The Channel

Melissa Ford, AEA 267 School Social Worker was selected by the Iowa School Social Workers Association (ISSWA) as the 2016 Iowa School Social Worker of the Year.  Melissa will be honored at the annual ISSWA Conference in Des Moines on November 11. She will also be recognized at the Midwest School Social Work Conference in Chicago on October 27.

Melissa has been with AEA 267 since 2008 and serves in the Grinnell Community School District. Nominated by several staff members at Grinnell High School, her nomination letters highlighted Melissa’s work there and in the community with the Poweshiek County Dental Coalition.

Heidi Durbin, Dean of Students summed up the reasons why she recommended Melissa for this prestigious award: “In addition to all the day-to-day responsibilities Melissa performs, it is her willingness to jump in and make things happen and her wealth of knowledge about school and community resources that is unparalleled and makes her most deserving of this award.”

Please join us in congratulating Melissa on this well-deserved honor!

To support the new integrated services model, the agency is pleased to offer an electronic Professional Learning/Travel System to support staff with expenses such as conference registrations and travel arrangements (hotel/flight/rental car). The new system merges the internal PD request system, the external PD request form, EQ requests, and travel requests into one line of communication with notifications delivered via AEA 267 email. Transportation arrangements for staff will be handled by Keri Hudson (NW/S sectors) and Barb Schroeder (NE/E sectors). For your convenience, the system will be linked to the Professional Learning website. Staff will be asked to specify the type of request they are seeking. Options include:

Approval Only

o   I am requesting approval to attend an event and there are no material fees or travel arrangements needed. Any fees incurred are mileage only and reimbursement will be made by the staff member.

PO Number Needed

o   I am requesting approval to take an internal Professional Learning opportunity and need an internal purchase order number to register for a course with material fees. This is for No Credit. If approved, you will receive a purchase order number and will register for the AEA 267 PD offering using that purchase order number.) Travel arrangements will be forwarded to an administrative secretary.

Reimbursement Needed

o   I am requesting approval to take an internal course and plan to request reimbursement for material fees. This is for fee-based credits – graduate, licensure renewal, substitute authorization, Para educator, and classes with Audit Fees. If approved, you will then register using your credit card. Travel arrangements will be forwarded to an administrative secretary. Your credit card will be charged for the credit and the materials. You may request reimbursement for materials through the same process by uploading your invoice onto the system after registration.

Travel/Conference Registrations

o   I am requesting approval to attend an event and need travel and/or conference registration arrangements to attend. Travel may involve hotel, airfare, and rental car needs. If approved, the request will route to an administrative secretary for processing. Any mileage/parking/meal fees incurred will be submitted for reimbursement by the employee

Thank you to everyone who responded to the evaluation of our Opening Day meeting on August 11. Feedback on the day was overwhelmingly positive despite our spontaneous schedule and presenter changes. Thanks for rolling with the punches! In addition to your appreciation for the day, it was also clear that you prefer to keep the meeting centrally located in Cedar Falls in the future. For that reason, we are currently looking for a site for next year’s meeting somewhere in the Cedar Valley. Also, you suggested that we move the meeting back a week to better accommodate the transition back to contract time for those staff who are off contract for the majority of the summer. Thus, we are considering August 14, 2017 as our date for next year.

Stay tuned for more details which will be shared via Intersections.

The agency is making available walking workstations in each of our office locations to help encourage more movement throughout the day. These workstations are being delivered and set-up, however, we are still in the process of putting a system into place for their use.

Look for details to be sent within the next week. Please do not use the workstations until further guidance has been provided.

The 2016-17 Ed Directory is in the process of being printed and will be distributed to all AEA 267 staff this month. In the meantime, the online searchable schools directory (including labels) is current and accessible and administrative listservs have been updated. Please contact Lori Thomas, Admin. Assistant if you have questions.

AEA 267 Contact Manager is a great source to target email messages to specific groups of educators served by our agency (Use your email login/password to access.) The staff website has help tips for using Contact Manager and if you have questions, contact Beth Strike, Director of Creative Services or Deb Culp, Admin Assistant/Internet Network Service Coordinator.

The AEA 267 Board of Directors met Wednesday, Sept. 7 in the Cedar Falls Conference Center. The board agenda and packet are available online and the minutes will be published online after approval at the next month’s board meeting.

Thank you to each of you for your attendance at the all-staff meeting this week! The meeting presented a great opportunity to learn and grow together as well as reconnect with colleagues. As promised, here is some important information to share in follow up:

• Replace the Lace  During the All Staff Kickoff meeting we heard from Michelle Ernsdorff, the founder of Compass to Care. Compass to Care is an organization that raises money for families to pay for travel expenses incurred during their children’s cancer treatments. Compass to Care is conducting the Replace the Lace campaign to raise awareness of childhood cancer by offering gold shoelaces. Many of our staff showed an interest in purchasing these shoelaces and in order to save on shipping and handling costs, staff can order as a group. Simply bring a cash payment of $5.25 per pair to the following designated people by August 29: Cedar Falls: Kathy Barfels, Clear Lake: Donna Perry, Marshalltown: Sandee Gavagan & River Hills: Joan Coffin. What a great way to rally around an important cause in the spirit of Eat, Move, Sleep!
• Photos from the day can be found in this Google folder! Simply click on one photo and “arrow” through the collection. A huge thank you to Tiffany Schmitt for her photography skills.
• Finally, you may not have noticed but during the 8:30-9 a.m. time frame, we shared some images on the screen while you were getting seated. Many thanks to Harsha Jayawardena (husband of AEA 267 board member, Darshini Jayawardena) for providing us with the rights to show his original photography.

The AEA 267 Board of Directors received the completed AEA 267 Facilities Study conducted by Struxture Architects during their meeting earlier this week. The study provides a comprehensive review of the Cedar Falls and Marshalltown offices including their current conditions, capacities, and areas for improvement. It also provides a host of considerations regarding how best to utilize facilities into the future.

Remember that the study itself is merely a guide for the board. It serves as an important tool in decisions but doesn’t include every consideration. Facilities conversations will be ongoing as the agency continues to seek out ways to bring expenses in line with available funds.

Staff members who work through the summer months had a chance to sit down informally with Chief Administrator Sam Miller at each of the three sites for an update regarding budget and facilities. If you weren’t able to attend, here are the highlights:

• The Facility Study (see related story) is merely a guide for the board about how to best utilize facilities in the future. Decisions have not been made about any of the buildings although conversations are taking place about how to reduce our overhead to ensure that expenses are in line with available funds, which continue to diminish.
• Areas such as Media and Print & Production (now part of Creative Services) have been having conversations about the viability of maintaining multiple site for these programs (as we do currently) into the future. Current staffing levels when compared to other AEAs appear to be higher and the expenses of maintaining multiple sites may not be sustainable. Decisions have not been made but conversations are occurring.
• While the agency is currently on solid ground financially, we continue to dip into our reserves to meet our current staff and overhead expenses. We have to be careful that we are not dipping below suggested guidelines for reserves and thus must continue to find ways to reduce expenses.