A Des Moines Register Mediacom Poll has found 56% of Iowans have a favorable opinion of the state’s nine Area Education Agencies. The AEA’s provide special education services, teacher training and other services to Iowa school districts. In early January Governor Kim Reynolds said the AEA’s are failing students with disabilities and she proposed major changes in how AEA’s operate, including an end to some services she says schools can get from the private sector or hire staff to provide. The Iowa House has approved its own bill which would keep the AEA’s the sole provider of special education services for schools. It calls for creation of a task force to study the AEA’s and pushes back the timeline for changes in non-special ed services provided by the AEA’s. Representative Skyler Wheeler of Hull says he and other House Republicans met with parents, superintendents, AEA employees and education groups to get to this point.
Wheeler says as the parent of a daughter with autism he knows how important AEA services are to families and that’s why he used his authority as House Education Committee chairman to permanently table the governor’s plan.
The bill passed the House late last week with the support of 53 Republicans. Nine Republicans and all Democrats in the House opposed it. Representative Molly Buck, a Democrat from Ankeny, is a teacher who questioned why the governor decided to propose such major changes.
Senate Republicans have developed their own proposal for A-E-A changes that more closely resembles the governor’s bill. In the Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll, 20% of those surveyed have an unfavorable view of AEA’s.
