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Stay up to date on current issues in the Legislature, the governor’s office, and U.S. Congress and learn how to be a more effective advocate, how to connect with other advocates, and when there are opportunities to bring your issue to the attention of lawmakers and opinion leaders.

News

26 Jan, 2024
Each week during the Iowa legislative session, we will be focusing on one bill that could impact the lives of Iowans with disabilities. You can check them out here. We've already done them on the Governor's AEA proposal (House Study Bill 511 and Senate Study Bill 3011), Rep. Chad Ingel's comprehensive post-secondary transition scholarships bill (House File 252), and Sen. Brad Zaun's bill to make prescriptions accessible to people who are visually impaired or blind (Senate file 2022). There are more to come each week, so watch for them on Mondays here .
10 Jan, 2024
Governor Kim Reynolds wants legislators to make big changes in the way special education, mental health, substance use, and disability services are delivered locally in Iowa. She is asking legislators to pass bills that would: Allow local schools to decide how to pay for special education services. Special education funds would go to the schools, and they could hire their own Area Education Agency (AEA), an AEA in a different part of the state, another organization that does these services, or contract with professionals to provide services directly. The AEAs would be competing for this work, and schools no longer have to contract with their region's AEA. There was no mention of how this would impact special education services for children in private schools, and how those services would be paid. The state take over administration, so oversight would be through the Department of Education. The Governor wants to do this all over the next year. Direct the Department for the Blind to again provide accessible media materials for students with visual disabilities and help local schools create new materials as needed . This was a successful program that was ended last year. Local schools were on their own to purchase accessible materials, but were given no additional money to do so. This would return things to the way they were before. Break up the 13 Mental Health and Disability Services (MH/DS) Regions. The Governor's plan will consolidate the current substance use and mental health regions together into seven Behavioral Health Regions . The Iowa Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) would contract with a lead agency to administer services for substance use treatment and prevention, gambling addiction treatment, and mental health core services. The services to individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities that are currently managed by the MH/DS regions would go to HHS's Aging & Disability network, which would be expanded to include more Aging & Disability Resource Centers. The Governor said she knows families will be concerned about the changes to special education. She also said that something needs to be done to make sure families throughout the state have the same opportunities for quality special education services. The Governor said: There is a 41% gap in students with disabilities compared to overall student scores. Iowa ranks 30th in 9 of the 12 national assessments for students with disabilities. Iowa spends $5,331more per student on special education than the national average. Iowa is the only state that requires schools use one support agency for special education services. Education funding must be done early in session, so we will probably see a bill very soon. If you have questions, concerns, thoughts on this, you can use our Take Action Center to email your legislators .
Sarah Young Bear Brown, an advocate for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, testifies at Capitol
02 Oct, 2023
The Governor's Boards & Commissions Review Committee posted its final recommendations and wants nearly half of Iowa's boards and commissions to be eliminated.
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