Iowa
Iowa AEA administrators explain changes before overhaul takes effect
DES MOINES, Iowa (Gray Television Iowa Capitol Bureau) – Iowa’s Area Education Agencies are racing to make changes before reforms passed by the legislature take effect on July 1.
Nothing will change with special education funding this year since AEAs will get to keep 100% of funds, but significant changes are coming with media services and education services this fall.
This upcoming school year will be a transition year for AEAs. In addition to special education, they provide resources like education services, such as literacy and math coaches, and media services to help with IT and technology. Beginning in July, districts will only be required to send 40% of their funds to AEAs for it.
Cindy Yelick is the chief administrator of the Heartland AEA in Central Iowa. Yelick says staff are leaving due to the overhaul. Heartland won’t fill roughly 50 open positions, which means parents may experience less flexibility with services. However, she says they’re working to preserve as much frontline staff as possible and parents shouldn’t be worried.
Dan Cox is the chief administrator with the Northwest AEA. He says about 10% of their staff, or roughly 30 employees are leaving. Cox says the departures have been spread across the AEA so impacts won’t be too severe. Cox too says there will be some noticeable changes to services. For example, That means parents may have access to six literacy coaches rather than eight.
Gov. Kim Reynolds’ office maintains employees who leave are doing so for personal reasons and not due to the legislation.
Both AEA chiefs say making changes has been incredibly difficult.
“There’s grieving because people have really invested in that equity of services across the state for years and thinking about how you now move into a different model so there’s some sadness. I would also say that there’s part of it that is a challenge that is invigorating to people,” Yelick said.
“It’s just the unknown and then the volume of support from the public that said ‘hey, no, stop, slow this down’ and then to have that just kind of you know brushed aside and changes made anyway was really tough to take for a lot of our staff too so they’ve been through the emotional grinder,” Cox said.
Cox says parents should continue to ask teachers and their school superintendents about how changes to services will look at their school.
Both administrators say next year will be even tougher. That’s when school districts won’t be required to use AEAs for those media and education services if they don’t want to.
Copyright 2024 KCRG. All rights reserved.
POLK COUNTY, Iowa (Iowa Capital Dispatch) – Eight months ago, a state licensing board charged an Iowa nurse with multiple regulatory violations, including soliciting or accepting money from a patient. This week, for the first time, the Iowa Board of Nursing publicly disclosed those charges.
The records show the board has charged Abbriel Rae Mitchell, 44, of Roland with five separate regulatory violations: violating patient confidentiality or privacy rights; soliciting, borrowing, or misappropriating money or property from a patient; committing an act that causes physical, emotional or financial injury to a patient; participating in or attempting to initiate a sexual, social or business relationship with a patient; and engaging in behavior that is contradictory to professional decorum.
As is customary with the Board of Nursing, it has publicly disclosed no information as to the alleged conduct that gave rise to the charges or indicated when or where that conduct is alleged to have taken place.
State records indicate the board’s investigation of the matter was initiated in 2024. The charges were formally approved by the board on Oct. 8, 2025, but were made public only this week in the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing’s official Notice of Board Action for the month of June 2026.
It’s not clear why the charges were not publicly disclosed last year. In recent months, DIAL has indicated questions about the numerous licensing board errors and lengthy delays in public disclosure of disciplinary charges are best directed to the Iowa Attorney General’s Office. That office has, in turn, referred such questions back to DIAL.
Board records indicate Mitchell was first authorized to work in Iowa as a licensed practical nurse in July 2005.
A hearing on the charges against her is scheduled for Oct. 15, 2026.
Copyright 2026 Iowa Capital Dispatch. All rights reserved.
Iowa State WBB coach Bill Fennelly on future timeline
Iowa State women’s basketball coach Bill Fennelly on end of career timeline, thoughts on possible retirement?
The Iowa State women’s basketball team will face a trio of its old Big 8 opponents at home and on the road next season during conference play.
The Cyclones’ home-and-home league partners for the 2026-27 campaign are Kansas, Kansas State and Oklahoma State, the Big 12 announced June 11.
Iowa State’s home-only opponents are BYU, Colorado, Houston, TCU, Texas Tech and Utah. The Cyclones get Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, UCF, Cincinnati and West Virginia on the road only.
The unbalanced schedule — with just three home-and-home opponents — has been in place since the league expanded to 16 teams.
It will be a pivotal season for the Cyclone program after losing nine players to the transfer portal, including stars Audi Crooks, Addy Brown and Jada Williams.
Dates, times and broadcast information will be released later this summer.
Iowa State columnist Travis Hines has covered the Cyclones for the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune since 2012. Contact him at thines@amestrib.com or (515) 284-8000. Follow him on X at @TravisHines21.
Hear Rob Sand as he details his ‘Accountability for All’ plan
Iowa Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand talks through his ‘Accountability for All’ plan at a press conference on April 2, 2026.
State Auditor Rob Sand said pharmacy benefit managers who work with Iowa’s Medicaid program appear to be overcharging taxpayers by using prohibited pricing techniques.
But Sand said he wasn’t able to get a full picture of the financial impact to the state’s Medicaid program because the three pharmacy benefit managers that work with Iowa Medicaid did not provide certain financial records and other information his office requested.
“We believe that Iowans deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent and that PBMs shouldn’t be allowed to rip off taxpayers by hiding behind what they say is proprietary information,” he said at a news conference Wednesday, June 10.
At issue is the use of what is known as effective rate pricing, which Sand said allows PBMs to claw back payments previously made to pharmacies at the end of the year. That results in “spread pricing,” which the audit says occurs when the PBM receives a larger reimbursement payment from the Medicaid managed care organization it works with than the PBM pays to the pharmacy.
Sand said spread pricing is prohibited under Iowa Medicaid.
“It can inflate costs for taxpayers, reduce the quality of care and create financial hardships for pharmacies,” he said. “That’s especially true for the independent pharmacies in smaller communities.”
Sand’s office released a report Wednesday covering transactions from 2019 to 2021. While incomplete, he said it showed the effective rate reconciliations for one of the three PBMs that works with the state totaled $100 million over that time period.
“That’s $100 million that Iowa taxpayers may have been overcharged,” Sand said. “We believe it to be even more than that because despite the fact that we made repeated requests and negotiated, the PBMs still at the end of the day withheld critical financial information.”
Sand said his office hired a firm called 3Axis Advisors that has performed similar work in other states to assist with the audit, at a cost of about $30,000.
Sand’s report recommends banning year-end reconciliations and requiring PBMs, managed care organizations and other state contractors to provide unrestricted access to information for the auditor’s office.
The report says there should be additional regulations on PBMs to separate Medicaid payments from non-Medicaid payments and to remove pricing variability from PBM contracts.
Sand, a Democrat who is the party’s nominee for governor, earlier this year released a health care platform pledging to crack down on pharmacy benefit managers.
Last year, Iowa lawmakers passed legislation placing several new regulations on PBMs, including requiring them to pay higher reimbursement rates to pharmacies.
A federal judge partially blocked portions of the law last summer while a lawsuit is pending from a coalition of business groups. It is awaiting an appeal.
Sand praised the law as “very good” but said “I think there’s a lot more that could be done.”
“The regulations that were contained in it would prevent some abuses,” he said. “But again, I think it’s very important to emphasize that auditors need to have access to this information to make sure that taxpayers are being protected, and they’re not being ripped off.”
Heather Nahas, a spokesperson for Gov. Kim Reynolds, said Iowa has recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in improper fees charged to pharmacies.
“For the last several years, Gov. Reynolds and Iowa lawmakers have been leading the fight against abusive PBM practices, advancing reforms, strengthening oversight and defending those efforts against repeated challenges,” she said in a statement.
Nahas called Sand’s report “irrelevant and outdated,” saying the data he looked at does not reflect current practices at Iowa’s Department of Insurance and Financial Services or Medicaid pharmacy oversight.
Nahas said the report includes recommendations that Iowa Medicaid implemented more than three years ago.
“The auditor may be late to the game, but he’s finally arrived at the same conclusion that Iowans, the Republican legislature, and the Reynolds administration have known for years: PBM practices demand scrutiny, transparency and reform,” she said. “The difference is we’re doing something about it.”
Sand said his efforts to gather data were delayed by resistance from the PBMs and by a Republican-passed law, Senate File 478, that blocks the auditor from going to court against other state entities to force them to turn over documents.
“It took absolutely forever to get all of this data, to go back and forth with the PBMs, to evaluate legal claims about trade secrets or about SF 478,” he said. “And so as usual with this industry everything is much murkier and slower moving than any reasonable person would expect.”
Stephen Gruber-Miller is the Capitol bureau chief for the Des Moines Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com, by phone at 515-284-8169 or on X at @sgrubermiller.
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