Daily Nonpareil. February 24, 2024.

Editorial: Press pause on AEA bills this session

Legislation can be tricky business, and lawmakers led by Gov. Kim Reynolds have kicked the hornets’ nest by proposing disruption to Iowa’s educational services for students with disabilities.

Reynolds has proposed overhauling area education agencies, including allowing school districts to contract with private companies instead of AEAs and reducing the number of AEAs in the state. It’s not a far stretch to imagine the complete dismantling of the regional agencies, especially given subsequent proposals to move their governance under the Iowa Department of Education.

AEAs provide a number of services to districts, particularly rural ones, but their main charge is serving students with disabilities.

Nonpareil reporter David Golbitz spoke with Council Bluffs resident Nate Roane, whose son Adam was born with cerebral palsy. Adam had a pediatric stroke in his first week of life, and the Green Hills AEA stepped in to provide support that Roane called “a real blessing.”

“I believe that Adam has had a better outcome because of having that early intervention,” he told The Nonpareil.

It’s understandable why so many parents are rallying against AEA reform. It seems clear that AEAs aren’t working universally well for all students they are serving, although that’s true of public schools and probably any government.

Citing a consultant’s report, Reynolds cites low test scores and high costs. We believe those who are skeptical of those arguments make good points. But it seems like it’s worth taking a closer look at the issues being raised.

“The system has been in place for a long time, and where we live it doesn’t work,” David Smith, the superintendent of the Spirit Lake Community School District, told lawmakers this week. “It hasn’t worked, and we don’t think it’s going to work in the future.”

Council Bluffs Community School District Superintendent Vickie Murillo supports AEA reform because funding for AEAs is collected by school districts and passed through without direct say on how those dollars are used.

Local school boards get to vote on their region’s AEA board members, and Council Bluffs is large enough that it gets two dedicated seats on the Green Hills AEA board — although one has been vacant for more than a year.

AEA boards provide indirect accountability on behalf of their local districts, allowing the professionals at the AEA latitude to make decisions in accordance with state policy — in other words, it’s a similar relationship to the one voters have with their local public schools. Perhaps it’s not enough.

There seems to be wide agreement that improvements can be made at the AEAs. But the urgency feels suspect, especially given the Reynolds’ push toward privatizing education. ( Other Iowa newspapershave said the same.)

If reform is what the AEAs need, we need to get it right. An interim study and more informed debate next session seems like a better plan than the current bills moving in the Legislature. We’d urge lawmakers to consider pressing the pause button instead of continuing to push ahead.

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Des Moines Register. February 25, 2024.

Editorial: To keep Iowa schoolkids safe from guns, look to research, not more guns

Doing something just to do something could be a net negative. School safety actions should have evidence to support them.

A proposal at the Statehouse to allow teachers and other school employees to carry weapons and to subsidize security guards is the wrong approach to keep Iowa children safe.

But it’s difficult to articulate alternatives that are both effective and realistic in the wake of three deadly school shootings in central Iowa in less than three years. Expert research suggests a sad truth: No set of policies can provide much assurance so long as it remains easy for children to acquire firearms.

That’s not fatalism. State officials, school boards, school administrators, other educators, parents and guardians — all of them, and more — can and should take actions that might make it less likely a child will be shot on school grounds. But it’s maddening to realize that so many interventions are, for practical purposes, off the table anytime soon because of the sheer number of guns in circulation and the prevailing political attitude that almost no benefit could ever justify the slightest complication for people to acquire and carry firearms.

What should be done in the here and now? Four steps could make a difference:

1. Listen to the research

Research on mass shootings in general and at schools in particular is plentiful, although one hurdle to applying it is widespread suspicion of political motives behind any research involving guns in the United States.

If the Secret Service is a relatively neutral arbiter, its 2020 report on targeted school violence provides both some help and some sobering realism about perpetrators: “There is no profile of a student attacker, nor is there a profile for the type of school that has been targeted,” the authors wrote. “Attackers usually had multiple motives.” The report adds that many attackers were victims of bullying and had exhibited psychological, behavioral or developmental symptoms. Many used firearms they got from their homes.

The studies on protecting schools do not illuminate a clear direction. Access to schools should be controlled, but going significantly further to make buildings into fortresses can be outrageously expensive and deliver other, negative effects for students’ psyches. Experts raise similar concerns about the cost and message of metal detectors.

And, of course, such building measures would not have stopped a drive-by shooting outside East High School that killed a teenager and injured others. Last month’s attack at Perry High School occurred before the start of the school day in a common area. Based on what is publicly known, it’s not clear even in hindsight whether access limits might have made any difference.

The bottom line: Doing something just to do something could be a net negative. School safety actions should have evidence to support them.

2. Reject adding more guns to the mix

Debate in Iowa for over a year now has centered on putting weapons in the hands of school staff members. It was a bad idea when the 2023 debate centered on whether insurers were right to threaten to drop schools’ coverage if they armed staff. This year, House File 2586 would authorize employees of public and private schools, colleges and universities to carry weapons.

Two separate issues are involved here. The easier to deal with is intervention — a teacher or another employee using a gun to stop an attacker. It’s absolutely true that this might be beneficial. Sometimes a good guy with a gun does stop a bad guy with a gun. Unfortunately, a good guy with a gun might also make a mistake in securing the weapon, leading to a tragic accident. Perhaps a staff member will overreact to a situation or miss the target when firing. Some children might be less comfortable in class knowing it does or might contain a deadly firearm. The possibility of a successful intervention doesn’t outweigh the downsides. School shootings often play out in seconds. In Perry and at the Starts Right Here charter school in January 2023, how likely is it that armed personnel would have been in the right place to avert bloodshed?

2. Reject adding more guns to the mix

Debate in Iowa for over a year now has centered on putting weapons in the hands of school staff members. It was a bad idea when the 2023 debate centered on whether insurers were right to threaten to drop schools’ coverage if they armed staff. This year, House File 2586 would authorize employees of public and private schools, colleges and universities to carry weapons.

Two separate issues are involved here. The easier to deal with is intervention — a teacher or another employee using a gun to stop an attacker. It’s absolutely true that this might be beneficial. Sometimes a good guy with a gun does stop a bad guy with a gun. Unfortunately, a good guy with a gun might also make a mistake in securing the weapon, leading to a tragic accident. Perhaps a staff member will overreact to a situation or miss the target when firing. Some children might be less comfortable in class knowing it does or might contain a deadly firearm. The possibility of a successful intervention doesn’t outweigh the downsides. School shootings often play out in seconds. In Perry and at the Starts Right Here charter school in January 2023, how likely is it that armed personnel would have been in the right place to avert bloodshed?

This is a place where throwing money at a problem might produce results. Many biometric gun safes that require an owner’s fingerprint before opening retail for under $100. A state that has a multibillion-dollar budget surplus and forks over hundreds of millions of dollars a year for families to spend on private school can afford to make these freely available to gun owners, removing any excuse for leaving weapons for kids to take.

4. Don’t be a stranger

Almost everybody agrees that children’s mental health services in Iowa are far from adequate. Leaders are working on legislation to address that complicated problem. But we can’t sit back and do nothing until the state has recruited more psychiatrists trained to help children. Each of us can reach out to help a struggling young person.

It’s not easy to tell in advance, with precision, whether a teenager might become a physical danger to other people. But speaking up in response to warning signs, such as disturbing social media posts, could help.

It’s impossible to calculate how often somebody showing interest in a troubled student averts a mass shooting. In Michigan, a jury decided this month that a woman was criminally liable for not doing anything before her son shot four classmates to death with a pistol his parents had bought him as a gift. We need not be bystanders until after a horror show emerges.

The Institute for Justice notes the complication that some students will fear discussing concerns about a classmate lest they be labeled a “snitch.” Still, talking about warning signs might sometimes protect others and convey that someone cares even a little.

Could all of this make parents and guardians feel confident that their child won’t be the next one murdered at school? Probably not. That will require a seismic shift in the availability of guns. But this is a place to start.

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