Our Mission
To improve the learning outcomes and well-being of all children and youth by providing services and leadership in partnership with families, schools and communities.
Our Goals
- Increase learning growth for students
- Decrease the gap in achievement
- Increase annual graduation rates
- Increase gateways to post-secondary success
The Heartland Administrators’ Association (HAA) meeting will be held on March 2 via Zoom from 9-11:30 a.m. The agenda is available at this link. The meeting features guest speaker, Steve Bench, who will present on Generational Differences and Supporting Young Teachers. Steve is a nationally recognized speaker who has shared his message with audiences across the country. Prior to founding Generational Consulting, Steve was a program director for Business World where he worked with thousands of teenagers every year and those Millennials have informed and inspired his presentations.
Please take 2-3 minutes to complete this short survey to provide information about needs related to science education in your setting. We’d like your responses April 9.
Iowa’s AEAs have designed and provided professional learning opportunities to learn strategies and supports for implementing Well-Being/Mental Health services to students and educators across the state of Iowa. Each AEA has used legislative funds to designate staff as Youth Mental Health First Aid trainers. Educators across the state have participated in over 150 different learning opportunities developed by the AEAs in partnership with the Iowa Department of Education focused on the social, emotional, and well-being of students and educators targeted to address the mental health needs of school-aged children. Here is an update on the number of mental health/wellbeing training that have been taken by educators in recent weeks.
We are pleased to officially announce that ACHIEVE, the new system that will manage the components of special education/early intervention in the state of Iowa, including Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) and Individualized Family Service Plans (IFSPs), will be ready for use in November of this year. A November date will ensure the following for a smooth transition:
- Sufficient time for migration of data and system testing
- Adequate professional development is established and administered to all appropriate staff
- All count data is from one system
Training is currently being developed and more information will be shared at the Iowa Special Education Network meeting on March 9. You can also find information on this ACHIEVE Update Site. We look forward to working with you in this new and enhanced system.
In an effort to enhance security for the Iowa IDEA system, an additional security layer will be implemented in March.
This process will take place between March 5 at Noon and March 7 at Noon and will impact the LIVE Iowa IDEA system (IFSP, IEP, IMS and Hearing Module). The Iowa IDEA LIVE site will be taken off line at Noon on March 5 until approximately 4:30 pm. Although the system will be brought back up there will be testing going on behind the scenes and some functions of the system may not work appropriately. This testing will continue until Noon on March 7. It is recommended that users do not try to enter data into the Iowa IDEA LIVE site from March 5-7 as some functionality may not be available (even if the site appears to be online).
This message is also posted on the login screen of Iowa IDEA site.
