A rural Iowa school fears AEA staffing issues could affect services

DES MOINES, Iowa — Each Iowa school district has been playing a numbers game when it comes to what general education media and services they will receive from Iowa Area Education Agencies.

This school year, Iowa AEAs continue to receive 100% of special education funding and 40% of general education and media funding. Schools can choose how to spend the remaining 60%, either through a different vendor or through the AEAs.

Barb Schwamman, superintendent of Riceville and Osage Community Schools in rural northern Iowa, said they are currently spending all their money on AEAs.

However, once we enter the second year of Iowa’s new law, AEAs will receive 90% of special education funding. Schools will be able to choose how to spend the remaining 10%, along with 100% of media and general education funding.

“We know that the services are going to cost us, in essence, maybe more money,” Schwamman said. “Because we pay about $900 a day for them.”

Because it’s so early in the school year, Schwamman said they’re not currently seeing any major issues with costs or services, but he does have concerns.

Iowa AEAs are struggling with staffing: at the start of this school year, there were 429 fewer employees than last year. Schwamman worries this could start to affect how they receive services in the long term.

“Some of our school improvement consultants, instead of serving four or five districts, are maybe serving six or eight districts, and that’s a lot,” Schwamman said. “They’re spreading people thin.”

The law gives schools flexibility to hire new staff, rather than outsourcing to AEAs. Schwamman said it’s easier for urban schools to take advantage of this, since she already faces staffing challenges in her two rural districts that serve about 1,400 students combined.

“We share human and teacher resources with multiple districts, so again, we’re already sharing,” Schwamman said. “To think we can create what AEA has done among a group of small districts, why would we do that? We can do it in a better regional environment.”

The new law also requires a task force to review AEAs and make recommendations to lawmakers by Dec. 31, but no meeting has been scheduled to appoint members.

A spokesman for House Republicans said they are having difficulty finding a date when enough members of the legislative council can meet, but hope to set one as soon as possible.

“The system has been in place for 50 years,” Schwamman said. “Why was it changed in a few months? Why wasn’t there a longer process? And again, we have serious concerns about how we’re going to fare in this ‘second year.’ We’re at a point where things have changed a bit, but we don’t know what’s going to happen in the next legislative session.”