SOLON — Nine Area Education Agencies (AEA) provide Special Education, Media, Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment, and Professional Learning support to children, families and educators services across the state. The Solon Community School District (SCSD) is aligned with the Grant Wood AEA, which serves districts in Linn, Jones, Cedar, Johnson, Washington, Iowa, and Benton counties. AEAs are a fairly recent development in Iowa education, which has its roots dating back to 1858. In 1910 over 5,000 districts across the state were overseen by 99 county superintendents. In 1974 the county system was replaced with 15 area education agencies. Through voluntary mergers, the AEAs were consolidated into the present nine.
On March 27 Governor Kim Reynolds signed House File 2612 into law, which restructures funding for the AEAs as well as increasing pay for new teachers, setting the state’s school funding after announcing her intentions to overhaul the AEA system during her January Condition of the State address. Under HF2612 the AEAs, the state’s special education services provider, would continue to receive 90% of the state funding allocated to the AEAs with the remaining 10% going directly to the school districts to be used at their discretion for media and general education services, which can be spent with private vendors or through the AEAs under a fee for service model.
During the signing ceremony, Gov. Reynolds said, “Over the last several weeks this bill has been the focus of much discussion and debate. Change is seldom easy, but it is necessary to achieve better results.” Reforming the AEAs, she said, “creates accountability, transparency, consistency, and most importantly, better outcomes for all of Iowa’s students.”
SCSD Superintendent Davis Eidahl said there are a lot of unknowns as to how the legislation will affect school districts in general, and Solon in particular.
“Changes needed to be made, it’s a 50-year-old model and tweaks and changes needed to be made. The bill that they passed was better than the original bill that was proposed, but I don’t see (next year) it having much of any impact on Solon.”
Grant Wood AEA, Eidahl said, will still provide all special education services to Solon. “In year one they get 90% of the funding anyway, and that 10% extra, if we need to pass that through so we’ve got full access to everything they offer for our special education students, we will.” When it comes to media and educational services Eidahl said, “Until we really determine what specifically we use, and how much of the AEA’s time, I look for us to just pass that money through (to Grant Wood AEA) in year one and then do a strong audit.” By this time next year, or earlier, Eidahl said the district will know what (outside of special education) is needed for Solon’s own school improvement. “We utilize their literacy experts quite a bit for training of staff and sitting in on student interventions to help with intervention practices or to close gaps (in learning). We’ve used their math consultants in the past, we use their online library and their book exchange.” The district does a unit on electricity for the fifth-grade students, he said, “We borrow a bunch of books on electricity that we can flood classrooms with so the students can do some background reading.”
Overall Eidahl looks for some change, “but not significant.” The AEA is “certainly beneficial to Solon as far as their utilization. It won’t look much different next year, and the year after probably 60-70% of our dollars will still go to the AEA because of the job that they do for us.” Having the ability to control at least some of the funds, Eidahl said, presents opportunities for the districts to look for other resources. “Some of the things we’re doing in math at the elementary level, such as changing the pedagogy (method and practice of teaching), the AEA just couldn’t provide that support, so we went out and found the expertise to help us. Now since we can control our money, it will come to us and if we choose to utilize the AEA, great. If we choose to use a different outside expert, we’ve got the money to do so. So, there’s positives to it.” Eidahl said he thinks ultimately this will make the AEA stronger. “They’ll need to become more responsive, they’ll have to hire some quality experts, and if they’ve got the right personnel districts will want their services.”
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