Why do Des Moines Public Schools not use the AEA?

DES MOINES — When area education agencies were created by the Iowa Legislature five decades ago, Des Moines Public Schools was not included in the plan to provide vital resources and training to educators and families in the state’s school districts.

As the largest school district in Iowa — with more than 30,000 students today — Des Moines Public already employed many who provided the special education services.

“It was anticipated that there may be circumstances that would require some flexibility, and (Des Moines Public Schools) is a good example of that,” said Phil Roeder, spokesman for the Des Moines system. “As the largest school district in the state, we were already offering a variety of programs and supports for students with disabilities.”

These supports included school psychologists, special education consultants and speech pathologists. “It was decided that it simply did not make sense to terminate school district staff only to be rehired by the AEA to serve in the same capacity and provide the same supports to our students,” Roeder said.

Some state lawmakers are using Des Moines Public Schools as an example of how overhauling AEAs and allowing districts choice in how special education services are provided to their students — as Gov. Kim Reynolds is proposing in Senate Study Bill 3073 — could work.

The most recent version of Reynolds' proposed bill would give school districts the ability to opt out of their AEAs’ special education services and seek them from another party — or another AEA. There currently are nine in Iowa.

The governor has said the overhaul is necessary as test scores of Iowa students with disabilities have lagged in national comparisons even though the state spends a comparatively high amount serving them.

Cindy Yelick, chief administrator of the Heartland AEA that serves Central Iowa around the Des Moines area, said area education agencies create a conglomerate, providing more support to educators and families than most districts could afford individually.

“We’re talking about improving student achievement, particularly for those with a disability. That’s a very, very complicated problem to solve,” Yelick said.

Using Des Moines Public Schools as a model for how schools could deliver services to students outside the local AEA is “reducing the much larger problem” of student achievement Yelick said.

The proposed bill would drive up the cost for education experts and services, pitting school districts and AEAs against each other, Yelick said.

Some rural school districts like Moulton-Udell in Appanoose County might need only a part-time speech language pathologist, for example. But hired under the AEA, the rest of that speech-language pathologist’s time can be spent at another school district like Ottumwa’s.

With staffing shortages in many areas including education, school psychology and speech language pathologists, “we need the system for kids to be as efficient as possible, so we can capitalize on the staff we do have,” Yelick said.

“When you break it apart, we’re really concerned about how this will work in rural Iowa,” Yelick said.

Reynolds’ plan would create a division of special education within the Iowa Department of Education that would take about $20 million that now goes to AEAs, using it to hire 139 workers who would focus on special education and assume oversight of the AEAs.

The bill would centralize much of the oversight and operations of the AEAs under the Department of Education. The director would be in charge of appointing AEA chief administrators, combining or dissolving AEAs and approving AEA budgets.

Heartland AEA provides services to more than 11,000 educators and almost 150,000 children in Central Iowa.

While Des Moines Public Schools does not rely on the area education agency to support special education services in its district, Heartland is a “key partner,” Roeder said.

There are 14 staff members at Heartland AEA assigned to the school district to provide educational supports, including Prek-eighth grade consultants with a literary focus, elementary and middle school consultants with a math focus, social emotional behavior mental health consultants, science consultants, a consultant for the gifted and talented program and a computer science consultant.

Because Des Moines Public Schools already was providing for the special education needs of students, it didn’t make sense some 50 years ago to terminate school district staff, Roeder said. Another reason Des Moines Public Schools made the decision to keep most of its services in-house is because the district at the time offered employees two retirement plan options: the state’s Iowa Public Employees' Retirement System and the Des Moines Teachers Retirement System.

Both retirement plans were started in the early 1950s. The AEAs were a part of IPERS only, while the Des Moines Teachers Retirement System was specific to Des Moines Public Schools. If employees left to work for another school district or agency, they would have had to change benefits including their retirement savings plan, Roeder said.

Today, all new Des Moines Public School employees are enrolled in IPERS, while employees who already were participating in the Des Moines Teachers Retirement System continue in that plan.

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