15H.5 - IOWA SUMMER YOUTH CORPS.
15H.5 IOWA SUMMER YOUTH CORPS.
1. For the purposes of this section, "service-learning" means
a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community
service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning
experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.
2. The Iowa summer youth corps program is established to provide
meaningful summer enrichment programming to Iowa youth. The program
shall be administered by the Iowa commission on volunteer service
using a competitive grant process to implement projects in accordance
with program requirements. The commission shall adopt administrative
rules for the program, including but not limited to incentives, grant
criteria, and grantee selection processes. A percentage of the
grants shall be designated by the commission to address the needs of
city enterprise zones that meet the distress criteria outlined in
section 15E.194.
3. The program shall provide grants for projects that utilize a
service-learning approach during the summer months to enhance student
achievement and summer learning retention, teach meaningful job
skills to Iowa youth, engage Iowa youth in their communities, provide
positive youth development experiences, and address the needs of
youth from families with low income. The service-learning approach
shall be integrated into the program using science, technology,
engineering, mathematics, social studies, civic literacy, or other
appropriate curricula identified by the department of education.
4. The program shall involve the youth participating in the
program in service-learning activities with one or more of the
following focuses:
a. Energy conservation in the youth's community, including
conducting educational outreach on energy conservation and working to
improve energy efficiency in low-income housing and public spaces.
b. Emergency and disaster preparedness.
c. Improving access to and obtaining the benefits from
providing computers and other emerging technologies in underserved
and other appropriate areas of counties and cities, including but not
limited to low-income communities, senior centers and communities,
schools, libraries, and other public settings.
d. Mentoring of middle school youth while involving all
participants in service-learning to address unmet human, educational,
environmental, public safety, or emergency disaster preparedness
needs in the participants' community.
e. Establishing or implementing summer of service projects
during the summer months. Budgeting for a summer of service project
shall include the cost of recruitment, training, and placement of
service-learning coordinators. A summer of service project shall
comply with all of the following requirements:
(1) Youth participating in a project will be enrolled in grades
six through twelve in the school year which begins immediately
following the end of a project.
(2) The focus of each project shall be community-based,
service-learning activities that address unmet human, educational,
environmental, emergency and disaster preparedness, and public
service needs. Environmental needs addressed may include energy
conservation, water quality, and land stewardship.
(3) The activities for each project shall be intensive,
structured, supervised, and designed to produce identifiable
improvements to the community. The activities may include the
extension of school year service-learning programs into the summer
months.
f. Performing community improvement projects, which may
include but are not limited to a green corps program activity under
section 15H.6 or other youth training program.
5. a. Funding for the Iowa summer youth corps program and the
Iowa green corps program established pursuant to section 15H.6 shall
be obtained from private sector, and local, state, and federal
government sources, or from other available funds credited to the
community programs account, which shall be created within the
department of economic development under the authority of the
commission. Moneys available in the account for a fiscal year are
appropriated to the commission to be used for the programs.
b. The commission shall manage the program in a manner to
maximize the leveraging of federal, local, and private funding
opportunities that increase or amplify program impact and
service-learning opportunities. The commission shall also encourage
collaboration with, and utilization of, other national, local, and
nonprofit programs engaged in community service or addressing the
needs of youth from families with low income.
c. The commission shall give priority consideration to
approving those projects that target communities that have
disproportionately high rates of juvenile crime or low rates of high
school graduation or that have been designated as city enterprise
zones that meet the distress criteria outlined in section 15E.194.
d. The commission shall include progress information
concerning implementation of the program in the quarterly reports
made to the governor and the general assembly in accordance with
section 15H.2.
6. a. Notwithstanding any contrary provision of chapter 8A,
subchapter IV, or chapter 96, a person participating in the Iowa
summer youth corps program shall be exempt from merit system
requirements and shall not be eligible to receive unemployment
compensation benefits.
b. If a stipend is provided to a youth participating in the
program, the youth shall be age fourteen through eighteen.
c. A youth participating in a summer of service project that
either has an education award or no compensation shall comply with
the grade level requirements specified for summer of service project
participation.
d. A project that uses funding for an AmeriCorps young adult
component within the project design shall limit participation in the
component to young persons who are age sixteen through twenty-four at
the time of enrollment in the project. Section History: Recent Form
2009 Acts, ch 161, §1, 4
Referred to in § 15H.6