ICCSD School Board members unanimously voted to delay the first day of school to Sept. 8 amid coronavirus concerns in a board meeting on Aug. 4. The delay will provide teachers more time to plan their teaching schedules with on-site and online learning models.

“One of the things I think is potentially the benefit of a later start is that it gives our teachers who are going to be serving students in the pre-k12 online program, an opportunity just to further their work in terms of the online courses and delivery models,” said ICCSD School Board member Janet Godwin.

The decision will also offer the opportunity to observe the coronavirus rates at the University of Iowa once the school reopens on-site on Aug. 24, and prevent a potential spike from incoming university students from impacting public school cases.

“In August, with the University starting classes and knowing that that’ll likely affect the spread rates in the community, [we’re] trying to have some additional time to monitor those rates and see what that health data presents at over the last week,” said Interim Superintendent Matt Degner. “Some of those numbers have trended up a little. We’ve monitored those with Johnson County Public Health and so we wanted to try to get a better sense of where the health conditions in the community were at that time and felt like those extra two weeks would provide some of that.”

With the adjusted academic calendar, the school year will now end on June 11.

Tonight, the Board voted unanimously to delay the start date for the 2020-21 school year. The first day of school for all learning models will now be Tuesday, September 8, 2020.

— Iowa City Schools (@IowaCitySchools) August 4, 2020

This story is still developing, check in with WSS for more updates.