Iowa Free Public School After Twenty-One for a Veteran

This is one sentence in the school attendance chapter and it is the least known veteran benefit in Iowa law. Section 282.6, subsection 2: "Every school shall be free of tuition to all actual residents between the ages of five and twenty-one years and to resident veterans as defined in section 35.1, as many months after becoming twenty-one years of age as they have spent in the armed forces of the United States before they became twenty-one, provided, however, fees may be charged covering instructional costs for a summer school or driver education program." How the arithmetic works. Iowa public school is tuition free to residents from five to twenty-one. A resident veteran gets an extension past twenty-one equal to the time they served before twenty-one. Enlist at eighteen, serve four years, and you have thirty-six months of pre-21 service, so you are tuition free until twenty-four. Enlist at twenty, serve until twenty-two, and you have twelve months of pre-21 service, so you are tuition free until twenty-two. Note that it is time in the armed forces before age twenty-one that counts, not total service. Service after your twenty-first birthday adds nothing to the extension. Who "veteran" means here. Section 35.1, the master definition, which carries the Iowa residency requirement, and the provision separately requires the person to be a "resident veteran". The routes in section 35.1, paragraph "c", any federal active duty other than training with an honorable discharge, and paragraph "a", subparagraph (13), the open-ended period from August 2, 1990, will cover nearly anyone who might use this. What it is for. A veteran who enlisted out of high school without a diploma, or left before finishing, and comes home wanting to complete secondary school in a district rather than through an equivalency programme. It also covers a veteran who wants to take specific district coursework. The alternative routes are a high school equivalency diploma or a community college adult education programme, and those may well be the better fit; the point of recording this provision is that a district cannot charge you tuition inside the window. The exceptions in the same sentence. Fees may be charged covering instructional costs for a summer school or driver education programme, so the tuition exemption does not reach those. And "Every person, however, who shall attend any school after graduation from a four-year course in an approved high school or its equivalent shall be charged a sufficient tuition fee to cover the cost of the instruction received by the person." So once you hold a high school diploma or its equivalent, the free-tuition provision stops. If you already have an equivalency diploma, this door is closed. Subsection 3: "This section shall not apply to tuition authorized by chapter 260C." Community college tuition is not affected by this section. The board may waive the summer school and driver education fees in a hardship case under the same subsection. If a district turns you away, the section is one sentence long and the district's business office will not have read it. Bring it, together with your discharge document showing entry and separation dates, and ask the superintendent rather than the building.