Thank you so much for your advocacy during the past three months as the Legislature has discussed and reviewed the Iowa Area Education Agency system. I received more than one thousand emails against changing the AEA structure. Iowans wanted a task force to get to the root cause of any issues. They wanted stakeholders involved in the process. They wanted a slower timeline to review such a large change in the system and to enable these changes.

Governor Reynolds and most of the Republican legislators did not listen to Iowans. The Governor signed the bill last week that was passed by the House on March 21 and the Senate on March 26. The bill that became law has these three main components:

1. Reorganize the AEAs under the direction of the Iowa Department of Education with the addition of over 40 new personnel

a. Districts must use AEA services for special education.

b. Allows districts to access 10% of the funds and the other 90% going to the AEAs in the second year.

c. Media services have become a pay for service model.

d. Instructional Services – professional development goes to the Department of Education.

2. Set the funding for Student Supplemental Aid at 2.5%

a. The House had previously passed 3.0% for Student Supplemental Aid.

b. The Senate never passed an SSA amount.

3. Provide minimum salary increases for teachers and provide money to increase the pay of the non-salaried personnel (para-educators, bus drivers, food service workers, custodians, etc.)

a. Teachers will receive $47,500 minimum salary the first year and $50,000 the second year of implementation.

b. Teachers with 12 years’ experience will receive a minimum of $60,000 the first year and $62,000 the second year of implementation.

c. Districts will receive a share of $14 million to increase the hourly pay rate of non-salaried personnel.

Politics were played over the good for the people of Iowa. It was politics that put these three items in this bill together. By combining these three items, the Republican leadership made sure that the Legislators had to choose between the AEAs that serve our most vulnerable students and our teachers who deserve increases in their salaries.

Pure Politics!

I already saw a social media post that stated that Democrats do not support teachers. That is false!

Pure Politics!

Some of the quotes I saw this week were:

• “We never asked for this,” Central Iowa Superintendent.

• “Those fired from the AEAs will have priority in the hiring for the new Department of Education jobs,” D of E posting.

• “No one really likes this bill,” Senate Republican who voted no. “The very idea of dismantling and defunding the AEAs has upset and offended the people in Iowa to a whole other level.”

• “The AEAs have failed Iowa’s students,” Governor Kim Reynolds.

• “This bill is a hostile takeover of the AEAs,” Senate Democrat.

Pure Politics!

The bill has no metrics or data aligned to measure the success of our Special Education students. How will we tell if this reorganization works? I guess we will make all these changes and then run the task force. It will be difficult to see what really affected our student outcomes when we changed so many things at one time.

Pure Politics! It is time for a change!

——

Sue Cahill, a Democrat from Marshalltown, represents

the 52nd District in the Iowa House.