Some special education services will shift next school year for the Greene County School District.

The School Board approved at its January meeting an agreement for Heartland Area Education Agency (AEA) to provide provisional special education services for the 2025-26 school year. Currently, the school district receives the mainly behavioral special education services through the Prairie Lakes AEA. Superintendent Brett Abbotts says the two main reasons for the change is that Heartland AEA has more opportunities for the district to partner with, along with location logistics, with the Prairie Lakes AEA main office being in Pocahontas, and the Heartland AEA main office in Johnston. He shares additional insight that was part of the January School Board meeting.

“Special education services will still take place in Greene County. This doesn’t mean that just because we’re shifting to Heartland that, that goes away. It’s just, now we’re going to be spending 90-percent of our follow through dollars that come in and out of our budget every year will just actually go to Heartland now instead of Prairie Lakes.”   

Abbotts believes that this move makes the most sense for the district and it is allowed with the recent change by the Iowa Legislature to change AEA partners for different services, with some of the funding that remains with the AEAs, and some of the funding can be directly controlled by the school district.