(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
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Senate sends bill on Area Education Agencies, school funding to governor • Iowa Capital Dispatch [1]
['Robin Opsahl', 'More From Author', '- March']
Date: 2024-03-26
The Iowa Senate approved an amended House bill making changes to the state’s Area Education Agencies Tuesday, legislation that also included state funding for public K-12 schools for the upcoming year as well as a measure increasing teacher pay.
Senators passed House File 2612 in a 30-18 vote, approving the amendment made by House lawmakers the previous week. Three Republicans, Sens. Waylon Brown, Mike Klimesh and Charlie McClintock, joined all Democrats in voting against the measure.
Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, D-Waukee, criticized Republicans for passing the measure despite there being problems in the bill.
“Several Republican members from the House acknowledged publicly over the weekend, there are problems with their most recent version because of so much — mistakes that should be fixed,” Trone Garriott said. “But they voted for it anyways. And so many of this chamber will vote this too, the House’s sloppy seconds. Because the unvarnished truth is this is a desperate attempt to pass something, anything, as soon as possible to please the governor.”
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds started the discussion on AEA changes in January, highlighting it in her Condition of the State address as her top priority for the 2024 legislative session. After the bill’s passage Tuesday, she released a statement thanking lawmakers and the educational professionals who weighed in on the measure.
“Over the last several weeks, this bill has been the focus of much discussion and debate,” Reynolds said in a statement. “Change is seldom easy, but it is necessary to achieve better results. Reforming the AEA system creates accountability, transparency, consistency, and most importantly, better outcomes for all Iowa’s students.”
In its final form, the bill is quite different from the governor’s proposal, which would have directed all special education state and federal funding to school districts directly. The bill sent to Reynolds Tuesday keeps most special education funds with AEAs.
In its second year of implementation, special education funding for Iowa K-12 schools would first go to school districts, with 90% of the money required to go to the AEAs, with the option of retaining the remaining 10%. The bill also would send 40% of funding for general education and media services directly to AEAs and 60% to school districts in year one, with all of those funds going to school districts in year two.
The bill also creates a task force to study AEAs and make recommendations to lawmakers on potential changes for the next legislative session.
McClintock, R-Alburnett, said that during his time in the Legislature, he has seen several unpopular bills, but “this is the first one that not only is universally disliked by both parties, but overwhelmingly one-sided in its opposition to passage.”
McClintock read letters from constituents, many of whom are Republicans, who said the bill will negatively impact their families and education in Iowa, adding that he can “say with some confidence that no one really likes this bill.”
“Let me say that I don’t think the governor was wrong in calling for a review of the AEAs,” he said. “Just that the AEAs are not only fully capable, but completely willing to review their processes without this legislation being forced upon them. And the debate over this issue should be taking place in a conference room somewhere with AEA chiefs and school administrators, and not in the chambers of the Capitol by lawmakers.”
Sen. Cherielynn Westrich, R-Ottumwa, pushed back against opponents’ claims that no one asked or ran their campaign on changing Iowa’s AEA system, saying she has advocated for more AEA accountability since 2018. She also said that of the people who reached out to her about the legislation, many people were concerned about its impact on programs like Early Access and Child Find, services that she said would not be affected because they are federally funded.
Westrich said the measure will create more accountability and oversight of AEA and special education services, and that much of the opposition is from “misinformation” about the measure.
“I believe what we’re doing here today is what I had hoped to accomplish, and set out to do,” Westrich said, thanking Sens. Ken Rozenboom and Lynn Evans for their work on the bill. “They came up with something far greater than I could have, and I appreciate your efforts in addressing this and creating more transparency, more oversight. I think this is going to be great.”
Per-pupil state aid, teacher raises set
Outside of AEAs, the legislation sets a 2.5% state supplemental aid rate for Iowa public schools — the amount recommended by Reynolds in her budget proposal — as well as incorporating pay raises for teachers and education support staff. The bill would set minimum teacher starting salaries at $47,500 in year one and $50,000 in year two, as well as setting a minimum salary of $60,000 for teachers with 12 years of experience in year one and $62,000 in year two, similar to the governor’s initial teacher pay proposal.
The bill also appropriates $14 million toward raising pay for paraeducators and other school staff like those providing health, custodial and food services. The final legislation does not include the $15 minimum hourly wage set by the House’s original school staff pay proposal, with Rep. Skyler Wheeler, R-Hull, saying in last week’s debate on the bill that it remained unclear if the appropriation would fully cover the pay increase.
Sen. Bill Dotzler, D-Waterloo, said he disliked having to vote against a measure raising teacher pay because of its inclusion in the AEA bill, instead of passing it as a separate bill as the House did initially with bipartisan support.
“You put a bill together that deeply offends me in a lot of ways and one is you have taken away my ability to stand here and support something I deeply care about,” Dotzler said. “… I’m going to vote against the whole bill, even though I support teacher salaries. That’s what’s wrong with doing this kind of thing. Supplemental Aid’s another one, we should be having debates and conversations on it.”
Sen. Janice Weiner, D-Iowa City, added that she believes the bill is unconstitutional, as it violates the state constitution’s Home Rule provision by striking AEAs from the definition of political subdivision, in addition to violating the state’s single subject rule.
“It was already a violation last week when Senate Republicans passed the Senate version with at least two subjects. It’s worse now, it’s a four subject bill: AEAs, special ed, SSA school funding, teacher and (paraeducator) pay. Separate bills that we should be voting on and considering separately.”
Evans, the bill’s floor manager, said he believed all aspects of the bill at hand were crucial components of improving educational outcomes for all students in Iowa, with additional support and accountability of services provided to families and students with disabilities.
“This bill in its entirety will not only improve student achievement and special education, it will not only help improve the AEA system — which is a support system for specialized and general education — but it’s going to raise student achievement in its entirety in our state,” Evans said.
Senate moves forward with Snow nomination
Earlier in the morning Tuesday, a Senate subcommittee moved forward with nominating Iowa Department of Education director McKenzie Snow to continue serving as the department’s director.
Snow first took the position as director in June 2023, replacing Chad Aldis who resigned from the position after four months in the role. Prior to becoming Iowa’s education department director, Snow had worked as K-12 policy director for former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos during former President Donald Trump’s presidency, as well as serving as deputy secretary of education for Virginia and division director for the New Hampshire education department.
Though several K-12 school superintendents and community college presidents spoke in support of Snow’s tenure in office, saying she was more communicative and available than previous directors, critics argued against her appointment because of her lack of teaching experience and licensure.
Snow has extensive experience in education policy, but during the meeting, she said her main classroom experience was teaching remedial courses at the University of the Free State in South Africa through the Fulbright program. She is not licensed to teach in any U.S. state, and holds a degree in political science from Kansas State University.
Jessica Roman, a Grant Wood Area Education Agency special education consultant, was among speakers who expressed concerns about Snow, who does not have direct experience or education on teaching in Iowa, being appointed to the position in light of the AEA bill.
“She’s never written a lesson plan in an Iowa classroom or an IEP,” Roman said. “Why then does it make sense for her to be the director of Department of Education for the state of Iowa, and of a newly formed division of special education?”
The legislation would create a division of special education within the state department overseeing the AEAs and special education services throughout the state.
The bill would also direct the education department to hire 53 new employees in oversight positions – 13 full-time staff members working from Des Moines, and 40 employees working across the state with AEAs and school districts.
This hiring scope is significantly smaller than Reynolds’ original proposal, which called for staffing the new division with 139 employees, funded by moving $20 million from AEAs to the state. Job listings for the division of special education were posted online in January, despite no legislation having been passed.
During the Senate debate on the AEA bill, Evans defended the measure turning oversight over to the education department — duties currently performed internally by the AEAs — saying that these duties were originally with the state.
“We’re simply returning the oversight back to the department that was designed for compliance and oversight, which is the Department of Education,” Evans said. “And taking it out of the hands of the AEA, which back when that was put into place in the late 90s, early 2000s, they did not want they pushed back against having that oversight put on their actual in-the-field workers. They didn’t want that responsibility. So now it puts it back in where it belongs.”
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