Senator Sarah Trone-Garriott exemplifies the key role the Area Education Agencies (AEA’s) played in the Perry shooting, further showing their importance.

AEA’s aid school districts in Iowa by providing special-education services, educational services, and media services. In Governor Kim Reynolds Condition of the State, she suggests that AEA’s will focus only on students with disabilities. 

Senator Trone-Garriott uses the situation that happened at Perry High School on January 4th as an example of how resourceful the AEA’s were.

“When the shooting at Perry occurred, the AEA’s have a crisis response team that is implemented in the state whenever there is a student death, a teacher death, a traumatic event. They had 50 people on the ground that day and they will be there for weeks to come. All of those services are proposed to be cut.”

Senator Trone-Garriott explains that cutting these services might not sound like a big deal but there’s a lot of teacher support, training resources, and curriculum advantages in the three categories that AEA’s serve.