Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed a plan into law that will shift funding for the state’s Area Education Agencies to local school districts and move oversight of special education to a state agency. She believes the moves will improve outcomes for special education students while Democrats insist it puts the system at risk.
It was Reynolds who introduced the issue in her Condition of the State Address at the start of the legislative session. In that speech, she painted a picture of the AEAs as overfunded and underperforming, a characterization that has gotten a lot of pushback.
That moment was followed by months of meetings, debate and negotiations. Lawmakers said they didn’t know what the governor was proposing until it came out publicly. One senator made the gesture of dropping a copy of the original bill into a garbage can. There were multiple hearings where parents of students with disabilities talked about how vital the AEAs have been in their lives.
But Reynolds kept pushing for a deal, and this week Republicans put through a final package. While it does not go as far as her original proposal, it does change how AEAs are funded and managed. It also ties in other more popular measures — notably a big raise in the minimum salary for teachers.
Reynolds signed the bill Wednesday in her formal office in the Capitol surrounded by a few dozen lawmakers, staffers and others. It was a relatively low-key bill signing compared to other major education laws passed in recent years, such as the laws creating education savings accounts and banning transgender girls from girls’ sports.
In prepared remarks, Reynolds called the AEA bill a “necessary reform” for a system that dates back to 1974. She said schools should know exactly what they’re paying for with their AEAs, and that’s part of what this bill does.
“Some schools haven’t used some of the AEA services despite being forced to pay for them,” Reynolds said. “Others have felt that they didn’t receive the quality that they expect. And many schools — urban and rural, large and small — have raised concerns about the lack of transparency regarding the cost of AEA services.”
There were tradeoffs in the final bill. Reynolds and Senate Republicans wanted local districts to control the state special education funding that currently goes directly to the AEAs. That’s the funding that pays for support services such as speech therapy or physical therapy for school-aged kids.
House Republicans wanted to keep that funding intact.
In the final bill, districts must use the AEAs for special education services, as they do now, but by the second year, only 90% of that state funding must go to the AEAs.
The other 10% stays with the school district, a change that critics see as a 10% cut to the AEAs.
Reynolds’ signature also triggers a raise for Iowa teachers. Starting in July, the minimum salary for a new teacher goes up to $47,500. It reaches $50,000 the year after, an increase of nearly 50% from the current minimum.
House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights, said Democrats supported the teacher pay portion of the bill but, overall, “there was more wrong with this bill than there was right with this bill and Senate Democrats were right to vote against it.”
She expects the law to be a factor as legislators hit the campaign trail for the November elections.
“Iowans don’t want this legislation, and the fact that she was surrounded by legislators should tell you everything you need to know about how this AEA bill was all politics,” Konfrst said.
Democrats had said the only thing lawmakers should do this year is to put together a task force to study how the AEAs are really doing. The law does create a task force that will report back to the Legislature by the end of the December, so it is possible lawmakers could revisit this issue next session with new information.
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