Gov. Kim Reynolds’ plan to overhaul Iowa’s special education system has a foothold in the Iowa Senate after both chambers held subcommittees on the bill Wednesday.
Now paired with an amendment that would scale back her vision of reform, the proposal cleared a Senate subcommittee but a House panel did not advance it.
The hearings were the first chance for the public to comment directly to lawmakers on the overhaul bills (HSB 542/SSB 3073).
In response to pushback against her original plan from lawmakers and educators, Reynolds outlined an amendment this week that allows the AEAs to continue all of their current services, although it would still cut $33 million in funding for media services.
It keeps a core provision which allows each school district to decide whether to put their special education funding toward their local AEA or to use it in another way by hiring a different provider or by using the money to expand their own services.
Superintendents from Okoboji, Clear Creek Amana CSD and Council Bluffs said they believe they could save money if they had that flexibility.
“We’ve determined we could provide the identified services for nearly $2 million less,” Council Bluff Superintendent Vickie Murillo said in the Senate subcommittee. “We do not discount these dedicated AEA special education service providers. This is about utilizing the funding so that we can efficiently align their work to meet the individual needs of our students.”
Reynolds says switching to a fee-for-service model would also bring more transparency to what districts actually pay for the supports they receive. But opponents believe it could harm services in rural districts, in particular, because they gain the most from combining resources.
“We benefit from a shared pool of resources that the AEA provides that if we had to go about it ourself we simply could not do,” said Winterset Superintendent Justin Gross. “We are lacking staff in these critical areas that we rely on the AEA to provide that we can tap into.”
Carrie Norris told the House panel that AEA specialists allowed her daughter Lily to overcome her hearing impairment in the classroom. Every year, she said, they train the teachers at Lily’s school in Carlisle to use a microphone that allows her to understand them. Norris said the AEAs deserve credit for Lily’s success in school.
“I’m not asking you to not look at this bill and wonder if there’s budget changes that need to be made,” she said. “I don’t know anything about that, but what I do know is I have a daughter who has benefited from AEA and I know she’s not the only one in the room. So please, just give these kids a chance.”
Although Reynolds never proposed cuts to services for children with disabilities, Norris and other parents at the hearings said they were concerned ripple effects from the overhaul could harm the system overall.
“You cannot uproot a system that has been embedded for 50 years in three weeks,” said Heather Sievers, whose daughter has a rare disability and has received AEA services from an early age. “The reality is if you care about reform and change and doing it in a responsible manner, we have to slow down and get voices at the table who were not at the table when this was written.”
Sievers called on lawmakers to delay the bill and take more time to hear from families and educators.
Reynolds defends her AEA proposal
Gov. Kim Reynolds does not want to wait past this year to implement an AEA overhaul. She says she is driven by test scores for students with disabilities in Iowa that lag other states and the national average, although critics of her plan question how much responsibility should lie with the AEAs.
Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Reynolds said AEAs that are doing well should have the support they need from their school districts under her plan. But, she said, the system deserves more scrutiny than it has received in the past.
“To stick our head in the sand and say, ‘Everything is perfect. I don’t want to change anything. We need more time.’ That’s ridiculous," Reynolds said. "Businesses have to do this every day to survive. We need to start operating government in that manner.”
Reynolds' plan would give the Iowa Department of Education more authority over the AEAs, including the power to hire and fire chief administrators, eliminate positions and direct mergers and closures.
It would also create a new division at the IDOE that would put supervision of special education services at the state level rather than with the AEAs. Reynolds said the change would result in a reduction from around 400 people working in oversight through the AEAs to 139 through the IDOE, and a cost reduction of $21 million.
Reynolds believes the funding in the special education system may be able to accomplish more than the AEAs are doing with it now.
“I’m not trying to make them go away,” Reynolds said. “I just want some transparency, some accountability and I want better outcomes for our children. That’s what I want.”
Next steps for the bill
At the end of the House subcommittee on the bill, Rep. Skyler Wheeler, R-Hull, said he would have further conversations before taking action on the bill and did not sign to advance it to the committee level.
Sen. Lynn Evans, R-Aurelia, chaired the Senate panel and opened the hearing by throwing a copy of Reynolds’ original bill into a garbage can and commenting, “That’s probably an appropriate place for the original bill.” But Evans joined Sen. Ken Rozenboom, R-Oskaloosa, in signing on to allow the bill to move forward.
“This is a discussion that we need to continue,” Evans said. “I’m not fully convinced that the bill that’s in front of us, nor the amendments, truly get to the heart of the matter.”
That lands the bill with the full Senate Education Committee, but its path from there is less clear. Committee Chair Rozenboom said following the subcommittee that he wants to “keep the discussion going.”
“I’m not going to dissect the bill today,” Rozenboom said. “We’ve had discussions about it. We’ve heard pros and cons. There’s conceptual fundamental pieces of this that we need to address. For instance, who is responsible ultimately for special education? Is it the (Department of Education) or the AEA?”
He said he plans to continue talks, including with school district and AEA officials, to come up with answers regarding the future of the AEA system.
