Green Hills AEA gains new chief administrator as school begins

The Green Hills Area Education Agency has a new chief administrator this year. Dr. Lolli Haws has been a superintendent at two school districts, a principal at two schools and started her career as a special education teacher for the deaf.

“This position has so much to do with special education and teacher professional development and those are two things that I’ve always been really interested in,” said Haws.

As chief administrator Haws is in charge of making sure all of the people in the agency are providing the right support to students, teachers and classrooms. She will make sure teachers have access to the proper teaching materials through the AEA.

She has been traveling to meet all the different AEA consultants in the seven regions of the state and was in the Osceola Regional Office Friday. Haws will mainly be located at the Halverson Center in Council Bluffs

Patrick Rabbitt is the regional administrator at the Osceola Regional Office.

“We have a tight knit group here with good communication,” said Rabbitt.

The Osceola Region serves eight school districts including Central Decatur, Clarke Diagonal, East Union, Lamoni, Mormon Trail, Mount Ayr and Murray.

AEA consultants based out the Osceola office serve these districts based on their population, so some people serve multiple districts while others stay at one.

There are many different services offered through the AEA by consultants in each different field. There are audiologists and speech pathologists in the Osceola office along with literacy coaches and many more.

“If we can get good materials in the hands of good teachers that will create good instruction for our kids,” said Rabbitt.

The AEA has a loaning system in which teaching resources and materials are made available to instructors. Teletherapy is another option for students with special needs to save districts and the AEA time and funds.

The AEA serves children from birth to age 21. There are three main service types, early access, birth to 3 years, early childhood, 3 to 5 years and kindergarten through high school.

When a child is identified as having needs, extra help through the AEA is available and the child is given an IEP (Individual Education Plan). Parents, AEA consultants and the school district come together to form a plan to best fit the child’s needs.

“Research tells us the earlier we intervene with a child of needs the better the chances are that they’ll have a successful academic career,” said Rabbitt.

There is even more personalized learning plans that the AEA has available to children that can catch them up to their peers before they would need an IEP. Specially Designed Instruction (SDI) is a way for teachers to give individual children personalized instruction with materials provided through the AEA before the child is identified as having special needs.

“It’s been a really successful endeavor,” said Haws.

When the AEA works with children the focus is on the whole child. That has three components to it, the child’s head, heart and hands. AEA consultants focus on educating the head, taking care of the heart and training the hands for the future.

The Agency has three main goals:

• all students proficient in literacy and math by third grade

• students with needs to show growth and have a 10 percent increase on state assessments each year

• future ready: for students to have opportunities to be productive members of society by the time they’ve finished school