message, 87% wrote "the shoes."

10/22/2026

Iowa's SF2428 took effect this past July 1st, and it rewrites a rule that's frustrated teachers for years. Under the old standard, a teacher could only remove a student from the classroom if that student posed an actual threat of violence. Chronic, serious, nonviolent disruption, the kid who derails every lesson without ever raising a fist, had no clear removal pathway at all.

The new law changes that directly. It defines what actually counts as a classroom disruption, violent or not, and creates a formal process for a teacher to request a student's removal when that threshold is met. It also mandates district oversight committees to review these cases and clarifies how the process interacts with a student's existing IEP protections, so a removal request doesn't accidentally run through a student's documented support plan.

That last piece matters more than it might look like on paper. A law that hands teachers more removal authority without touching how it interacts with special education protections is a law that's going to generate real disputes fast. Iowa built that connective tissue in from the start instead of leaving it for courts or districts to sort out later.

The practical shift here is significant. A teacher who's spent years watching one student eat up the majority of instructional time and attention, without ever crossing into anything violent enough to trigger the old standard, now has an actual process to point to instead of just absorbing the disruption indefinitely. Whether that process moves fast enough to matter in the moment is a separate question, since any formal oversight committee process is, by definition, not instant.

The old all-or-nothing violence threshold never really matched how classroom disruption actually works day to day. Iowa just built something closer to how it actually plays out.

The oversight committee requirement is also a real workload addition for the people serving on it, on top of their existing jobs. Someone still has to review each case, document the disruption pattern, and sign off before removal happens, which means Iowa traded an indefensible gap for a process that takes real administrative time to run well.

Does a formal process like this actually change what happens in the moment a student is disrupting class, or does it mostly help after the fact?

10/20/2026

"We'd love to approve it on a day he's off." — Pamela R.

BRACKMOOR SCHOOL DISTRICT — The district on Friday denied high school chemistry teacher Mr. Dobbins' request for a personal day to attend his brother's out-of-state wedding, citing the discovery that the requested day falls on a school day. Under district policy, personal days may be used on any day school is not in session, a window that includes weekends, summer, and 11 scheduled breaks.

Human resources director Ms. Rutledge suggested that Mr. Dobbins leave after his last class and "aim for the reception." Mr. Dobbins currently has 40 unused personal and sick days, accrued over 12 years of submitting requests that fell on school days.

The district has since approved his request for the following Saturday instead.

10/14/2026

10/09/2026

A bill moving through the South Carolina legislature would give teachers new authority to use physical force against disruptive students and to permanently remove them from the classroom — a proposal that has drawn opposition from the ACLU of South Carolina.

House Bill 5483, sponsored by Reps. Erickson, Bradley, McGinnis, Hartnett, Teeple and Vaughan, is listed as "active" in the legislature. The bill would permit teachers to use what it calls "reasonable physical force" to maintain classroom order, though the bill does not clearly define what qualifies as reasonable. It would also allow teachers to permanently remove a disruptive student from their classroom, and it includes protection for staff who comply with the policy from facing discipline over actions taken under it.

Read more in the comments...

10/01/2026

A rule only works when students know it means the same thing tomorrow, with a different student, and in a different situation.

The moment consequences depend on who broke the rule, students start paying attention to something else: who gets exceptions, who gets corrected, and how much the expectation actually matters.

Consistency doesn’t mean every situation gets the exact same response. Context matters.

But students should be able to trust that the standard itself isn’t changing based on who is standing in front of us.

That kind of predictability builds trust.