Iowa, state file 15

Coverage summary

• NONE FOUND is a statement about publication, not about service delivery.
• Obligations under IDEA are not evidence of a program.

• 348Units in frameExhaustive frame
• 340Readable subsetThe frame less NOT VERIFIABLE and NOT AUDITED: every unit whose pages were read
• 1PROGRAM rows with a weak-evidence flag

As of October 31, 2026, the release date of this version.

District coverage

One row per unit in frame. The table opens on each unit's coverage code and flags; Detailed adds the evidence note, the source, how the page was read, the pass at which the code was set, and every other column. Search, filter by code or agency type, and page through every row.

• NONE FOUND is a statement about publication, not about service delivery.
• Obligations under IDEA are not evidence of a program.

Operator silence

Counted in both directions for each statewide provider: the provider's own published count, and the agencies in frame that name the provider as a Deaf and hard of hearing service mechanism, named outright.

As of October 31, 2026, the release date of this version.

Publication against identified population

The state does not publish counts by agency, so this measure is not reported; it is never supplied where the state does not publish them (FRM-005 section 3).

The FRM-002 measure is not supported for Iowa. What can be said: the ACHIEVE count puts 3,269 deaf or hard of hearing learners ages 0 to 21 in the state in 2024-25 (885 in Heartland AEA, 91 at the Iowa School for the Deaf, 269 in Des Moines Public Schools), 1,097 of them on no plan; the school's average enrollment for FY 2024 was 113 by the Auditor's count and 'just over 100' by the school's own page; every AEA publishes hearing services; two of 325 districts publish their own deaf or hard of hearing capacity (Des Moines, a program; Dallas Center-Grimes, an interpreter staff), and 22 district pages carry a hearing mention short of a program.

State indicators

As of October 31, 2026, the release date of this version.

Identified population over time

The count of identified students with hearing impairment and with deaf-blindness as the primary category, for each year the state publishes, as published. Where two instruments give a count for the same year, both rows are shown with their sources. No change between years is computed.

As of October 31, 2026, the release date of this version.

Fiscal channels

The channels at FRM-003, each with its status. Amounts are as published, nominal, and marked enacted or appropriated; they are not added across channels, and no per-pupil figure is computed.

Every figure a channel carries

Where a channel carries a series, each fiscal year as published with its basis (actual, revised, enacted, appropriated, or as the instrument names it). The figures are not added across years or channels.

As of October 31, 2026, the release date of this version.

Workforce

The standards and the supply behind a Deaf child's classroom: the qualification the state requires of an educational interpreter, the training and preparation programs, the teacher of the deaf credential, shortage designations, the paraprofessional, intervener, and audiologist standards, and the special education workforce. Each figure is as published; no ratio is computed.

As of October 31, 2026, the release date of this version.

Schools and programs

As of October 31, 2026, the release date of this version.

The remaining columns (ages or grades, communication and language approach, ASL availability, residential service, enrollment, cost to family, governance basis, accreditation, leadership, notes, and primary source) are part of the licensed state file. Access tiers and the licence request route

The frame

The frame is every public school district of the reference year, the nine area education agencies, every founding group charter on the Department's authorized list, and the two state units: 348 rows. The instruments are the Department's 2026-27 Iowa Public School District Directory (324 districts, final 30 September 2026), the 2025-26 directory (325), the Reorganization and Dissolution History updated July 2026 (Orient-Macksburg dissolved 1 July 2026 after operating in SY 2024-25), the Authorized Charter Schools List of June 2026 (12 founding group charters, three of them 2027-28 openers; 5 school board model charters coded with their districts), Iowa Code chapter 273 (the nine AEAs) and 256.95 (ISD and IESBVI). The federal CCD 2024-25 is the cross-check: 325 regular LEAs, every one in the frame; the nine AEAs as service agencies; ISD as a state-agency LEA with no school row; seven charter LEAs keyed at the organization. 348 rows: 325 districts (Orient-Macksburg NOT OPERATING), 9 AEAs, 12 charters (3 NOT OPERATING), ISD and IESBVI.

Frame count

348

Frame

Exhaustive

The deaf and blind boundary decision

Deaf-blindness is carried where the instruments name it: the federal 618 file prints no deaf-blindness count for Iowa (noncategorical); the Iowa Deafblind Services Project's registry is 'an annual census of all Iowa children/youth from birth-21 who have both hearing and vision problems' and feeds the National Deafblind Child Count, 120 for Iowa in 2024 (the latest report); the ACHIEVE count carries no deafblind breakdown. IESBVI is a frame unit and a boundary entity (the blind system hosting the deafblind project on the ISD campus); its rows and figures are not deaf counts. The two counts are shown side by side and never reconciled.

Reference years and frameworks

Enrollment and child count

SY 2025 (School Year 2024 - 2025): the fall 2024 federal IDEA 618 count (no hearing category for Iowa) beside the ACHIEVE count for 2024-25 (the 2026 report under 256.106(7))

Fiscal

Iowa FY 2025 (1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025, the year that funded SY 2024-25): Senate File 2435 (2024) and its NOBA; FY 2026 (SF 647, v1.0 record) and FY 2027 (HF 2783) as context in the series

Institutional framework

As served on 15 and 16 October 2026 (Central): the Iowa Code 2026, the Iowa Administrative Code and the enrolled 2026 Acts as the Legislature posts them; the agencies' pages as served

Frameworks applied

FRM-001 1.0, FRM-002 1.0, FRM-003 1.0, FRM-004 1.0, FRM-005 1.0, STD-002 1.2

The method as applied

Normalizations in force

Every normalization applied in this run: the FRM-004 set and the state's own standing false positives, as the file records them.

• Standing false positives set aside at the hit review: the federal (USDA) nondiscrimination statement naming ASL and the Federal Relay Service on meal and nutrition pages; website accessibility boilerplate; procedural safeguards text; the certified budget and appeal public hearing notices; 'ISD' for any other body; 'we look forward to hearing from you', 'signing in', 'signing bonus', 'hearing' as a board or budget proceeding.
• Iowa coding rules (the v1.0 trail, carried): a district PROGRAM rests on the district's own pages (Des Moines, a program; Dallas Center-Grimes, an interpreter staff, weak); AEA-provided hearing services on a district page code MENTION with the AEA in the mechanism column and as operator under D-038 (seven rows); a nurse screening schedule, a hearing test request form or a screening notice alone codes MENTION (five rows).
• Iowa coding rules, continued: an eligibility, weighting or services recital codes MENTION (eight rows); a staffed interpreter position named only in a staff directory is a D-037 list item coded MENTION and tabled (Monticello, Interstate 35, Sioux Center); a bare link to an AEA, ISD or IESBVI codes NONE FOUND with the provider recorded.
• MENTION requires a hearing term on a held capture (FRM-004). Every MENTION row names its page and the term; Moravia's rests on a one-page procedure PDF fetched and filed as a byte original beside the captures (evidence form 'web page and a byte original (PDF)').
• PROGRAM for each AEA rests on the AEA's own hearing services or core special education pages (audiologists, audiometrists, teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing); Keystone moves from v1.0's NONE FOUND (a transport artifact: 403 to both transports beyond the home page) to PROGRAM on the same standard text the other AEAs publish. IESBVI is PROGRAM as the boundary entity hosting the deafblind project, not for a deaf program of its own.
• D-038: the AEA is the operator named on the district rows whose MENTION rests on AEA-provided services (program_operator_code AEA-NN); the Department is the operator of ISD and IESBVI (code IADOE); each AEA row carries itself as operator. Lewis Central CSD (3645) is ISD's counting identity in the child count bulletin, recorded on the ISD row's regional_unit, not as an operator.
• NOT OPERATING under D-045, decided afresh: Orient-Macksburg (4978) operated in SY 2024-25 (CCD Open; the 2025-26 directory) and was dissolved 1 July 2026 (the Reorganization and Dissolution History); its site still served two pages on both days. Red Barn Schoolhouse (CH-9012) opened 2026-27 and is read as operating.
• NOT OPERATING under D-045, the charters: Distinctive Innovation Academy (CH-9002), Great Oaks High School and Career Center Des Moines South (CH-9006) and Horizon Science Academy Cedar Rapids (CH-9007) are authorized founding group charters with a 2027-28 opening year operating no school in the reference year or on the run date, with no website on the list and one D-039 search each (v1.0 coded them NOT OPERATING under D-010).
• NOT VERIFIABLE with the deep review mark (deep review, access) on eight units whose hosts did not answer on either day and for which one D-039 search found no other site: MFL MarMac (dead host), Twin Cedars (NXDOMAIN), Le Mars (unreachable), Baxter and Keota (TLS failure, not bypassed), Eldora-New Providence and Hubbard-Radcliffe (the shared South Hardin host and its apex, TLS failure, not bypassed), Lynnville-Sully (the hijacked host, not accessed).
• v1.0's nine NOT VERIFIABLE rows become eight: Central City, Dubuque, Moulton-Udell and Red Barn Schoolhouse were read at their addresses; West Harrison and Moravia on the hosts the D-039 searches gave; Morning Sun's policy pages at mscsd.isfis.net (a vendor host) were read as the unit's published policy pages; five v1.0 NONE FOUND rows whose hosts never answered this time are NOT VERIFIABLE.
• D-043: the 2026-27 directory's website column is the host baseline for the districts and the charter list's for the charters; the AEAs, ISD and IESBVI have no address in the directory and were read at their own hosts (flag 'address not taken from the state directory'); Orient-Macksburg at its 2025-26 address. Eight listed addresses answer on another domain; three were wrong (West Harrison, Moravia, Lynnville-Sully); eight did not answer.
• D-043, continued: five directory addresses changed between the 2025-26 and 2026-27 editions (Bettendorf, Carroll, Collins-Maxwell, Lone Tree, Moulton-Udell); four pairs of districts share one site (North Kossuth and North Union; Remsen-Union and Marcus-Meriden-Cleghorn; Villisca and Corning; Eldora-New Providence and Hubbard-Radcliffe). The flagged rows are tabled on the District Coverage sheet.
• D-040: attempt one on 15 October 2026 Central (16 October UTC in the capture names), attempt two on 16 October 2026 Central (17 October UTC) for the 148 units with a keyword hit, a thin or script-rendered read or a failed read (the SchoolBlocks sites by tab navigation, -a2n; others sitemap-seeded, -a2s; the rest a second crawl, -a2), Des Moines and the two D-071 organizations.
• D-040, continued: 149 rows carry both days; the eight NOT VERIFIABLE rows carry both days as failed attempts; the three charters without a site carry the search day. The attempt-two unit ids carry -a2, -a2s or -a2n so the two readings of a page sit side by side.
• The identified counts by unit are not published in Iowa (noncategorical; the federal file prints no hearing row); the ACHIEVE count by location (the 2026 legislative report, Table 1) is carried on the nine AEA rows, ISD and Des Moines as identified_hi_count with its frame stated in the note (all DHH learners ages 0 to 21, not an IDEA category); every other row carries null. Deaf-blind counts by unit are not published (NCDB statewide only).
• Enrollment by unit is not carried at v2.0: the Department's certified enrollment file by district for 2024-25 (named on the 17 January 2025 press release) was not retrieved in this run, the directory carries no enrollment column and the CCD LEA directory carries no membership; the column is empty with the instrument named here and in a records request row.
• Fiscal headline Iowa FY 2025 under D-075 (1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025, the year that funded SY 2024-25): the named appropriations are read from Senate File 2435 (2024) and its NOBA; FY 2026 (SF 647, the v1.0 record) and FY 2027 (HF 2783 and its NOBA) sit in the series as context; v1.0's FY 2026 headline is replaced, not corrected.
• NONE FOUND is a statement about publication on the unit's own site, not about service delivery: by statutory design the AEA employs the teachers of the deaf and the audiologists who serve a district's pupils, and a district that publishes nothing may be served fully by its AEA.
• The 2026 Legislative Report is shown beside the 2025 report and never substituted (3,269 beside 3,183); the ACHIEVE frame (ages 0 to 21, all learners identified, not an IDEA category) is stated wherever either count is used.

The method and its known limitations

The frame rests on the Department's 2026-27 directory, its Reorganization and Dissolution History, its Authorized Charter Schools List and Iowa Code chapter 273, with the federal CCD 2024-25 as the cross-check; the five school board model charters are coded with their districts. Every unit was read in the rendered browser on 15 October 2026 Central (the Iowa closure probe v1: a crawl of up to 16 pages beyond the home page in a 42-second budget with a keyword screen and per-page digests) and the 148 units with a hit, a thin read or a failed read were read again on 16 October 2026 Central, within seven days; the capture file names carry the UTC dates, 16 and 17 October. Pages beyond the probe's budget were not read. The sixteen SchoolBlocks sites and Red Oak refuse same-origin fetch and were read by navigating the tab through their sitemap pages; Des Moines by navigation after a 403 to fetch. Eight hosts did not answer on either day and were not bypassed (two TLS failures, a shared TLS failure, a dead host, two unreachable hosts, a hijacked host not accessed); one D-039 search per unit found no other site for them. NONE FOUND is a statement about what a unit publishes, not about what it delivers: the AEA employs the teachers of the deaf and the audiologists who serve a district's pupils by statutory design. The identified population is not published by category in Iowa (noncategorical; the federal file prints no hearing row); the ACHIEVE count under 256.106(7) is the state's only count, by AEA, ISD and Des Moines, and is not an IDEA category; the publication measure is not computable. Enrollment by unit was not retrieved (the certified enrollment file by district is the instrument). The fiscal headline is Iowa FY 2025 under D-075, read from Senate File 2435 and its NOBA; FY 2026 stands on the v1.0 record (SF 647 through its NOBA, not re-read) and FY 2027 on HF 2783 and its NOBA. The state cost per pupil for FY 2025, the FY 2025 AEA special education support amounts, the ESA's FY 2025 cost, the Part B, Part C, EHDI and deaf-blind award amounts and any capital line were not retrieved; each is named as not published here with its instrument. The Auditor's June 2026 ESA analysis and the Board of Regents' Vinton history stand on the v1.0 record. ISD's enrollment rests on three instruments shown side by side (the Auditor's FY 2024 average, the school's own statement, the ACHIEVE count) and is not published by state of residence; the Nebraska and South Dakota agreements are named by the school and not published. The interpreter and teacher credential rules were read verbatim this time; the number of licensed interpreters, the teacher-of-the-deaf headcount and the shortage lists were not published on the instruments read. The HHS Commission's members were not transcribed. The CDC newborn screening table is for 2022, read from the CDC archive. Archive snapshots are requested at the release stage (archive_lookup.py), not during the audit.

Disclosure

Novara Consulting Group LLC, the publisher of the Index, has no financial, partnership, contract, license or funding relationship with any Iowa body named in this file, and no public-purpose extract exists between the firm, its principals, its brands or its instruments and any such body. No request for this file is on the Index's record and no contact, formal or informal, has been made with any Iowa body; it was built in the Index's own sequence (the v1.0 file of 30 August 2026 and this v2.0 re-audit as a wave 2 file under D-058, placed by D-065) with no editorial input from any body it describes. The two co-founders' declarations of 16 October 2026 are filed in 04_Verification.

Compiled

October 31, 2026

Notice and correction record

Notice sent

October 17, 2026

Window closed

October 30, 2026

Responses

No response was received before the window closed.

Contact of record

Notice, comment, and correction on this state file reach the Index at the contact of record the file names.

Mailbox

notice@ndedi.org

Postal address

Novara Consulting Group LLC, 18140 Zane St NW #159, Elk River, MN 55330

Send a correction or a comment on this state file

Version history

• v2.0

  October 31, 2026, cause: re-audit

  Re-audit from the v1.0 standard (wave 2 under D-058, placed by D-065; D-075 headline Iowa FY 2025; D-070 label SY 2025 (School Year 2024 - 2025)). Frame re-verified on the 2026-27 directory, the Department's dissolution history, the June 2026 charter list and the CCD 2024-25 (348 rows; Orient-Macksburg NOT OPERATING under D-045 with the three 2027-28 charters); every unit read in the rendered browser on 15 October 2026 Central and 148 units again on 16 October (D-040); the state units, the Department, HHS and the nine AEAs as seeded sets; every keyword hit reviewed against its capture (13 PROGRAM with one weak flag, 24 MENTION, 299 NONE FOUND, 8 NOT VERIFIABLE with the deep review mark, 4 NOT OPERATING; Keystone AEA to PROGRAM; seventeen districts to MENTION; five hosts to NOT VERIFIABLE); the federal 618 child count (no hearing category for Iowa) and personnel files read (interpreters 103.22 FTE); the 2026 legislative report under 256.106(7) (3,269; 1,097 without a plan; 156 assessed) beside the 2025 report; the Code sections, chapters, rules and the four enrolled 2026 acts as byte originals (the school's statutes untouched; 273, 256E and 257.11B amended); SF 2435 (FY 2025: ISD 11,707,253 dollars, 120.00 FTE) and HF 2783 (FY 2027: 12,813,313; 132.00 FTE) with their NOBAs; the Auditor's reports on the school, the Department (ISD 113 pupils, 108,904 dollars per pupil, FY 2024; two ESA findings) and the nine AEAs; the interpreter rule read verbatim (481 IAC 961: EIPA 3.5 or NIC; a temporary license of two years renewable once) and the citation corrected from 645 IAC 361; the Workforce block and the D-071 organizations added; data modules to the schema 1.3 contract (entities.py authored, ia_data.py generated), the eight-sheet workbook, the narrative with Annex A, the trail with the delta table, reconcile.py and the STD-003 checklist; stop-three handback before notice. Noticed 17 October (sixteen bodies, no response); released 31 October 2026.

• v1.0

  August 30, 2026, cause: first release

  First release: narrative profile, workbook (seven sheets including Fiscal), verification trail, prompt as issued, evidence source record, URL manifest (384 rows), evidence captures, and verification scripts with the release reconciliation output (125 checks, all pass). Frame of 348 units (325 districts, 9 AEAs, 12 founding group charter units, ISD, IESBVI) coded 12 PROGRAM, 7 MENTION, 317 NONE FOUND, 9 NOT VERIFIABLE, 3 NOT OPERATING (D-010), zero NOT AUDITED. Headline findings: the custody premise dissolved on contact, in the direction opposite to Illinois: 2023 Acts ch 19 moved both ISD and IESBVI from the Board of Regents to the Department of Education, and HF 2612 (2024) made the AEA boards advisory with each AEA special education director a DOE employee, so the deaf school, the blind system, the regional directors, Part C, and the LEAD-K duty all run from one department; Iowa is noncategorical and reports zero children in every federal disability category, but the live LEAD-K law (Iowa Code 256.106, the series' first) rebuilt the count through the ACHIEVE DHH Database (3,183 learners 0-21, including 1,257 with no plan); the delivery map is the AEA layer by statutory design (8 of 9 AEAs publish hearing capacity against 2 of 325 districts); one campus carries both systems (IESBVI and the deafblind project headquartered at the ISD address); statutory relics survive (256.97's "too severe" gate, 299.22's default state-school attendance, 216A.113's telephone company seats); the universal ESA reports nothing by disability; no in-state LSL sector exists. The row's Cause column was added on 17 October 2026 (the changelog carried four columns).

Checks record

Release checklist version

1.4

Run date

October 31, 2026

Reconciliation output

15_Iowa_reconciliation_output_v2.0_2026-10-31.txt

Run ledger identifiers

R-2026-10-17-01, R-2026-10-17-02, R-2026-10-17-03

Custody and report checks

Report checks output

15_Iowa_report_checks_2026-10-31.txt

UK spellings in the Index's own prose

0

Files in the evidence manifest

3,394

Evidence manifest check

Pass

Sources with an archive snapshot

45

Sources with no archive snapshot

17

Archive lookups that failed

0

Deposit

DOI for version 2.0

10.5281/zenodo.23438424

DOI for every version (resolves to the newest)

10.5281/zenodo.23438423

Deposit record

zenodo.org/records/23438424

Deposited

October 17, 2026

Licence on the record

Summary layer under the free terms; the licensed files are restricted on the record (STD-004 v1.0 section 3) (licensed files restricted; metadata and the summary export open)

SHA-256 of the package as imported

09789a82d2f320f3b82d07c30c945d4c20de3789bdca419e6a85e0d97719bc24

Sources

Each source with its access date and its Internet Archive status as the archive status file recorded it at the run: a snapshot found, with its date and address; no snapshot; a lookup that failed; or not requested.

Gaps a records request could close

Each gap this file records that a request to a public body could close, with the record requested, the route, and the request as the file records it. A gap with an identifier has been asked; a gap without one has not yet been asked. The gap stands until the record is published.

As of October 31, 2026, the release date of this version.

The narrative profile

What the narrative covers

• In plain language
• Summary of findings
• Governance and legal framework
• The state school
• Communication and language approach
• The statewide outreach and early intervention layer
• The AEA layer, the districts and the charter schools
• The private and listening and spoken language sector
• The market layer
• What the units publish
• Data, and what the state does not measure
• Fiscal allocation and legislative context
• The workforce
• Open items
• Notice and correction
• Sources
• Annex A. How to read this file

The licensed state file for Iowa carries the narrative profile of this version (13,033 words, rendered here for a licensee), the report and its evidence supplement as PDF and Word, and the workbook with every sheet, and it carries the same figures as this page. It is licensed per state, with a reduced-rate product for Deaf-led and disability organizations, and under the State Partner and national licences. How to request a licence

Downloads

Summary export, free

The frame, the tallies, the operator silence counts, the indicators, and the fiscal channels of this version. With them, every other part of this page that is free: the plain-language summary, the method as applied, the identified population over time, the workforce, the Schools and Programs directory, the records requests, the contact of record, and the archive status of the sources. The District Coverage rows and the identified population by agency are viewable on this page and are not in the export.

• Summary (CSV)

The licensed state file

These files are served to a signed-in account whose licence covers this state. Access tiers and the licence request route

Evidence captures, prompts, declarations, and drafts stay in the repository and are not published.