Education Leaders Discuss Iowa’s Area Education Agencies (Part 1)

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Lawmakers are considering changes to the state's Area Education Agencies. We'll talk about the services AEAs provide and the path forward on this edition of Iowa Press.

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For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating 50 years of broadcast excellence on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, February 23rd edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

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Henderson: In January in her Condition of the State message, Governor Kim Reynolds unveiled an overhaul of Iowa's Area Education Agencies. There are nine of them serving the state of Iowa. Since then, House republicans have proposed their own alternative plan and Senate republicans have a bill that hues more closely to the Governor's plan but does make changes. Our guests here today are to explain what Area Education Agencies are and share their views on the proposals that are percolating at the Capitol. Our guest to my left here is Cindy Yelick, she is the Chief Administrator of the Heartland Area Education Agency. In the middle is Mark Lane, he is Woodward-Granger Community School District Superintendent. And we have Deron Durflinger, he is Van Meter Community School District Superintendent. Welcome to you all to this conversation.

Glad to be here.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

Henderson: Also joining me in asking questions are Stephen Gruber-Miller of the Des Moines Register and Erin Murphy of the Gazette in Cedar Rapids.

Murphy: So, we wanted to start with some sort of foundational work here and Cindy we'll start with you. Area Education Agencies, one of the things that they do is provide special education services to schools. Tell us a little bit more about that. What exactly does AEA staff do in that universe helping special education students?

Yelick: The AEAs actually can start working with children from birth. So, if a baby is born and spends time in the NICU, that family can be matched with an AEA service provider and they help them navigate just all of the community resources they might need to and we can stay with the student until they are age 21 if they qualify for services through their individual education plan. We provide direct services to students in the areas of occupational therapy, physical therapy, teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing, orientation and mobility specialists for students that are visually impaired. So, there is a whole suite of what we call direct services. We're also responsible for what is called Part C, so services to kids 0 to age 3. And then we also are responsible for what is called Child Find, which is the evaluation process that helps identify students who might be eligible for special education services.

Murphy: This is going into school buildings to do these things?

Yelick: Correct. From age 3 on we're working in collaboration with local schools and working with students in both public schools and accredited non-public schools.

Gruber-Miller: So, another bucket of services that the AEAs offer is general education services. So, for those of us who might not be up on all of the terminology, just explain what those general education services are and how they differ from special education.

Yelick: So, general education services are available to all students in schools in the public and accredited non-public areas. Those things might include professional learning. So, we offer a variety of courses, improving early literacy instruction, we offer substitute authorization courses for people that want to become substitute teachers, we have coaching authorization classes for people who want to become coaches. We also have people that can go into classrooms and help teachers with implementation of new curriculum or support a district as they are designing new curriculum or identifying new curriculum that they want to implement. So, that area for us is called education services and it makes up about 12.5% of our budget.

Henderson: Deron Durflinger, in Van Meter how does this fit into your operation?

Durflinger: Yeah, well from the general ed side, we just had a full day of professional development on Monday of no school with students and we had AEA staff come in and provide some training actually on AI. So, we utilize those services periodically. We do a lot of our own professional development. But from a special ed side, that is where we use their services the most. They are definitely working with us hand-in-hand in trying to develop plans that are going to meet each student's needs. There's some media services we use as well but probably not as much in our district.

Henderson: Mark Lane, how does it work in Woodward-Granger?

Lane: I think one of the unique things to our district is that we are a district that houses two consortium programs. And so, we have a unique relationship with Heartland AEA. We have a school that is the Grandwood Consortium School that is a school specifically for students with special needs. Currently we have students enrolled at Grandwood that attend from about 30 to 40 different Central Iowa school districts and so the ability for us to operate the Grandwood program on behalf of other school districts, Heartland's partnership there is essential. These are students with some of the unique IEPs in the state of Iowa and they can become very difficult for one district to serve and when they come together in a place like Grandwood we have the appropriate staff and then the partnership with Heartland AEA in serving those unique IEPs is really critical. So, the general resources for special education that Deron talked about we're experiencing in our K-12 program. But then in our consortium schools I think we deliver some unique programming with Heartland for some unique needs.

Murphy: So, we are here today in large part because the Governor has proposed legislation that would -- and state lawmakers are considering legislation that would have significant impacts on how AEAs operate. So, Cindy, I'll start with you on this one as well. On this program a few weeks ago the Governor said that AEAs are failing Iowa’s special education students and she cited some test scores and some achievement gaps as her reason for that viewpoint and thusly this proposed legislation. What is your response to that?

Yelick: The Governor has been using the NAPE achievement to cite that piece of data. The sample size for NAPE is very small, 266 special education students out of 70,000 in the state of Iowa were included in that last assessment. So, it's a pretty small sample size to be making a high stakes decision. But the other thing is if you even review the NAPE website and information, they even state that that assessment really is not designed to look at high level policy decisions. It's a much broader sweep at what achievement could look like but isn't really positioned to give you the fine level data you need to make these kinds of decisions.

Murphy: Mark, from the school administrator's perspective, are these test scores the way that you judge how your students with special needs are being served?

Lane: I don't view the NAPE as something that is really a relevant measure specifically to our school district and I haven't done that as a principal or as a superintendent. I'm much more interested at the state level like on our Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress. And even more relevant to us is the common formative assessments, the daily assessments that we're giving to students that inform teacher decisions. And so, I think it's important to have different measures at different levels of the system. But whatever is happening closest to the student I think is most powerful for making educational decisions.

Henderson: So, Mark, what are the scores telling you, the ones that you're looking at? Are student achievement gaps existing with students with disabilities?

Lane: I think we see gaps in different subgroups. We see gaps between students that may receive free and reduced lunch, they may have a disadvantage related to their socioeconomic status. I think we see existing gaps there. I think we see gaps in some of our minority groups. And these are complex problems that all school districts are facing and that I think we're working together with our neighbor districts and with Heartland AEA to try and address.

Henderson: Deron?

Durflinger: Agree. I think from an assessment standpoint, the closest to the students is what we're focusing on. I've been at this long enough and I don't know if I've ever actually spent too much time on NAPE results. With that being said, there are definitely gaps in different areas that we know we can do a better job of. And as I kind of think about this situation and some of the data that is being used kind of around the AEA services, the local districts are the ones that are implementing the IEPs, not the AEAs, they're consulting us and helping us. But still, those are local data points, those aren't an AEA data point, from my perspective.

Henderson: Just in case people didn't catch it, an IEP is?

Durflinger: An individual education plan. So, students that have disabilities are provided a specific plan to help their needs based on whatever their situation is.

Lane: If I could make one more point I think in relation to there's also a unique nature to how we identify students in Iowa in relation to how we identify students across the nation. There are different approaches to identifying students to receive an IEP. And Iowa uses a unique approach that is very different from some other states in our country. And so, I think there's been statements about apples-to-apples comparisons. I think that is a bit of a misnomer too in the unique nature of the way we identify and then exit students who are successful in special education.

Gruber-Miller: So, we want to ask you about some of the different aspects of the legislation that has been proposed. So, I want to start with the House, Senate and the Governor all have different ways of going at this. But one of the common threads is that they would give school districts more control over some of the money that currently goes to AEAs. This is something that some superintendents in the state have said that they are interested in. I'll start with you, Deron. What do you think of that idea?

Durflinger: Yeah, Cindy knows me really well. I'm interested in that. We've had the conversation -- I think the more opportunity we have to control where funds are going, I'm definitely in favor of having that flexibility. But it's a bigger issue than just that. It's not just as simple as giving us our funds and letting us use them how we want. Part of the AEA system, and part of our statewide education system, part of public education is we're trying to educate all students so you have to kind of think of it from that lens as well. So, though locally do I think we would utilize the dollars exactly as we are now? I really don't know because I don't have access to them directly. But I also understand that though from a local district perspective I'd like more flexibility, there is kind of an overall statewide responsibility that we need to consider with those funds.

Gruber-Miller: And Mark, what do you think of that idea?

Lane: I guess I see it a little bit differently than Deron. I come from the perspective of I've never really viewed my flow through money as our district money. It's the mechanism that the Iowa legislature years ago put in place to fund a state agency that has no taxing authority. So, it's a mechanism that money flows through our school districts to another public entity that serves students. So, I understand that perspective, that's just the perspective I've always had as a public educator in Iowa. My greatest concern is in relation to, again, the unique nature of some programming in our district that when we make these decisions at this very high level removed from the day-to-day work is that we create unintentional silos. There could be unintentional consequences. We rely on Heartland AEA, we rely on our partner districts in order to fund our unique programming that shouldn't be the responsibility of Woodward-Granger taxpayers alone. And so, my greatest fear is that we would put those kinds of services that are collaborative in nature at risk by siloing and separating these funds.

Gruber-Miller: Cindy, one of the things the Governor has said is that it's not always clear what school districts are, what it costs to pay for some of these services because school districts have to go to the AEAs for them and that is why she is proposing more of a fee-for-service model where the districts would get that money and then contract for specific services. What are the pros or cons of that plan?

Yelick: Right. I think one of the pros as the Governor is thinking about it is that really public accountability for what staff are being employed with those funds, how much a certain district is utilizing to meet IEP minutes. And I think that is one of the things that is really important to understand is that a lot of services we provide such as occupational therapy or speech language pathology is driven by the number of minutes on a student's IEP. So, it's not just flexibility of saying, well you send two SLPs to our district and we really only want to pay for one.

Henderson: What is an SLP?

Yelick: Thank you, a speech language pathologist. It's really driven off of what do they students need to access a free and appropriate education? And so, in some ways there isn't maybe the flexibility that one away from the staffing equation would know about. But I think there are ways to get at that public accountability if that is one of the desires we need that isn't about disrupting the entire system. I think the other, one of the disadvantages is there is a huge economy of scale when you staff across an area. So, an example I give is in one of our regions, if a district had to contract with us for occupational therapy services in June, I can look at the numbers and say, this district would have contracted for about a quarter-time person, another district would have contracted for a half-time person. As students move, as students grow and develop on their IEPs needs change. That one district now needs, has nobody who has an occupational therapy goal, but the other needs more than one person to do it. When you have the economy of scale through an AEA system, staff can be moved throughout the year to meet those individual student needs, where it's a different situation if you're setting contracts with private providers in how you move those staff throughout the year.

Henderson: One of the proposals in each of the bills that have been presented in the legislature would take this system, which currently doesn't have state government oversight, and put the Department of Education in charge of making those decisions. I think some legislators were surprised to find out that the Department of Education and the state really didn't have oversight of these Area Education Agencies. Isn't that a good idea to have state oversight of this nine-region system?

Yelick: So, the AEA system has oversight by the state Department of Education similar to that of a school district. We have an accreditation process where every year we are participating in a desk audit where information goes to the Department of Education that they review. We have a site visit on a five-year cycle and that team comes from the Department of Education and districts from across the state. They visit the AEA, they write a report, that report goes to the state Board of Education for approval. And they can identify the specific standards if they have certain ones that they want to see improvement on or not improvement on. So, that cycle is in place. We have a board that is elected by the local districts that we serve and they are a public board, just like with schools. We publicly have hearings on our budget and we have budget review. So, to say that there is no state accountability isn't a match for how the AEA system is currently governed.

Henderson: So, there was a public hearing at the Statehouse this past week and there were superintendents who said, maybe slow down this idea of reform. But they also expressed their view that their input is not being heard by the AEAs in regards to staff performance, the people from their local AEA that is coming in and they were in favor of greater state oversight. Are you failing to communicate with some schools about staffing?

Yelick: You know, I think in any system we have staff that are very high performing and staff that need more support. I think both of the superintendents that are with me today would agree to that. We have regional administrators that are in contact with local district leaders, building principals, teachers, superintendents to get input on that and I can tell you as of yesterday I had a conversation with a superintendent that said, we want to talk about how this situation is playing out in our district. So, I don't know that I would characterize that as we are failing to have that input. Do I think that the system works seamlessly and that there's never any concern? No. But I think the superintendents have a good connection to their area chief administrators to work through those concerns.

Murphy: Mark, speaking of the public hearing, you came to that at the Capitol and spoke and I wanted to follow up on one of the things you said, which was, and I'm paraphrasing here, that you are an advocate for constant improvement and always looking for ways to improve things. So, I wanted to ask you in that spirit, what would help maybe better this system? And whether it's something in the bills that we're seeing or maybe something that those bills are missing all together? What improvements do you --

Lane: I had the opportunity to speak the other night and I also a couple of weeks ago had the opportunity to speak with Speaker Grassley with a small group of superintendents and then with co-chairs of the Senate Education Committee, Senator Rozenboom and Senator Evans, and I would say here today what I said there and I think they have listened to this. The first thing I would say is slow down. And I've seen that process and I've seen response to that. It feels like we're slowing down and we're taking an opportunity to really engage and talk and I was really excited about the number of people that came and spoke the other night. The other thing that I would say that I think is really critical to continuous improvement is involving the people closest to the problem, involving the people that are closest to the work. So, we have amazing folks that receive AEA services, our teachers, our parents, students, we have folks that work really hard within the AEA system. As a leader I have always found often their ideas about how to improve systems and how to improve workflow are different than mine and probably more correct than mine. And so, having an opportunity for people that really benefit from the system and are engaged in the system to me is critical in improvement.

Gruber-Miller: Yeah, well one of the other things we wanted to talk about, Cindy mentioned economies of scale earlier, I wanted to get to your views on that, essentially the idea here being that if districts were allowed to choose whether or not to go to AEAs for services, that if some of the big districts left, more rural districts would be left without some of those resources from the AEA. So, I wanted to get your view on that, Deron.

Durflinger: Yeah, I don't think there's any question that that would be the case. And I think what Cindy was alluding to earlier with part of it is just where your location is at as far as staffing and services that are able to be provided for students. And the closer you get to the metro areas, the better opportunity you have for that. I think we're seeing that statewide and in every industry. So, I think there would definitely be some challenges for more rural school districts. We're a small school district in Central Iowa, about 1,100 kids. The fastest growing district is directly to our east in Waukee. So, we're in a position where we think we would be able to probably work out some partnerships. But you get too many districts over to the west and I don't think they would have the same capability. We have districts that have a hard time finding -- we have districts in our conference that have teaching positions that are unfilled because they don't have applicants. So, trying to do this on a larger scale with an AEA special education system would be very difficult I believe.

Henderson: Mark, there is a third part of the AEA system, it's called media services. And the Governor has suggested these are services that schools could more efficiently purchase locally, maybe on their own Main Street, rather than relying on the AEA to provide them at a higher cost.

Lane: Respectfully, I would disagree. I think about 25 years ago when I was a fifth-grade teacher, my ability to check out like a FOSS science kit and have that be delivered by an AEA van, that was something that was to the benefit of the school district that I taught in. It was instructional materials that were valuable and useful in my instruction that my school district didn't have to purchase, we didn't have to find a space to store it, and for that four-to-six-week unit I could have that delivered and I could teach my water cycle fifth grade science unit and then I would load that back on the van. I started teaching still when we would check out something that went on a film projector --

Henderson: Let's talk about today and we have not very much time left --

Lane: Yeah, and so I think that our ability to consolidate for online services, to check out book sets that complement what we already have in our district, there's just so much material that we don't have to purchase that can be shared across our districts.

Henderson: Erin?

Murphy: Just about two minutes left here. One of the things we wanted to make sure we asked about is when the recent tragic shooting at Perry High School occurred one of the first things that happened, we've learned is that Area Education Agency staff was on-site to help with crisis counseling. AEAs have mental health services. Speaking of these bills specifically, and Cindy I wanted to ask you because there has been debate about this, what is your understanding about how those service would be impacted by the different forms of legislation? Again, sorry about in a minute and a half now that I wound that one up.

Yelick: So, those services are available to all schools, accredited non-public schools, so those are not in special education because it's not a special ed only service. I think Deron has talked about it a few times about it's an insurance policy. We hope no district ever needs those services. But at the committee the other night you heard the person who is frontline in Perry talking about the number of other tragic situations they have supported since the Perry incident. So, we deploy those services if there is a death of a staff member, a student, and other situations in a community. And those are related to education service dollars. And it's also something though that there is a huge knitted factor across the agency. So, in that case, Stacey Warren, who is the person who spoke at the subcommittee, she might be spending a lot of her day doing special ed work, but we can fund a part of her to help with this crisis response team. So, this isn't a situation where you say, we're just going to shut down media, or we're going to shut down educational services, but we still want crisis team and that's going to stand up. Because of the way everybody works across the system, we like to say it's an integrated system, to meet the needs of all kids and all schools and I think that's something important to understand.

Henderson: Very briefly, maybe Deron you could address this, but as you view the legislature, are they in your view going to take some action? You guys are looking in just as we are. Do you expect them to take action?

Durflinger: It sure feels that way. I think when you've got the three different chambers working on a bill, it would probably indicate that something is going to happen. Now, what that something is we don't know. Obviously, I agree with Mark, we'd probably like to see it slow down a bit. And I'm a very big advocate for change, it's kind of what we're known for in our district, so I'm supportive of doing things to help students and I like to move forward quickly so I appreciate that. But I do agree that something is going to happen, I just don't know what it's going to be yet.

Henderson: Speaking of time, we're out of it for this conversation. Thanks to the three of you for joining us today.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you.

Appreciate it very much.

Henderson: You can watch every episode of Iowa Press at iowapbs.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching today.

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Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation.

The Associated General Contractors of Iowa, the public's partner in building Iowa's highway, bridge and municipal utility infrastructure.

Elite Casino Resorts is a family-run business rooted in Iowa. We believe our employees are part of our family and we strive to improve their quality of life and the quality of lives within the communities we serve.

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Across Iowa, hundreds of neighborhood banks strive to serve their communities, provide jobs and help local businesses. Iowa Banks are proud to back the life you build. Learn more at iowabankers.com.

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