Megan Dial-Lapcewich, of Oxford, Iowa, knew her 3-year-old son Eddie was falling behind developmentally with his speech. She said she could only understand about 50 percent of what he said, when at that point in his development, she should be able to understand 75 percent.

She said Eddie’s developmental delay in speech caused some frustrations at home as he tried to communicate with the family but couldn’t get his point across.

Dial-Lapcewich said she decided to get his delay checked out after a teacher at the in-home play school she takes Eddie to mentioned it. His speech delay was later confirmed by Eddie’s doctor.

His doctor recommended Dial-Lapcewich contact the Area Education Agency, or AEA, to start free speech therapy under Early ACCESS, a program that AEAs provide to Iowa families free of charge for children under 3 who are not developing as expected.

However, Dial-Lapcewich is concerned by recent legislation that restructures how AEAs receive funding. She worries it could mean a reduction in services that AEAs are able to provide.

“I’m more than a little bit afraid,” she said. “My boys are not school age yet, but they are very close, and I just cannot imagine them not being able to get the support that they need when they’re in school for whatever issue may be arising for them.”

AEAs offer a variety of services including special education services to Iowa students in public and private schools. State and federal funding provides for services like Easy ACCESS that paid for Eddie’s speech therapy.

They are designed to provide free, easy-to-use services for children with disabilities. Dial-Lapcewich said all she had to do was fill out an online form, and a speech therapist from the AEA contacted her within a week to set up a consultation.

Dial-Lapcewich said the easy access to services was a lifesaver for her since she was already trying to get her other son with behavioral issues help, and having to navigate insurance for speech therapy for Eddie would have been even more stressful.

“By being able to get him the help right away, when his language is going through so much development,” Dial-Lapcewich said. “Like, it’s been amazing, and we just wouldn’t have had that without the AEA being able to help us right when we needed it.”

Speech therapy has been transformative for Eddie, Dial-Lapcewich said, and he has seen enough progress in his six months doing appointments with the AEA speech therapist to get back on track developmentally.

“So, it’s been a huge difference, and we’ve seen such a positive impact on how we understand him and how he’s able to get things that he wants by using more language,” she said. “He is so much more willing now to repeat new words, to try out new phrases.”

However, the agencies are seeing major changes under new legislation that has shaken their foundation.

In 2024, Iowa lawmakers passed House File 2612, which started an overhaul of Iowa’s Area Education Agencies, changing how the agencies are funded and who performs oversight and administration of special education; and giving school districts more latitude over some of the funds that used to flow straight to AEAs.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds made the legislation her top priority in 2024 because she felt Iowa’s special education system was failing, citing a 2018 report from the Department of Education that listed Iowa as “needs assistance.”

She said the organizations were top-heavy and had gone beyond their original mission of providing special education services.

Iowa lawmakers sent her an overhaul of the system that made large reforms to the way AEAs functioned. The bill gave school districts control over 60 percent of general education and media services dollars that previously flowed directly to AEAs, but it required 100 percent of special education funding to go to the AEAs for this school year.

Starting this fall, school districts will retain control of 10 percent of their special education funding and are required to give the other 90 percent to an AEA. The districts will also get control of 100 percent of their education services and media dollars.

The bill removes the oversight and administration of Iowa’s special education system from AEAs and moves the function to a new Special Education division of the Iowa Department of Education, which would be in charge of oversight of special education.

Now, AEAs are required to make contracts with school districts and assign dollar values to services that were provided without one before. This has left rural districts paying more for the same services they were getting for free before.

The nearly 50-year-old entities were created as economies of scale to help rural districts provide special education services to schools under their jurisdiction. Now, AEA administrators say they are confronting massive reforms that have shaken their foundation, causing staff to leave faster than they can hire, leaving agencies short-staffed and upending the way they are funded.

Staffing shortages

Under Iowa law, AEAs are required to identify students with disabilities and provide support and supervision of school district special education providers.

University of Iowa Clinical Instructor of Educational Leadership Lisa Kieffer-Haverkamp, who used to run a regional special education division at Grant Wood AEA, said AEAs are obligated to identify, monitor, and help put in place interventions in schools for special education students.

Kieffer-Haverkamp said AEAs also have specialty teams that help assist with students with certain needs, like autism, or those who need extra help with reading.

However, this school year all AEAs have seen a 12 percent across-the-board decrease in staff and Grant Wood AEA — which serves Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, and the surrounding area — having a 16 percent decrease.

This has affected AEAs’ abilities to staff these special teams. Grant Wood AEA Chief Administrator John Speer said they have had to reduce their number of staff dedicated to these teams to ensure they are fulfilling their chief responsibility of identifying students with disabilities or “Child Find.”

“We still are not quite staffed like we would have been a year ago, so caseloads are increasing,” Speer said. “It’s more hectic and harder to serve districts exactly like we have had in the past. Our staff just can’t do that.”

Great Prairie AEA Chief Administrator Nathan Wood wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan his organization has reduced staff across the board by not filling positions emptied by resignations or retirements.

But Great Prairie AEA is struggling to fill vacancies that are still left open, including for speech and language therapists, and it is looking to fill the vacancies with a remote or hybrid contract for the next school year. The AEA still has openings for math and literacy curriculum consultants.

Other services the Grant Wood AEA provided that went beyond what is required by law are going away because it doesn’t have the resources to provide them, Speer said.

“There’s various examples of where we’ve had to pull people from, from teams that we really value,” Speer said. “But in order to Child Find the way we want to, we’ve had to make those decisions.”

Kieffer-Haverkamp said with staffing shortages, AEA staff spend less time with stakeholders in each school and are not able to give the best services.

“You don’t get to get into a deep level in terms of knowing the building, knowing the teacher who’s being able to support them in a more comprehensive way,” Kieffer-Haverkamp said. “You’re going to come in and do the identification of students and leave because you’ve got four other schools you have to be at.”

Mediapolis Community School District Superintendent Adam Magliari, who serves on the state AEA task force, said the impact on special education beyond staffing shortages is yet to be known.

“We don’t know the impact of this legislation yet, because they haven’t had a full year to see,” Magliari said. “We’re going to see the impact of this in the next two to three years, when AEAs are really full service, pay-to-play.”

He said removing even 10 percent of the special education dollars that go to AEAs could have severe consequences on their abilities to serve their rural districts. He said sending all state special education funding to the AEAs makes sure special education teachers have support.

“It ensures that our kids have the services they need and allows AEA to be able to budget better,” Magliari said.

While special education services have been impacted by staffing shortages at AEAs, changes in funding models have affected general education and media services that AEAs used to provide to districts free of charge.

Fee-for-service leaves some behind 

Speer said AEAs are not built to be dollar-for-dollar and that “fee for service” contracts can make it so smaller districts are paying more than they were before to keep AEA services, since AEAs have to assign a price to all services that are not required by law for special education.

“The whole system used to be like a buffet. You could ask for as much as you wanted, whenever you wanted. You were able to do that,” Speer said. “And now it’s like ordering off a menu.”

Speer said this has exacerbated the differences in general education and media services in large and small districts served by Grant Wood, when they used to get the exact same services.

“What you start to see in rural areas specifically is inequity in the resources that they can acquire from the AEA system,” Speer said. “The AEA system was designed to equitably serve students in districts of various sizes.”

Speer said the inequities are caused by the bill requiring AEAs to move to a fee-for-service model.

AEAs were designed to be economies of scale, Kieffer-Haverkamp said, offering districts services at a discount because they could not afford to purchase them on their own.

“It’s going to be harder for them and to provide those services in a meaningful way and in an economically feasible way,” Kieffer-Haverkamp said. “That part of the AEA structure was developed for efficiency and effectiveness.”

Speer said the Grant Wood AEA offers curriculum consultants and online resources through the general education and media services dollars. This includes online resources like Encyclopedia Britannica, an online encyclopedia. Districts used to get these for free, but now they have to pay a per-student fee.

“Well, we don’t have that flexibility anymore,” Speer said. “Now we have to charge for all services.”

Wood said some districts in his area were forced to use the funds that would have gone to educational services and media services to cover budget shortfalls.

“This is a reality that superintendents and school boards must face,” Wood wrote in an email to the DI. “It is unfortunate that funding that has been previously designated to be used for teacher professional development is now general fund dollars and can be used in any way the districts see fit.”

However, many superintendents are enjoying the extra flexibility the legislation has given them with state funds, as education funding has remained relatively stagnant over the past few years.

Districts find flexibility with funding 

Solon Community School District Superintendent Davis Eidhal said his district has used the dollars to contract with an out-of-state curriculum vendor for a math curriculum that is closer to the structure of the district’s literacy curriculum. The district has also used the dollars to contract with Tanager for expanded mental health services for their students with the greatest needs.

“It was an area that we just didn’t find through the AEA,” Eidhal said. “So, having that flexibility to meet our needs, our district-specific needs, was a benefit.”

Eidhal said the flexibility allows the district to decide if the specific services offered by the AEA suit them when it comes to professional development and curriculum.

“For the majority of our professional development, we’re able to utilize the AEA, but there are some areas that we have gone outside and been able to have the flexibility to use those dollars,” Eidhal said.

However, Eidhal said they send all of their special education dollars to the AEA and plan to do so in the future.

“It’s a lot more efficient and cost-effective that we’ve been working with the same consultants, basically that we have prior to the change,” Eidhal said. “They know our district well and continue those services, and they’re more local, and that has been helpful in providing our district support in a variety of areas.”

Magliari said his district decided to give all of its AEA funding to their AEA while they evaluate how education services and media services dollars could help them with improvements they are looking to make.

However, Magliari said while he appreciates the flexibility with education services dollars and media services dollars, he worries about what the flexibility with special education dollars could look like in the future.

“I don’t believe any cuts should be made towards special education services for our kids, and I do think it’s going to impact the rural districts the most,” Magliari said.

Dial-Lapcewich said she has appreciated all the help from the AEA in getting Eddie up to speed in his speech development but worries about the future of the organizations given the new legislation.

“I just cannot say enough about the AEA, the way it’s set up, and the way we’ve experienced it is how services should be set up for families and kids,” Dial-Lapcewich said. “Yeah, I had to do minimal work. I just had to say, we need help, and they provided that help, and that’s how it should be, especially when it comes to the education and development needs of kids.”