Missouri Valley Big Reds family, the school district needs your help! I am writing with deep concern about Governor's Reynolds ' Condition of the State address where she has laid out her framework for Iowa's Area Education Agencies (AEAs).
Governor Reynolds has proposed to gut the Iowa Education System by eliminating essential AEA services provided to both public and private schools. Governor Reynolds' proposal take the AEA education structure backwards, to the 1970s, when the AEAs were created. This structure only provides services to Special Education programs. While these programs are important, our AEAs have evolved with time to provide so much more to so many more students and educators.
Iowa has always been a leader in education innovation, as well as having a strong student and educator support network. Over the years, our AEAs have evolved with the needs of our students, educators, and schools. They ensured both public and private schools stayed on the forefront of educational research, practice, and student achievement and ensured that schools had the support to implement and sustain this best practices for our students and educators. The Iowa Department of Education is not equipped to support all of Iowa schools with the same focus, the same local knowledge, and the same energy that our AEAs are able to do. Our AEAs are equipped with current research, best practice, support and staff and I implore you to keep them intact and able to provide us with the same current services.
Below are services that our AEA currently provides to support the Missouri Valley Community School District, our students, and our staff. These services are essential and will devastate our students, staff, and programs if we lose them:
1. School Psychologist Resources:
Because of the AEA support, Missouri Valley is able to financially afford to have two school psychologists, Stephanie Boden and Angie Williams, onsite everyday to provide not only special education support but additional resources for the district outside the role of special education, including but not limited to
Essential members of the Missouri Valley Schools Safety Team. This team meets monthly and our AEA supported the writing of our District and Building Emergency Operations Plans as well as our District and Building Reunification Plans.
Provide crisis preparedness, response, and recovery when needed for a variety of situations (student death, staff death, act of violence, natural disaster, etc) and travel to districts across Iowa when the need arises.
Mental health work including leading Missouri Valley's Hope Squad program (3 of 4 Hope Squad Advisors are AEA employees), Missouri Valley was the first school district in the State of Iowa to have Hope Squad due to our AEA staff advocating for this program.
Suicide prevention training for all staff, students in certain classes (high school HOSA students, health class, etc), and offered in the evening to community members
Suicide risk assessments and behavior threat assessments/screeners: These Behavior Threat Assessment procedures are directly credited with AEA staff members trained in crisis prevention through AEA classes and the STOP grant funding.
Intervention planning and small group instruction in social skills for students who demonstrate a need for special education evaluation. Many students who receive these intervention no longer require special education support;
Bi-weekly intervention coaching, collaboration, and data review with special education teachers;
Quarterly trainings for the district's paraeducators, as well as bi-weekly direct coaching
Written various grants for funding for programs such as Hope Squad, PBIS, Character Strong, and community events such as Social Media & Mental Health, Internet Safety: Human Trafficking and Our Youth, etc.
Work individually with students on a variety of topics such as mental health, problem-solving, anger management, etc. (85 students in grades 6-12 from August -December 2023)
Consult with general education and special education teachers and staff on a daily basis regarding a variety of situations
2. School Based Interventionist (SBI):
We contract this position through AEA and the Juvenile Court System. Our SBI, Ally Epperly, is in our Middle School and High School Buildings everyday working with our at-risk students. Because of her knowledge of student behavior, threat assessments, and our at-risk youths, she provides great context as a member of our School Safety Team. The first semester of this school year, she met and worked with 84 students. Last year, she met with 140 students for a total of 887 student contacts along with 125 parent contacts and 33 outside agency contacts. Examples of how the SBI serves our students includes:
Provides social/emotional check ins with students
Functions as the Juvenile Court Liaison for students on probation by providing supports and interventions to help students be successful within the Juvenile Justice System, school, and personally
Provides peer relationship support
Organizes the SAT Team (Student Assistance Team) for the middle school and handles the referrals and organizes the monthly meetings
Monitors student attendance and implements truancy interventions when needed
Crisis Response
Safety Team Member
Completes suicide risk assessments and behavioral threat assessments as member of the team
Connecting families in need with resources/Coordination of outside services to come into the school when needed
Hope Squad Advisor
TeamMates Mentoring Building Coordinator
Builders Club Advisor (a Kiwanis student leadership group for middle school students)
ISTEP Advisor (Iowa Students for Tobacco Education and Prevention)
3. School-Based Mental Health Worker:
Missouri Valley is able to share a social worker, Tina Seguin, comes to the school one day each week and meets with students so parents do not have to take a day off work and students do not miss a half or full day of school for counseling sessions. She meets weekly with the many students who require therapy services that improve classroom performance and meet the needs that are difficult to reach in the community due to the long wait lists for providers. Throughout the last five years, she has served 23 students at the elementary school. Missouri Valley also has a financial benefit to this service through sharing dollars where we are able to count an additional two students towards our enrollment.
4. Professional Development for Teachers:
Our AEAs provide essential teacher training that allow our staff to provide the best instruction. We are able to work with AEA staff who are experts in math instruction and literacy instruction.
Currently, AEA literacy consultants are providing Face-to-Face training with 32 elementary staff members around the science of reading and best practices in reading instruction for all students. Throughout the years, our literacy consultants have provided coaching on special education instruction, reviewing data to ensure students close the skill-gaps, and building capacity within the staff to pass on knowledge to new staff. Thanks to this instruction around evidence-based instruction, curriculum recommendations, fidelity checks, and effective data review, three students have completed a full exit from their special education services this year alone.
5. Early Childhood
AEA Early Childhood consultants have provided professional coaching two times a month both through training and through in-classroom, direct coaching. The results of this collaboration has included early interventions for students across the district (home intervention, MV preschool, and Head Start).
Research demonstrates services provided in preschool and early elementary are critical for prevention of academic non-proficiency later in life, improving student outcomes and reducing special education evaluations. The district currently has two relatively new preschool teachers that rely on the monthly coaching from the AEA to create and deliver support for students.
6. School Improvement Support:
Our AEA provides us with necessary support to collect data and documentation for state and federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requirements. This allows our staff to stay in the classrooms rather than have substitute teachers. The AEA does the hard data work that keeps the expert teachers in the classrooms.
7. Media Services:
AEAs are able to purchase items that schools can't afford. Every week, teachers at Missouri Valley are able to check-out resources from the AEA media for all content areas to support their teaching, saving the district thousands of dollars in material costs. Some examples have included robotic technology that has directly resulted in increasing communication for students who were nonverbal, as well as reading, science, and social studies book kits that have been used across grade levels to meet Iowa's academics standards and supplement curriculum.
8. AEA Print Services:
The AEAs provide printing and laminating services at a discounted rate for schools. We do not have an industrial sized laminator because we can send our materials to the AEA to laminate so much cheaper than we can purchase the printer and laminating film. AEA is able to print and bind our District reports and plans, which save the district money.
9. Career and Technical Education (CTE) Requirement Support:
Our AEAs provide essential support for our Perkins money and RPP money for our CTE programs. Again, they do the heavy lifting so our teachers can stay in their classrooms teaching rather than in a conference doing reports leaving their students with a substitute teacher.
There are so many more essential functions that our AEAs provide and ALL of these services are essential to running the Missouri Valley Schools Education program. To lose one breaks the strong chain of support our students, staff and community deserve.
Please contact Representative Windschitl and Senator Constello to tell them to save our AEA services to save the education quality for our students!
Representative Matt Windschilt email: matt.windschitl@legis.iowa.gov
Senator Mark Costello email: mark.costello@legis.iowa.gov
