The facts about AEA flow-through funding
As budgets
get tight and school boards and administrators study their cash
flows, one topic that continues to bubble up is the line item in
school district budgets that shows AEA flow-through dollars. Since
AEA funds appear in the local districts’ Aid and Levy Worksheets,
it has led some people to the belief that these funds belong to the
local school districts. That is not correct. These funds were never
taken from the districts.
When the Iowa Legislature created Iowa’s Area Education Agencies in
1975, it also created a separate funding stream for the AEAs
specifically to fund its services. No school district dollars were
ever reduced or reallocated in the creation of the AEA system
funding.
With no direct taxing authority, AEA funding had to appear on some
other entities’ books for accounting purposes. Because AEA funding
is based on per pupil allocations tied to local district
enrollments, funding shows up as flow-through funds from each
individual district in the area. The AEA budget in total was, and
still is, intended to be used to provide mandated services
throughout the region for all of the public and private schools not
for individual school purposes.
In February 2009, the Fiscal Division of the Legislative Services
Agency issued this statement after its review of AEAs: “the method
of distribution of AEA funding is strictly for accounting purposes,
the school district budget is not impacted.”
The AEA flow-through money is intended to equalize, as much as
possible, educational opportunities for all schools, both public
and accredited nonpublic, within an AEA region. Without the
cooperative services of the AEAs, inequities between school
districts would increase and learning opportunities for students
would vary greatly. AEAs require the allocated funds to provide
equitable educational opportunities. Any reduction in funding would
impact the ability of the AEA to provide mandated services to the
districts.
The flow-through money is not, and has never been, district money.
To allow those dollars to be “rolled-over” into a single district
budget would result in harm to the group.
