Governor Kim Reynolds delivers the Condition of the State address on January 9, 2024. Photo by Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Des Moines Register (pool).

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com   

We love surprises when we anticipate they’ll be positive. But we dread the surprise of a car not starting on a subzero morning, a call at 2 a.m. from a loved one crying, or a doctor’s hushed prognosis. We laugh when people jump out at a party shouting surprise because we know we’re safe. But we scream if a group jumps out surprising us while we’re on a midnight walk.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ Condition of the State speech last week was a scary surprise party for public educators and parents.

In January 2023, the governor used her speech to accuse teachers and librarians of being pornography peddlers and student groomers. She proclaimed parents should run the schools, but forgot to mention her vision didn’t include parents with LGBTQ kids, or those who want to have real classroom discussions about real world issues. 

The same month, in her third attempt to ram private school vouchers through the Iowa House, Reynolds surprised even her own party by introducing one of the country’s largest and most expensive programs of its kind.

THE GOVERNOR’S PLAN FOR AEAS

In this year’s Condition of the State, Reynolds announced a new way to pay teachers, new requirements for teachers to stay teaching, and a merit pay plan based on standardized tests. She declared that Iowa’s Area Education Agencies (AEAs), in place since 1974, would be systematically torn down and public schools would be left to shop around for these services.

Surprise! Cue the panic and fear.

Because of significant backlash, the governor’s office announced on January 18 that Reynolds had agreed to amend her education plan. The revised House Study Bill 542 would allow AEAs to “provide general education services and media services if requested by schools and approved by the Department of Education.”

Even with the promised amendment, the governor’s bill is a solution in search of a problem. Iowa’s AEAs provide high quality service. There’s no need to overhaul them.

Reynolds’ plan burns down the AEA structure before building a new system. 

It also says districts can stay with their AEA for special education services, partner with other districts for those services, or contract with a private for-profit company. Rural districts will need to try and stay with their AEA or form an agreement with the closest urban district. 

Even with money previously provided to the AEA, there is no way a school district will be able to afford enough speech pathologists, psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, and special education consultants to meet the needs of all students. This plan appears to throw open the door to for-profit companies. Private companies will go where the money is, and that’s not rural Iowa. This concept will harm small schools the most.

The Iowa AEA structure has been the envy of the rest of the country. It will be gone unless the education community, and parents speak loudly in one voice. The governor promised a “comprehensive review.” What we received instead was a study bill, possibly devised by outside consultants. Iowans including concerned parents and educators can contact their state legislators directly.

Each school district should pass a simple resolution in support of the AEAs. It could be something along these lines:

Our AEA has provided outstanding service that meet the needs of our students.

Be it resolved that the current AEA structure be maintained and enhanced. 

If the structure is altered in any manner, a comprehensive study should be conducted prior to making any changes.  That study should include educators, parents, and school board members as full voting participants. Those educators, parents and school board members should be appointed by the local school districts and the AEA.

THE GOVERNOR’S PLAN FOR TEACHER SALARIES

Increasing teacher salaries is long overdue, but how those salaries are raised matters a great deal in attracting and retaining teachers. Although teacher salary schedules are certainly not perfect, they reward years of service with a rase through a step increase each year of service, until a teacher reaches the highest level on the schedule. 

Schedules also provide incentive for teachers to obtain advanced degrees by increasing salary for graduate hours and degrees earned. If you want to provide across the board raises that will attract and retain teachers, the best way is to do it through the salary schedule. 

That’s not in the plan the governor laid out in her speech to state lawmakers.

The Reynolds plan would increase the state minimum salary for teachers from $33,500 to $50,000. It also would increase the minimum salary for teachers with twelve years of experience to $62,000. This raises some questions.

• What would be the salary for teachers with more than twelve years of experience?

• What happens if a teacher is already earning $50,000 or $62,000?

• Are there salary incentives for additional graduate hours and degrees earned?

• Iowa still has collective bargaining (although the system is weakened). How will the Iowa State Education Association units make their bargaining proposals while the legislature debates this salary bill?

• How can school boards budget for salaries not knowing what the legislature will allocate?

The governor’s education bill (House Study Bill 542) also would allocate funding for all current teachers to pass a Foundations of Reading assessment. All educators would be required to pass the test within three years. 

I’m all for training in reading, but passing a test shows a teacher is a good test-taker not a proficient teacher of reading. Teachers need an increase in salary, not an increase in requirements. If part of the goal is to retain teachers, this new requirement will send veteran teachers looking for exits.

Another part of the bill spends $10 million to create a merit pay plan. There are a few details. But schools across the country that have adopted merit pay quickly found it didn’t work in a school environment, for two reasons. Teaching is about teaming with colleagues, and merit pay destroyed that. Also, teachers don’t control the raw product, because public schools accept all students, wherever they are academically. 

That $10 million could be used instead to increase para-educator salaries, because Iowa needs to attract and retain them as well.

Iowa’s foundation is education. Let’s not let it crumble by surprise.