During her Condition of the State address Tuesday, Jan. 9, Gov. Kim Reynolds outlined one of her goals for this legislative session is to reduce the impact of Area Education Agencies throughout the state, especially to get them back to helping students with disabilities.
As she noted, the Area Education Agencies work on a regional system to deliver resources to the many school districts in Iowa.
And AEAS have grown, especially the Grant Wood AEA, beyond providing just care for special education students in districts (though that remains their primary goal) to providing help for all schools in their coverage area.
Especially for rural schools, the AEAs have been crucial in providing resources to school districts for specialized units in core classes.
In middle school science classes at Lisbon, for instance, the AEA has helped to provide resources for a unit in earth sciences, as was discussed in a building tour of the newly renovated middle school classrooms a few years ago. The teachers let the AEA know what units they are covering and when that was planned for their curriculum, as well as number of students in their classrooms. The AEA has those items ready for the unit, and when completed, teachers return those items to the AEA for the next building or district to use, replenishing what needs to be before doing so. It may not be an exorbitant cost, but imagine multiple costs for hundreds of students per year for every unit that need specialized materials you only need once. Those all add up. As does finding a location to store them.
Not all districts have enrollment numbers like Cedar Rapids, Iowa City or other larger metros where those expenses could easily be covered from a general fund. Without resources like the AEA provides outside of assistance for special education, many rural school districts would have to come up with different ways to teach an earth/science class that do not provide the hands on and experiential learning that help students better grasp the concepts.
And that’s just one example of what AEAs provide for our area schools. There are countless other resources at our AEAs that Mount Vernon and Lisbon utilize to help all students learn. Yes, a lot of that has to do with special education resources. Lisbon in November spoke about utilizing English Language Learner materials for the district from the AEA for a student who needed those resources.
We get that AEAs have grown from their original purview. When the state is limiting resources to education by not funding schools at adequate levels, other solutions arise. The focus of the AEAs has always remained on helping all students learn.
We also understand that Reynolds did say districts who want to utilize AEA resources can still do so. Impacting AEAs and their funding and changing their focus, however, will have damning effects, especially for more rural districts in the state. We hope that the legislature doesn’t act quickly on this and has a more lengthy discussion of any sweeping changes before they are made.