Our Mission
To
provide services and leadership, in partnership with families, schools
and communities, that improve the learning outcomes and well-being of
all children and youth.
Our Goals
• Increase learning growth for students
• Decrease the gap in achievement
• Increase annual graduation rates
• Increase gateways to post-secondary success
As we work on continuing to make our agency a high performing organization, the members of the Agency Planning Council (APC) continue to discuss strategies and tactics related to staffing. Part of this work has been to succession plan as a result of upcoming retirements.
Our process when making staffing decisions includes a review of feedback from our districts and our planning councils, and we consider how we might replace, modify or repurpose the functions of each anticipated vacancy. We have made the following decisions regarding changes for our leadership team effective July 1, 2016.
We will continue to use The Connection to provide additional updates as needed. Please contact your supervisor if you have any questions.
Someone from the Agency Planning Council (APC) attends each of our regional and department planning council meetings, and sometimes they take questions from those meetings back to others in the Agency to get the answers. Instead of just reporting findings to the council who raised the question, APC will now use The Connection to “close the loop” so the entire agency can benefit from the process.
This week’s question is: Is there a way to improve search function when I search the Agency’s library catalog?
From Susan Schrader, Director of Resources and Library Services
There are some cool features to help staff and teachers either browse or search directly for resources in the Heartland AEA library. Start at the Agency’s website, click Library & Digital Resources then click Search Library Catalog.
First, staff can limit search results by choosing Professional Book in the Limit to Format: pull-down menu.
When a name, term or phrase (in quotes) is entered, the system automatically searches the title, series, author, keyword, annotation and subjects. We try to also use the “trendy” terms, “Iowa language” and acronyms as keywords so staff and teachers will quickly retrieve the best results.
Staff can also do an Advanced search and choose any of the limiters mentioned above.
If you want to go beyond guest access and reserve materials yourself, call the Heartland AEA library and we’ll set up a password and give you a quick tutorial.
The next generation of searching is also available with a small (and growing) collection of 19 professional ebooks in Mackin VIA. “X-ray vision” searches every word in the ebook when any term, phrase or name is entered. It’s like staring at a shelf of books and knowing that page 13 of one book, page 213 of a second book and page 66 of a third book have the information you need before you even touch the book!
Go to the MackinVIA website
Log in with the Heartland AEA online database username/password
Click Groups, and you’ll see the 19 titles
Here’s an example: Do a search on “formative assessment” and with a single click you can go directly to the page(s) with “formative assessment” already highlighted for you.
Quality teaching in a culture of coaching, pages 205, 207
Making number talks matter, page 168
Checking for understanding, pages 2, 3, 7, 12, 80, 84, 85, 121, etc.
Guided instruction, pages x, xi, 19, 20, 118, 128, etc.
Rigorous reading, pages 134, 137, 179, 199-201, 211
Better learning through structured teaching, pages 6, 36, 38, 50, 61, 62, 90, etc.
Plus more.
If you don’t find what you need, give the library staff a call, and they will be happy to help you! Or, they may add it to the collection, and you’ll receive an email notice to be the first to check it out.
As announced in the Dec. 21 edition of The Connection, Heartland AEA will begin providing certain employees with Form 1095-C—Employer-Provided Health Insurance Offer and Coverage. Form 1095-C is a new reporting requirement of the ACA effective with the 2015 tax year.
You’ll receive Form 1095-C if you were a full-time employee for at least one month during the 2015 calendar year or were covered under the Agency’s health plan. This form includes information about health insurance coverage and enrollment that is offered to you and your family, if applicable.
This new reporting requirement is complex and is requiring a substantial effort by the IRS, software vendors, insurers and employers to build the necessary systems and processes to accommodate this new reporting. Originally, Form 1095-C was required to be provided to employees by Jan. 31, 2016. In recognition of the magnitude of this new reporting requirement, the IRS has announced the due date for providing employees with Form 1095-C has been extended from Jan. 31 to March 31.
Heartland AEA recently received a system update from our software vendor, and our ACA team is working through the system upgrade. At this moment, our best estimate is we’ll be able to provide employees with Form 1095-C in late February.
You should consult with your tax advisor for your specific health care tax questions. If you have any questions about Form 1095-C, contact Steve Jordan, Senior Payroll Specialist, at ext. 14908.
Last week the Iowa Department of Education released the latest edition of the annual Condition of Education report.
The report provides a wide range of state-level data, including shifts in student populations and demographics, teacher salaries and characteristics, student achievement results and school financial information. The Condition of Education report contains the most recent data through the 2014-15 school year, unless otherwise noted.
Highlights include:
Students in Public Schools
• 480,772: The number of students enrolled in Iowa’s public schools during the 2014-15 school year, up from 478,921 the year before.
• 21.8%: The percentage of minority student enrollment, up from 21.1 percent in 2013-14 school year and 5.5 percent in 1990.
• 41%: The percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, down slightly from 41.1 percent a year ago and up from 27 percent in the 2000-01 school year.
• 90.5%: The percentage of students from the Class of 2014 who graduated from high school in four years, up slightly from the year before (89.7 percent).
• 41.3%: The percentage of students from the Class of 2015 who took a higher-level mathematics course, including calculus and trigonometry. This represents no change from the year before.
• 67.4%: The percentage of students from the Class of 2015 who took chemistry. 28.8 percent took physics.
• 22.2: The ACT composite score among students in the Class of 2015 who took the college-entrance exam, up from 22 the year before.
• 67%: The percentage of students in the Class of 2015 who took the ACT, down from 68 percent the year before.
Technology Readiness
• The percentage of schools equipped with 50 MB or more of bandwidth climbed to 71.9 percent in the 2014-15 school year from 60.1 percent in 2013-14 and 44.4 percent in 2012-13.
Schools, Teachers, Finance
• Iowa’s average teacher salary increased 2.7 percent to $55,356 in the 2014-15 school year.
• Iowa’s average teacher salary improved to 25th in the national rankings from 26th. Iowa’s Midwestern ranking remained 6th out of 12 states from the 2012-13 school year to 2013-14.
• There were 34,725 teachers in Iowa schools during the 2014-15 school year, up from 34,509 in 2013-14 and 33,610 in 2000-2001.
• There were 338 school districts during the 2014-15 school year, down eight from the year before. There are 336 school districts in the current school year.
• The state’s total per-pupil expense was $10,240 in the 2013-14 school year, up from $9,888 the year before.
Heartland AEA is pleased to announce that it will hold its second annual Education Career Fair in March!
March 2, 2016
2:00-6:00 p.m.
Heartland Area Education Agency
Johnston Regional Education Center
- The job fair will be an opportunity for teachers and other education professionals to meet with 15 central Iowa school districts at one location to apply for jobs for the next school year.
- The job fair will be packed with opportunities for job seekers, including a
- career fair etiquette class,
- mock interviews,
- resume critiques,
- graduate program information from area universities and a
- free gift for early registrants!
Visit the Career Fair page on the agency’s website for all the info! Pre-registration is encouraged this year, but the fair is again free of charge.
Reminder: The survey was sent via email last week. If you haven’t yet completed it, please do so!
This survey is for full-time Heartland AEA staff who have health insurance through the Agency. If this does not apply to you, please disregard this message.
Please complete this survey about insurance and other benefits offered through Heartland AEA. The results will be used to guide the Agency Insurance Committee's decision making. Your responses are anonymous and will be viewed by the Insurance Committee. The survey closes TODAY.
Thank you for your participation. If you have any questions, contact Juliette Houseman, Benefits Specialist.
Each week during the Iowa legislative session, we will bring you an AEA Legislative Update from the AEA system’s lobbyists, Tom Lane, Matt Eide, John Pederson and Kate Walton.
Online communities and learning networks are helping educators create innovative solutions to age-old problems and fulfill the promise of today and tomorrow’s educational landscape. Because online learning is evolving quickly it is especially important for online teachers to connect and collaborate.
The 28 days of OLLIE (+ 1 bonus day) through AEA PD Online is an excellent opportunity for online teachers to benefit from each other’s ideas and experiences, as well as gain some insight into the newest innovations in online learning.
It is our hope that at the end of this month (Feb. 1-29) the connections that are formed among and between the community members will extend beyond the 28 days and lead to community of online teachers that can support each other in future work.
What to Expect During 28 Days of OLLIE
28 days of OLLIE is meant to provide online teachers with learning opportunities focused on critical areas related to online teaching and learning. The community facilitators will be hosting a variety of learning opportunities or events for educators.
This year’s 28 Days of OLLIE format will be focused on scenarios that come from Iowa educators. Participants will read about a question or challenge faced by an online/blended teacher. Community members can then participate in activities and discussions and access expert resources that are focused on resolving the issue or challenge identified in the scenario.
Join the Community
We welcome educators at all levels and those who support them to participate. The first step is join the community, which can be done in seconds at http://bit.ly/1wWps6k. Once you’re signed up, you’ll get regular announcements about:
- Webinars
- Forums on topics related to teaching and learning online
- Activities that you can be part of
- Resources that are available
- Badges you can earn
- And much, much more!
You can also stay up-to-date with OLLIE Community events by following us on Facebook and Twitter.
The Internal Technology Department is in the process of evaluating the new Mac operating system (OS 10.11), and we are looking for volunteers to help us learn more about how it works with our existing machines and software.
If you would be willing to keep track of any problems you encounter and work with the Internal Tech staff to troubleshoot any problems that would arise, please express your interest in participating in our OS 10.11 pilot by filling out this Google form by no later than Feb. 1. Thanks in advance for your assistance!
There were some questions after last week’s article about iPad app purchases. Read last week’s article for the correct information.
