Des Moines, Iowa — A legislative committee has approved emergency rules that will let Iowa school districts continue to use paraeducators hired to work with individual students as substitute teachers in any classroom.
The action was necessary as the governor’s public health emergency proclamation which had allowed paraeducators to be subs during the pandemic expires at midnight. The committee is also proposing legislation directing schools to make a good faith effort to find substitute teachers and ending the policy after this school year is over. Representative Megan Jones, a Republican from Sioux Rapids, is the bill’s sponsor.
Jones also blasted the Board of Educational Examiners for holding a meeting Monday at 7:30 a.m. to reveal its solution to the problem, as that limited the public’s ability to review the regulations that already have been approved 24 hours later.
The executive director of the Board of Educational Examiners says state officials do not know how many paraeducators are employed in Iowa schools. The board’s emergency rule requires schools to ask for waivers when paraeducators are taken away from their main jobs to substitute teach in another classroom. Emily Piper, of the Iowa Association of School Boards, says that’s important
Melissa Peterson, a lobbyist for the Iowa State Education Association, says there are paraeducator shortages as well.
Senator Rob Hogg, a Democrat from Cedar Rapids, blasted the governor for letting her public health emergency expire and creating this dilemma in schools that required this scramble to ensure paraeducators can continue to be assigned to substitute teach Wednesday.
Hogg’s wife is the media secretary at a Cedar Rapids school, but she’s also a former paraeducator and Hogg says she’s often been assigned to lead a classroom as a substitute teacher over the past two years.
