AEA changes arrive for the 2024-25 school year

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU)– During the 2023-24 Iowa legislative session, lawmakers passed major changes to the state’s Area Education Agencies (AEA) system. The change was a top priority for Gov. Kim Reynolds.

A new law changes how funding is handled for the organization, and that has caused several issues for the AEAs of Iowa.

AEAs provides school districts with special education teachers, as well as educational and media services.

In the past, state and federal funding for special education would directly go towards the organization. However, now AEAs get to keep 40 percent of that money while schools get 60 percent of the funding to spend on the organization or their school district for educational and media services.

The bill passed in late March and is only phase one of the bill.

“On the special education side, there are no changes this year to the funding,” Dr. Dan Cox with Northwest AEA said. “But next year schools have 10 percent that they get to keep and decide what they’d like to spend that on in special education, 90 percent coming to us, my job.”

For the 2025-26 school year, the AEAs’ media and educational services will receive none of the funding. Instead, schools will use that funding to contract teachers.

“If schools just don’t have to let us know until the last minute, then we can’t staff,” Dr. Cox said. “We can’t retain people in an effective way, so we need to have some guardrails for that and it would be helpful for the legislature to put some parameters in place for that.”

Dr. Cox said that over the next several months, people are going to feel pain points from this new law, but promised that AEAs will continue to provide top-notch services.

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