The Channel

The AEA 267 Board of Directors met August 10, 2011 at 4 p.m. in the AEA 267 Administrative Service Center for a closed session of the Annual Professional Growth Conference with the Chief Administrator. The Audit Committee met at 5:15 p.m., followed by the regular meeting at 6 p.m. at the Conference Center.

During the meeting, the board:

• Viewed a video presented by Beth Strike, AEA 267 Communication Specialist, aimed at new teachers. The video was produced to raise the awareness among new teachers about AEA 267 services.
• Motioned to accept a variety of resignations, retirements and hires.
• Decided to keep the current mileage reimbursement rate of $.37/mile as it is competitive with other AEAs and public agencies.
• Approved the Physical Therapy contract with Pruckler Physical Therapy.
• Accepted the Excellence in Education Enrichment Grant of $25,730 from R.J. McElroy Trust.
• Approved the transportation agreement between EPI, INRTC and AEA 267.
• Reviewed Board Policy 405.8 – Personal Business Leave and heard Dr. Anne Sullivan’s presentation of recommended changes per master contract negotiations.
• Heard a variety of reports from directors and fellow board members.

An AEA 267 Foundation meeting was held immediately following the AEA 267 regular board meeting.

Iowa Valley Community College District (IVCCD) will ask voters to renew its $.20¼ Plant Levy on the Sept. 13, 2011, school election ballot.  According to IVCCD Chancellor, Dr. Chris Duree, this is not a new tax but a 10-year levy, which has been in place for 32 of the last 35 years.  All of the 15 community colleges in Iowa currently have this levy, including Iowa Valley.

“The Plant Levy provides funding primarily for utility costs and for maintaining, remodeling, improving and expanding community college facilities,” says Duree. “The levy is for 20¼ cents per $1,000 taxable assessed valuation. That means, for example, the owner of a home assessed at $100,000 would continue to pay about $20.25 per year, or about 5 cents per day if the levy is renewed.  The levy impacts property owners in all of the high school districts we serve.”

Voters approve this levy for a 10-year period.  The levy is paid by property owners in Marshalltown, West Marshall, East Marshall, BCLUW, AGWSR, GMG, Iowa Falls-Alden, South Hardin, Hubbard-Radcliffe, Gladbrook, South Tama, Grinnell-Newburg, BGM, and Montezuma school districts.

Iowa Valley Community College District operates Marshalltown Community College, Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls, Iowa Valley Continuing Education, and Iowa Valley Grinnell.

(This message published as a courtesy to Iowa Valley Community College Districts as a public information service.)

While we wish we had more to report to you regarding legislative action and education funding, there still has been little progress down at the state capitol. The following report from Wayne Haddy, Iowa AEA Government Relations Specialist, provides the latest:

“It has been awhile since a report was sent out and in reality there has been very little to report.  I’d like to say there is an end in sight, but unless something changes quickly it does not appear that there is.

On June 8, House Republicans are bringing forward an omnibus bill that includes all legislative determined budgets and language dealing with what would be considered “social issues.”  The bill will provide for a two-year budget and included in that budget is a growth factor of 0% for the next fiscal year and 2% for FY 2012-13. Unfortunately, the bill also includes a $20 million cut to AEAs for each of the next two years. Unless something unexpected occurs over the next day or so, we fully expect the bill to pass.

We have met with legislative leaders and have prepared a great deal of information detailing the impact of such cuts.  It does not seem to have made any difference on the House side as they continue to pursue the Governor’s recommendation of $20 million.

We are also assuming at this point that the Senate will either refuse to consider this bill or will take it up, reject many parts of it and send back to the House.

Also, on Monday, Brent Siegrist made a presentation on the impact of the cuts to the Senate Education Appropriations sub-committee.”

Wayne Haddy, AEA Government Relations, 515-249-0740, whaddy@gwaea.org

The AEA 267 Personnel Office appreciates any updates from you regarding home address, phone number, etc. so that the staff database remains current. Please contact Shirley Horak at 319-273-8245.

Although this is the last official Intersections until August, you can keep up with AEA 267 news by following us on Twitter and liking us on Facebook! (Please remember that when you “Like” AEA 267 on Facebook, it does not mean that the agency Facebook page manager can view your Facebook site, thus your summer vacation pictures are completely private!)

The sunshine and warmer weather have arrived and so have summer hours. As of Monday, June 6 AEA 267 will observe summer hours in all agency offices. Hours will be 7:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. until August 12.

Please keep in mind that the office will be closed on July 4th in observance of the July 4^th holiday.

If you are going off contract for a length of time this summer, please be sure that your voice mail telephone greeting and email account vacation message indicates to callers and senders when they can expect to hear back from you and who to go to for immediate assistance.

The AEA 267 Board of Directors met June 1, 2011 at 6 p.m. in the AEA 267 Conference Center for their regular meeting. Prior to the meeting, the board met for a work session to learn more about the school visits made by Dr. Roark Horn during the 2010-11 school year as well as the 2011 AEA/DE Customer Feedback Survey results.

During the meeting, the board:

• Heard a presentation from Dennis Sinclair and Dr. Carol Sensor on the process used to assist our LEA Partners during their special education compliance review.
• Accepted with regret the retirements of Dr. Sara McInerny, Service Area Director Educational Services, effective December 31, 2011; and Christy Schmitt, Teacher of Multi Disabilities/Resource (Hudson), retiring December 20, 2011.
• The board accepted the resignations of Nancy Appletoft, Speech-Language Pathologist (Clear Lake); Andrea Skopec, Teacher of Mental Disabilities/S&P (AEA 267 River Hills School); and Amanda Backstrom, Teacher of Multi-Disabilities/Resource (Reinbeck). All resigned at the end of the 2010-11 school year.
• Motioned to hire Tyna Andorf, Teacher of Early Childhood Special Education (AEA 267 Castle Hill School); Samantha Brandel, Teacher of Mental Disabilities (Waverly); Abigail Flieher, Teacher of Art (Bremwood); and Stephanie Zeschke, Teacher of Early Childhood Special Education (AEA 267 Castle Hill School).
• Approved the Professional Development agreement with Morningside College.
• Approved the Professional Development agreement with Viterbo University.
• Renewed the agreement with Iowa Falls CSD for Sector Office lease.
• Renewed the agreement with Eldora-New Providence Schools for rental space.
• Approved the Ladders to Learning Agreement with Marshalltown Community Schools.
• Approved the 28E agreement with IAEP for food services at River Hills School.
• Changed the date of the August board meeting from August 3 to August 10, 2011.
• Approved a Lease/Purchase agreement for construction projects for 2011-12.
• Heard a variety of reports from directors and fellow board members.
• Ratified the Collective Bargaining Contract for 2011-2012 with CWA.
• Ratified the Collective Bargaining Contract for 2011-2012 with AEA 267 Education Association.
• Held an exempt session to discuss non-union support staff salaries for 2011-2012.
• Set non-union support staff salaries for 2011-2012 as recommended.

(See related story in the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier.)

Following a multi-step interview process that concluded on May 3, the agency has secured two outstanding educators to fill the Site Superintendent openings in the Marshalltown and Clear Lake offices.

Julie Davies, currently the Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment with Western Dubuque Community Schools, will become the Site Superintendent serving the Clear Lake office effective July 1. Davies, who has also served as the Director of Curriculum with Okoboji Community Schools along with having served as a business education teacher in Storm Lake, will replace Tom Fey, who will retire effective June 30.

Kim Neal, currently a Special Education Consultant with AEA 267, will become the Site Superintendent serving the Marshalltown office effective July 1. Before coming to AEA 267, Neal served as Director of Special Programs with Ankeny Community Schools. She also served as the Director of Special Education for ESU#1 (an intermediate service unit similar to an AEA) in northeast Nebraska. The position is new in the Marshalltown office due to retirements and restructuring.

Please welcome both Julie and Kim to their new roles this summer!

As many of you know, AEA 267 Chief Administrator, Dr. Roark Horn, has been on a whirlwind tour this year having visited nearly every public school district served by our agency since being hired July 1. (He has four school district visits left which will be completed later this month.) As part of each visit, Horn has asked those he has met with (primarily administrative teams) three basic questions: 1.) What are we doing well? 2.) What do we need to improve on? 3.) What solutions would you propose for areas of improvement?

In this podcast, Roark talks about the site visits and shares the “emerging themes” based upon what he heard.
 

For those that prefer to read rather than watch (the podcast runs approximately 27 minutes), below please find a summary.

Areas of Improvement

Shifting of personnel and communication to both partners and staff

Districts want us to figure out as quickly as possible if there will be changes in personnel assigned to them and then develop consistent means of notifying district leaders, such as personal contact, followed up by a letter. We recognize that shifting personnel also presents a challenge to staff, who sometimes are just as anxious to know where their assignment might be. We can grow and improve this area.

It is more convenient for some to go to other AEA’s for services

Generally, we are the beneficiaries of this, but it speaks to the need for increased consistency in our statewide AEA system for comparable services.

Know the audience

Not all initiatives fit all districts or are needed in all districts. There is a call for more differentiation among services to partners, which in turn calls for increased analysis with partners to determine needs. There is a sense that districts would like to ‘gamble’ on the four to five initiatives that will work in most districts, get very expert at those, and free up consultant time to work with partners to analyze what their data is showing in regards to their student outcomes, and plan purposefully to improve student achievement.

Distribute the right amount of information to the right people at the right times

The issue is not that people aren’t getting the information they want or need, but often some of the ‘important’ information gets lost in the frequency/amount that is passed along. We need to filter this better and be more focused on getting it to the right people in multiple forms that suit the audience.

Can initial identification of special needs students be done in a more expedited manner?

Mostly this comes from teacher surveys about AEA partnerships. Are we really purposely delaying the process (we certainly don’t believe this is the case), or just doing a poor job of communicating why the process has and needs certain timelines? Another piece of this improvement area is to continue to improve the paperwork process.

Need to be aware of geographical concerns and issues

There are really two problems: are districts on the edge of the agency receiving equitable services? If so, we need to make sure that is communicated well. And can we build back some regionalization while at the same time taking advantage of the positives that are available to us as a large agency with a great deal of diversity?

As we get even better at our services, and as we promote them more, people will likely want them more. Can we meet those wishes at the same time our resources are being reduced?

Like everyone in education, we will need to figure out how to do ‘less with less,’ but we need to focus on doing ‘the right less.’ When we have to reduce or alter a service for increased efficiency, we need to communicate those decisions well in advance to district leaders and provide the rationale for them.

Supportive Trends

• Responsiveness in all areas across the board. Almost like we can read their minds (but can we position ourselves to be proactive and responsive?)
• Team Rep model well accepted after challenging rollout. Strong positives now, but lessons learned on the initial communication.
• Use of webinars to disseminate information.
• Resource piece (media materials and technology services).
• Use of wikis, Google-apps, etc – electronic collaboration for folks is wonderful and supported by us; we are on top of the technology needed to support this quickly evolving trend – clearly a focus of our work going forward.
• SINA/DINA Schools are very appreciative of support and work.
• Assistance from Director of Finance.
• Those in the first year of the preschool grant very appreciative of help they are getting from the AEA.
• Almost all districts like their personal contacts with the AEA, to the point where they are concerned about losing those people to retirements and/or internal shifting.