Message from the Interim Chief Administrator

Agency Budget Update
The Agency’s leadership teams, and specifically leaders from Cabinet, District Services Council (DSC) and Operations Support Council (OSC), have been meeting to continue the process of determining how the Agency will trim its budget in the wake of the state’s 10% budget cut. The discussions focus on how to reduce the Agency’s budget, keeping these guidelines in mind:
• Maintain mandated services
• Minimize impact on clients
• Adhere to accreditation standards for service, agency initiatives and core services
• Minimize impact on all staff
• Seek and pursue new resources
• Reduce discretionary expenditure areas where possible
• Reduce number of staff through attrition where possible
• Maintain minimum 5% unreserved/undesignated fund balance targets

Current Decisions
We have made an initial plan for addressing the 10% cut, which is roughly $2.9 million for the Agency. As the details of these cuts are further defined, there will be additional communication to staff. Here’s the rough outline of where funds will be cut to date:
• $300,000 from categorical funds (professional development, Teacher Quality Compensation, Phase II and Iowa Core Curriculum) Note: Any changes in TQ and Phase II paycheck payments would occur after January 2010. For further details about TQ, see additional information below.
• $700,000 reduction in the Des Moines Public Schools’ contract
• $1.1M from ARRA Part B funds
• $600,000 from OSC and DSC budgets
• $100,000-150,000 from travel, purchases and other non-personnel cuts and creating a “culture of austerity”
• $150,000 excess resources from previous year’s budget

Dave King has offered the idea of creating a “culture of austerity” in our agency, and as part of achieving the target of $100,000–150,000 in savings from non-personnel cuts, we have made some other decisions and plans to help conserve our agency’s resources without significantly impacting our work. With everyone’s help, we know we can make a significant impact on our budget. We are looking for ways to measure our progress, and if you have ideas about that, please let me know. We want to be able to see and celebrate our successes!

• Coffee & Food at Internal Meetings: The Agency will no longer provide or reimburse for food or coffee for Heartland employees at any agency meeting, including regional office meetings and discipline/workgroup meetings. This is something we have enjoyed, but this is the type of discretionary spending the Agency needs to limit when funds are tight. The practice of signing up for treats is one approach groups are encouraged to consider if there is a desire to continue having food at meetings.
• Cost Saving Tips for Staff in The Connection: We have heard from several staff members who have ideas that could have an impact on our budget. Staff Advisory Council suggested we begin a routine communication in The Connection to share those tips with staff. Many cost saving ideas have been generated, including turning off lights, printing to copy machines, using an audio or video iChat to have a meeting and finding ways to reduce mileage. This week, we’ll give you some tips on how you can save on printing.

Next Steps
While some progress has been made, our leaders have several things left to address for this year, as well as for our future. We are focusing on further defining the reductions for the current year before we move on to 2010-2011 budget, beginning with the following:
• Hiring: Nola Bond, Director of Human Resources, is working with members of Cabinet to develop a process for addressing short- and long-term vacancies. In the absence of a formal process, leaders are asked to work closely with their supervisors when vacancies occur. Laura Gillon, Chief of Staff, and Steve Prall, Chief of Operations, will work with Cabinet members and Human Resources to make decisions.
• Agency Travel: Sharon Kurns, Director of Professional Learning and Leadership, is working with members of Cabinet to identify our decision-making guidelines for agency travel for the remainder of the 2009-10 year. As you know, most travel has been frozen. If you have questions about travel, please bring those to your supervisor.
• Purchasing: Dave King, Director of Finance and Business Services is working with members of Cabinet to define guidelines for making purchases. While we want to maintain our ability to provide staff with the tools they need to do their work, we expect leaders will be working with staff to carefully evaluate all equipment and material purchase requests.
• 2009-10 Budget Amendments and 2010-11 Budget Development: Business Office staff will be working with each of the Agency’s budget managers to amend the current year budget and work with them on forming next year’s budget. This process will begin in December.

I appreciate the time and effort everyone is making to protect our agency’s resources. We will continue to provide regular progress updates, and as always, your ideas and input are welcome.


New Feature to Support Creating a Culture of Austerity at Heartland: Cost Saving Tips For Staff Members
We are starting a new feature in The Connection to give staff some specific tools for helping reduce our expenses. Please keep these cost saving ideas in mind as you go about your daily work. These tips have the power to make an impact now, so please consider incorporating them into your workday. You can make a difference! Our focus this week is on printing.

Printing Tips
*Should you print in color or black and white and where should you print? It costs more to print in color than black and white, and it costs more to print black and white on a color printer than on a copier or a black and white printer. You should always print to the most appropriate device. A document in color may look better, but ask yourself if you really need it. To help with your decision-making, keep in mind that maintaining a Xerox 6360 color printer can cost $1,578.50 for a set of toner cartridges, a fuser, transfer roller and an imaging unit. The estimated per copy cost of printing to a color printer is $.10 to $.20 per copy, depending on coverage. That same color copy printed in our Heartland Print Center is currently being billed at $.02 per copy and will provide much better quality.

*Print documents two-sided to save paper. If your print driver for your copier has not been set up for two-sided printing, you can contact Tech Support for assistance in getting this option installed. You can find instructions for using this option on the server in Workgroups>Technology_Services>Software_Resources>Ricoh XXXX Copier Duplexing.pdf. Most of our printers cannot duplex, so printing to your office copier will be more cost effective. Better yet, don’t print so much—e-mail, Web pages, agendas, minutes, etc. can be accessed on your computer.

*Scan documents to PDF and e-mail them instead of copying them. Documents in electronic form may not need to be printed at all. Most agency copiers are able to scan documents into PDFs. If you need assistance, contact a support staff member in your office.

*Change the margins on your documents to save paper. This will increase the amount of space available for your documents to print on. The margins in Word are automatically set at 1” but setting them to .75” will save paper and still leave you with space on the side of your documents. To change the margins in a Word document using a Mac: After you open up Microsoft Word, go to the FORMAT drop down menu, then choose DOCUMENT. Once on DOCU¬MENT, click on MARGINS, and you’ll be able to change the settings for your margins. Check out the September HeartBeat for a great article that shows how much paper can be saved when margins are decreased.



Phase II and Teacher Quality Updates
There are additional updates for staff related to the funding from Phase II and Teacher Quality. The Agency receives categorical funding in these areas, and there is language in the HEA contract to guide how these funds are distributed to staff.

• TQ Professional Development: For this year, the amount of Teacher Quality funds for staff will be $460 for a 15-hour activity. The amount is lower this year because of higher participation in the activities coupled with the recent across the board budget cuts. If you have any questions, please contact Sharon Kurns at ext. 14362 or skurns@aea11.k12.ia.us.

• Phase II and TQ Compensation: Per our negotiated agreement, articles 18 H. and I, payment to staff in these areas is contingent upon receipt of Phase II and/or TQ compensation monies from the state. The state issued an across the board funding cut which includes reducing these funding sources, so we will be reducing payments to reflect this beginning sometime after January 1, 2010. We are waiting until then to make reductions for two reasons:
1. Last year the legislature backfilled these funds, which is why last year’s payments were not reduced.
2. Because there are so many different local contract provisions or lack thereof, SAI, IASB and ISEA agreed to address the legal issue in question via a declaratory order to clarify the matter and prevent hundreds of school districts from undertaking the same debate with their respective teachers’ unions. With this process, legal questions are provided to the Iowa Department of Education or an Iowa district court judge. The opposing parties are able to present their arguments for why those legal questions should be answered in a certain way. If you have any questions, please contact Dave King at ext. 14315 or dking@aea11.ki2.ia.us.

Important Messages About November Office Meetings

November 20 Regional Office Staff Meetings
In order to save costs on printing, we will be asking staff members to download several documents onto your computers prior to the office meetings on November 20. The documents will be available for download after noon on November 18 from a new tab on the Intranet called Professional Development Resources. The documents will be under a link called November Office Meeting Child Find Update. Also, please note that all meetings on November 20 start at 8:00 a.m. The morning session will be a Child Find update and office meeting, and the afternoon is free for learning teams to meet in whatever location they choose. (Remember to wear your team shirt if you have one.)

November 23 Central Staff Meeting
The meeting on November 23 is for staff members assigned to the central office from the areas of Professional Learning & Leadership, Special Education and Innovation & Accountability. (Operations staff members are not meeting in November.) We would like support staff to join us for the first part of the November 23 meeting, which will start at 8:30 a.m. Learning teams will meet in the afternoon in whatever location they choose.

November 2009 Board of Directors Meeting Recap

The Heartland AEA Board of Directors met for its regular board meeting on November 10.

Board Recognition
The meeting began with board recognition, during which time the Board formally recognized and thanked David King, Director of Finance and Business Services; Rebecca McCreary, Business Manager; Diane Schnelker, Assessment Consultant; Jennifer Swanson, Assessment Consultant; David Tilly, Director of Innovation and Accountability; and Kristi Upah, Assistant Director of Innovation and Accountability for their collaboration and support of staff and districts during the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) application and reporting process. ARRA reporting was a huge accountability issue for the Agency, and districts relied heavily on Heartland staff to assist them with reporting requirements and deadlines. These employees pulled together last-minute training sessions and provided outstanding 1:1 support. This type of collaboration is a hallmark of Heartland and many districts sent personal notes of thanks. Board president Ann Wilson thanked staff members for the hard work they have done and continue to do in support of the Agency and districts.

The Board then entered into closed session at 5:50 p.m. and returned to public session at 6:48 p.m. followed by another closed session from 6:49 p.m. to 7:36 p.m.

Discussion Items
When the Board continued with its public session, members had their second reading of Board Policy 511 – Internet Acceptable Use and Safety. Board members commented on how well the policy was outlined and went on to unanimously approve the policy.

Sheila King updated the Board on progress made with the Agency’s budget. Cabinet members and members of the Operations Support Council (OSC) and District Services Council (DSC) have been meeting regularly to discuss Governor Culver’s recent 10 percent budget cut and its impact on the budget. Both councils have been using the Agency’s vision, mission and core values as touchstones to stay focused on what really matters as they make decisions.

The Councils met on November 9 to identify $1 million worth of cuts from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds. They were successful and still able to maintain core services and staffing. Within the next week, additional meetings will be held to determine a clear approach on future travel, hiring and purchasing. More attention will be paid to these and other non-personnel areas as the Agency looks to conserve its resources.

David King then updated the Board on 1:1 meetings that will be held in December with every budget manager. The focus of these conversations will be on building their 2010-11 budgets. He then led the Board through a rough outline of the 10 percent cut, roughly $2.9 million for the Agency.
• $300,000 from categorical funds (professional development, Teacher Quality and Iowa Core Curriculum)
• $700,000 from Des Moines Public Schools
• $1.1M from ARRA funds
• $600,000 from OSC and DSC budgets
• $100,000-150,000 from travel, purchases and other non-personnel cuts
• $150,000 excess resources from previous year’s budget

Comments
Hazard and Young has officially started the search and recruitment process for the new Chief Administrator. An ad for the position is being run in Education Week and additional ads are being posted this week. Screening will begin mid-December.

The IKM and Manning school districts are moving forward with their merger plans. IKM is part of AEA 13 and Manning is part of Heartland. The chief administrators from both AEAs have agreed to use the same counsel, Jim Hanks, for efficiency and cost effectiveness. The petition to merge may be filed this month, and if so, a joint board meeting will be held in January. The Board will be kept apprised of the timeline.

Poverty Expert Donna Beegle to Present January Workshop

Highly-experienced national public speaker, discussion leader, trainer and author, Donna M. Beegle, Ed.D., will present a poverty workshop in Altoona on January 20, 2010 for AEA and school personnel interested in learning more about understanding those who live in poverty. Click here for more information and to register.

November World of Media

The newest issue is online at http://wom.aea11.k12.ia.us. Interesting resources for work and your children.

Topics:

• Online language and math translation tools
• Online graphs and charts generator
• Science and geography curriculum maps (21st century skills)
• National parks resources (Ken Burns)
• History and primary sources
• Intro to psychology DVDs
• Edutopia DVDs (best practices)
  
• Teaching Every Student in a Digital World (e.g. UDL)
• Best online videos for students (chosen by a review committee)
• Iowa Core scenarios database
• Streaming videos and student achievement research
• Wordle: word cloud generator
• Where the Wild Things Are resources
• African American authors
• Reading strategies
• New DVDs of favorite children's stories
• Math/science in everyday life
• Math online teaching tools

Holiday Van Route Schedule

Please make note of this schedule as you plan to send and receive items through our van mail.

• November 25-27 2009 No Van Delivery
• December 21-22, 2009 Regular Van Delivery
• December 23-31 2009 & January 1, 2010 No Van Delivery
• January 4, 2010 Regular Van Delivery Resumes

Kabel Business Services Holiday Schedule

Kabel Business Services, the company that administers the Agency’s flexible benefits program, will be closed for the holidays on the following days:

Thanksgiving
November 26-27, 2009
Christmas
December 24-25, 2009
New Year's Day
January 1, 2010

There will be no disbursements for claims on these days.

Iowa School Climate Survey Now Available

The 2009 Iowa School Climate Survey is now available. This biennial survey from the Iowa Pride Network measures the levels of racism, homophobia and sexism in Iowa schools. The 2009 survey is the first since the legislature passed the 2007 Iowa Safe Schools Law. Click here if you are interested in reading the survey.

Change of Address for Delaware Elementary

The street address for Delaware Elementary in the SE Polk School District has been changed. It’s a small change—the street designation has gone from “N.E.” to “E.” The new address is:

Delaware Elementary
4401 E. 46th St.
Des Moines, IA 50317

November 18 Lunch & Learn Canceled

The cultural competence Lunch & Learn scheduled for November 18 in Indianola (Understanding the Need of Gifted Children) has been canceled.

Jeans Day November 20

Since agency offices will be closed on the last Friday of the month, jeans day for November will be on the 20th.