Iowa City school officials on Tuesday summarized key 2025 state education legislation and its local impacts, telling the board the changes will require district policy and program adjustments in areas including absenteeism, equity programming, investigations of alleged student abuse by staff and new reporting or training requirements for board members.

Deputy Superintendent Chase told the board the Iowa Department of Education, the Iowa School Board Association and district legal counsel were among the sources used to compile guidance. "The training looks to be anywhere from 60 to a hundred and 20 minutes," he said when describing a newly mandated open-meetings training that the state must make available.

Chase and other presenters highlighted several measures they said could affect the district this school year:
- Absenteeism (Senate File 277): The law broadened exemptions and removed the certified-mail requirement, a change the district said could reduce time and cost. The district reported it spent about $30,000 on certified mail for truancy notices last year and that referrals to the county attorney dropped from 133 to 61 over recent years.
- DEI-related restrictions (House File 856): District officials said existing programs must be reviewed to ensure they do not provide preferential treatment based on race or other protected characteristics. Officials said they can redesign programs such as Grow Your Own to be open to all staff or students rather than give priority by race: "We could still have a grow your own program, but it needs to be redesigned as it cannot be based on preferential treatment because of a candidate's race or ethnicity," Chase said.
- Student-abuse investigations (Senate File 659): Allegations of student abuse involving a school employee will now be investigated by the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The district said DHHS will have up to 30 days to complete investigations and that if a case is found founded the district must terminate the employee; while DHHS investigates, local internal procedures may be paused.
- Civics test and postsecondary instruction: The state will require a civics test for the graduating class of 2026–27, with a 60% passing score; details such as the number of questions are not yet available.
- Human growth curriculum and health instruction: The law specifies required instructional materials, including certain video content, and creates a specific parent opt‑out for the unit.
- Cell phone law and discipline documentation: The district plans to record phone-policy violations in Infinite Campus for data purposes but said those records will not be used for disciplinary removal.
- Optional school safety assessment teams: A newly available model would allow districts to form multiagency care or threat-assessment teams with a policy adopted by the board; the district has not yet brought such a policy to the Policy & Governance committee.

Chase told the board many provisions required additional administrative guidance and that the district's legal counsel was advising on narrow questions such as scope, who the open-meetings training applies to and whether fines would be levied individually or on a district basis. Directors asked for follow-up with counsel on several points including potential liability for open-meetings fines.

At the meeting the board also approved its policy primers — updates to board policies that implement or respond to some of the legislative changes — by a unanimous vote. A board motion to approve the policy primers passed with all directors voting in favor.

District leaders said they will continue to review programs and policies with legal counsel and administrators and return to the board with proposed policy language or redesigns where necessary.