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The IWLA Bulletin

A Publication for the Members of the IWLA

The IWLA Bulletin is the official publication of the IWLA. It appears three times a year and is free to IWLA members. The full electronic version of the current issue of the IWLA Bulletin will soon be available online to IWLA members. The following two articles are samples of the content published in the IWLA Bulletin.

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Letter Writing Campaign [About the Campaign]

A Response from the Legislative Liason

Dear Ms. Corkery:

Senator Staci Appel forwarded your letter regarding the addition of a foreign language staff member at the Department to me for response. Thank you for your interest in this subject and your support of foreign language instructional issues.

You are correct in saying the Department does not have a staff member whose sole responsibility is foreign language support. Carmen Sosa does, however, address issues related to foreign language instruction and provides technical assistance in this area. Unfortunately, health issues have prevented her from being more active in this area in the last couple of years.

As with all Departmental funding issues, this begins and ends with the legislature. I will tell you that the level of obligation already made to new funding for existing expansion of effort (allowable growth, teacher compensation, and preschool, among others) makes this proposal a tough sell this year. The legislature was very generous last session providing funding for Department staff positions that were badly needed and we certainly appreciated that support.

While the Department would certainly staff this position if funding were made available, we are uncertain that there is enough work in this area alone to support a position at the Department solely for this purpose. We would want flexibility to use this staffing position for other related duties. We are also confident in saying that a staff position at the Department will not solve the statewide professional development dilemma in this content area.

A better vehicle to promote professional development supports for your teachers may be through some existing statute. The current law related to individual teacher professional development plans requires those plans to include goals for the individual teacher beyond district and building goals. It seems to make sense that foreign language teachers could use this mechanism to ensure that there are objectives related to specific content areas in those individual plans.

The Department does, however, understand that there are some clear shortage areas in foreign language instruction. Believe it or not, we have a steeply increasing need for Mandarin Chinese teachers. We have also imported 17 teachers from Spain to teach Spanish in our schools. Some sort of legislative effort to develop new or incent existing educators to go into foreign languages would clearly be helpful.

The Department also believes that an expansion of the teacher development academy concept is another way to potentially address needs in this area. Of course, that is another issue that tracks directly to funding. In short, while we agree that there is a need to provide better supports for foreign language teachers statewide, we aren’t convinced that a staffing position dedicated to that purpose at the Department will accomplish this goal. We are certainly willing to continue to work with you on this issue.

Thanks again for your advocacy and I look forward to working more on this issue during the upcoming legislative session.

Sincerely,
Jeff Berger
Legislative Liaison
Iowa Department of Education

Cc: Senator Staci Appel
Bridget Gode

Contact Jeff Berger

Contact Staci Appel

Contact Members of the Education Committee