The Area Education Agencies across Iowa continue to adjust to changes made in how the agencies operate following the last legislative session.
Stan Rheingans is Interim Administrator for the Central Rivers Area Education Agency, based in Cedar Falls, which covers most of the school districts in the broadcast area. But he is also Administrator of the Keystone Area Education Agency, which is based in Elkader, and covers districts in northeast Iowa.
Rheingans tells RadioOnTheGo News that changes made by lawmakers will be harder on rural school districts.
“Look at the two AEAs together, Keystone and Central Rivers, you know we’re talking about almost 100,000 students. So we can really purchase things with an economy of scale, make them available to districts large and small. So whether you graduate 25 students a year or 800 students a year, you have access to those same resources. In the new model, the larger districts, because it’s funded on a per student basis, can purchase many of the services and materials that they would choose our smaller districts will have to really think through how to spend those resources because it’s going to be based on their enrollment and so they’ll have access to limited dollars for that going to be some change in what districts can access because of their ability to pay.”
There are also less employees.
“We’ve selectively tried to rehire those positions, but that’s been a struggle. You know, folks look at, they read the news, they see what’s happening, and so, you know, maybe flying to the AEA is something they’re going to put on hold for a while until they see how things stabilize. We are stretched thinner than we’ve ever been. So we’re working really hard to make sure that that doesn’t impact students first. We always want to be student focused, making sure that as we spread out employees over that geography, that we always focus first on what’s best for kids. We’ve got folks working really, really hard to make up for the 20% decrease in staff. I think we’re doing a pretty good job with that. That’s going to be really hard to sustain long term just because of the pace. So we’ll try to rehire employees as we can.”
There are 9 education agencies in Iowa.
