I’ve now been serving at Heartland AEA for over six months and have had the opportunity to attend a majority of our council and committee meetings. It's been a pleasure to watch our teams at work, and I can confirm now what I suspected when I accepted this position: Heartland AEA is a special place, made up of special people who are engaged in important work for the right reasons. So, before I go any further, let me take this opportunity to celebrate you by saying "Thank you." Thank you for your work, for your commitment and for your service. AEAs are dynamic and complex organizations, and Heartland AEA is no exception. Even after several months on the job (and now nearly seven years serving Iowa’s AEAs), I continue to be amazed daily by not only how many different things are being done by this agency, but also by how well those things are being done. Everything each of you does, regardless of your role in the Agency, is in some way, improving the quality of life for a child somewhere. We should all be grateful for that privilege—it isn't a benefit found in every profession. So please always remember that this agency is special because of the people who work here. I hope you recognize and take pride in your important work.
We have much to celebrate in Iowa schools. Literacy outcomes and graduation rates are on the rise. Thanks in part to our efforts, the vast majority of schools we serve have leveraged their teacher leadership programs to improve their coaching practices, resulting in improved programs and increased student achievement. Educators are collaborating around more and better data, engaging in richer conversations and innovating in new and exciting ways. While certainly not without challenges, schools are serving a broader spectrum of students than ever before—students who not long ago were being served in much more restrictive settings. Students with special needs are receiving specialized programming and instruction at unprecedented levels. None of these accomplishments could have been fully realized were it not for the contributions of Iowa’s AEAs.
While it's important to occasionally reflect on our progress, it's equally important for us to understand that AEAs, including our own, are not universally embraced. The vast majority of teachers and families who work closely with us value our role and many will advocate for us publicly. Others, though, don't understand our work because they are unaware of the many types of services we provide. They simply have not been made aware of the many things we do for children, families and educators. Part of my job, especially during the legislative session, is to explain to stakeholders and policymakers the importance of our work and how it vitally contributes to the overall success of education in Iowa. I have to remember that some people simply don't know what we do, and I am encouraged when people respond positively when they learn more about our diverse services and see how those contribute to the quality of life in Iowa.
Sadly though, there exists in our political landscape an element that simply does not believe in our mission. These are people who view education as a personal responsibility, not a collective one. They either do not believe in our society's obligation to educate all students and see our system as an unnecessary layer of government, or they see us providing services that would be better delivered by the private sector. Thankfully, this group holds what I believe is a minority opinion. I find that the vast majority of Iowans in both parties value public education and want to see it ultimately succeed. Those who do not hold that opinion, however, are becoming increasingly organized and are passionate in their advocacy for alternatives to our public system. Our state's challenging revenue picture exacerbates our challenge. While the Governor has not proposed cuts to K-12 schools or the AEAs (beyond our current annual $15 million cut), and has in fact proposed a 1.5% increase in state supplemental aid (SSA), there is virtually no chance we will realize that level of support when the session ends.
Given our past successes and current political challenges, then, to what should we aspire going forward? The first thing we have to do, in my opinion, is to make sure we are continually viewing our work through a customer lens and doing our very best to understand exactly what it is that our districts want and need. We have to be inquisitive in both our individual daily interactions with district colleagues and in our more formal systems of needs assessment. I often say that in the service agency business, no news is never good news. We have to be intentional in establishing our formal and informal feedback loops through building relationships at every opportunity. The secret to providing quality service isn't being the person who has the answers as much as it is being the person who takes the time to ask the right questions and then listen closely to the answer.
The next challenge to which we should aspire is to find the right balance between building internal capacity and providing optimal service. For the last year and a half, I have represented Midwestern states on the Association of Educational Service Agencies’ executive council, and this is a conversation going on across the country. “In a time of diminishing resources, how do we continue to build internal capacity through new learning and still increase service time to our districts?” Over the past two years, Heartland AEA has added 28 Certified positions, and I sincerely hope we can add more next year. (That will be somewhat dependent on what happens over the next three months under the golden dome.) We know that we have to find the time to engage in new learning ourselves if we are to improve our practice, but the fact remains that districts value our partnership and they want to see more of us in their buildings. This is a challenge that I apply to myself and to our leadership team as much as to our larger service teams. We can't build new relationships or improve on existing ones if we don't make the time to do so. How do we increase face time? Our council structures have served our culture and communication needs well, and we have no plans to change that structure, but we have to continually ask the question, “How do we increase service time even if we don't add significant numbers of new staff?”
Finally, I want to reinforce a theme I have touched on before and that is that we need to do our very best every day to not only do our own work with excellence, but to support one another and be proponents of our profession. I have expounded before on the importance of supporting not only our AEA colleagues but those in our schools as well. What people sometimes don't realize is that even the innocent sharing of a frustration with our education system (and we all have those frustrations on occasion) can threaten the credibility of that system. We need to be the people who are intentionally looking for success stories to share with our public and our friends alike. Orchestrated efforts to undermine our public's confidence in its education system are underway in our country and our state. Eighty percent of Iowans have no direct connection to our education system, and they are being consistently exposed to a narrative explicitly designed to undermine our public system. It's incumbent on us who work in the system to actively and intentionally participate in the public championing of that system. We don't do this with data alone, though we are certainly seeing some promising improvements in student outcomes throughout the state. We do it one relationship at a time, one story at a time. You are doing great work every day, and so are your colleagues—share those stories. Make sure people know the special services you are providing. If modesty prevents, then champion a colleague—support one another.
In closing, let me reiterate how proud I am to be a part of Heartland AEA. I know how important your work is, and I appreciate the investment it takes for you to do that work to a high standard. Our profession is one that will be engaged in continuous improvement efforts forever. We can never afford to become satisfied when our society continues to send us so many children and youth with so many challenges, and the stakes for those children and families are so high. I'm proud, though, of how we embrace the concept of improvement in our agency. When I look around, I don't see people resting on current practice or past accomplishment—I see people with a passion for improving schools and making all students successful. We aren't there yet, but I'm more excited than ever to see what we can do together. Have a great 2018!
- Jon
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