Number range CHAPTERUNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

SAFE AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

TELECONFERENCE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2006

The Advisory Committee met by teleconference, at 2:00 p.m. EDT, David
Long, Chairman, presiding.

[PRESENT]{.underline}

DAVID LONG

KIM DUDE

FREDERICK E. ELLIS

MONTEAN JACKSON

RUSSELL T. JONES

SHEPPARD KELLAM

TOMMY LEDBETTER

SETH NORMAN

MICHAEL PIMENTEL

HOPE TAFT

DEBORAH A. PRICE

DENNIS ROMERO

BELINDA E. SIMS

HOWELL WECHSLER

# DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL

CATHERINE DAVIS

[ALSO PRESENT:]{.underline}

DONNI LeBOEUF, representing J. ROBERT FLORES of the OJJDP

C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S

Opening Comments 3

David Long

Discussion of October 23rd and 24th Meeting 3, 50

Discussion of September 8th Report to Secretary 6

Defining Safety 7

Funding 24

Research and Evaluation 38

P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

2:25 p.m.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I am going to really dive into this for time
considerations now because we are about 25 minutes in here.

I hope that you all have the agenda in front of you there that Catherine
was good enough to send out. We appreciate that.

Where it talks about general business, you\'ve just given the roll call.

The review of the agenda, just a reminder, and it is really tough with
these conference calls; we all know this. Because we can\'t see each
other eye to eye, it might be that we don\'t, and that is really not the
objective, to come to complete fruition with these issues, but rather to
raise them and get into the dialog, so that the transcriber can get
enough information down to make that preliminary report on the 8th,
which is really only some 72 hours away now. But we know that the big
one is June 12th, and we are well aware of that, but I just wanted to
mention that one more time.

Then, also, a discussion on the October 23rd and 24th meeting, and maybe
we can mention that first, for the sake of time, that if it would be
okay that we go through the same process that we did as we got ready for
the panelists on the first one, and the discussion on October 23rd and
24th will be on the Unsafe School choice/option or the
persistently-dangerous schools.

If we could go through that same process as we did before, whereas we
identify the issues or the perspectives to be addressed by those
particular focus group participants, and then if you have suggestions,
to please get them in to Catherine. Then we will get a master list on
those panelists. Then the panelists will be selected with their
backgrounds and everything, so we can go forward for that October 23rd
and 24th meeting.

Does that sound logical, if we follow that same plan? Anybody have any
comments or suggestions?

MS. TAFT: When did you want the suggestions back?

CHAIRMAN LONG: That sounds like Hope.

MS. TAFT: It is.

CHAIRMAN LONG: What would be the appropriate \-- let\'s see, going
backwards, October 23rd, today is the 5th. What if we had those \-- is
Catherine on, by the way?

MS. DAVIS: Yes.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Okay. You can help us with this on the logistics,
Catherine.

MS. DAVIS: How about a week from Friday?

CHAIRMAN LONG: I was going to say the 15th. Is that far off?

MS. DAVIS: Yes, it\'s about 10 days.

MS. TAFT: It\'s the 15th.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Oh, it is the 15th? Would that be okay, just by the close
of business on the 15th?

MS. TAFT: I think that sounds good.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Okay.

MS. PRICE: This is Debbie.

We\'ve got a little bit more time between this meeting and our October
meeting since we moved this meeting up. So that gives us a good amount
of time to get things in and to be thoughtful about it.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Right. That is a good point. The other thing I was
thinking about was for those people that might be traveling across
country or three-quarters of the way, that would give them about 30 days
to clear their calendar. But whether it is the 15th or 22nd is up to you
folks.

MS. DAVIS: I think from the logistics side, if we could do it by the
15th, that would be great. If we end up with not much response by then,
we can always stretch it out, if necessary, but, hopefully, the 15th
would be great.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Okay, got you. Let\'s plan on close of business the 15th
and then take into consideration what Debbie just said. That would be
great. Then we will head toward that October 23rd and 24th meeting in
Washington. So put on your thinking caps and get in some names for us.

SPEAKER: Is that the 15th of September?

CHAIRMAN LONG: Correct, yes.

Then that will be off the docket. Then we will zero-in on discussion of
items, can head toward that September 8th for the Secretary. It looks,
from all of our notes and that were sent out, and the last one was just
sent, I do believe, this morning, right, Catherine, because we were
emailing back and forth early?

MS. DAVIS: Yes. What was sent out this morning was a preliminary report,
a draft of what we would like to send out to the Secretary on the 8th.
We did our best to compile the responses we did receive last week, based
on that document, as well as the findings from the actual meeting.

CHAIRMAN LONG: So if we could, Catherine, you and I, I think it was
earlier this morning \--

MS. DAVIS: Yes.

CHAIRMAN LONG: And we appreciate your putting this together and getting
this out prior to this meeting.

If you look especially on page 2, where it is a good summary and
bullets, let\'s see, there is a total of five. It really boils down to
safety, funding, and then research and evaluation.

So if we could, in the spirit of this, again, if we could look through
this, talk about these as issues, not necessarily coming to a decision,
but enough to put this together for this preliminary. Then all of the
meat will go on the bones later for the final report.

So that first one really is safety, in the first bullet: \"Determine the
primary purpose of the program in defining safety.\" I notice a couple
of different things there, and then I will just turn it over to the
Committee members.

In one of these, and some of our discussion came up when we were there a
few weeks ago, that safety was No. 1 and that drug-free \-- that safety
emerges as No. 1. I think that, as we look at this, and I think you put
it well here, Catherine, that it is really safe and drug-free and that
that is really a tough situation to separate those two. But therein lies
part of the problem, in that when we are talking about money, some of
the money then is going to other places.

So if we could start with that first bullet, and see how all of that
fits together in your minds as Committee members, again, reminding that
since this is being transcribed, please give your name. So if we could
throw that first one out, \"Determine the primary purpose of the program
in defining safety,\" knowing full well that we certainly are not going
to define safety in the time we have allotted. So I would like to throw
that out, so we can follow these bullet points in preparation for the
September 8th.

MS. PRICE: This is Debbie Price.

Just to jump in for a short comment, it seems to me that the word
\"safety\" has the connotation that is narrower than the word \"safe.\"
I am wondering because safety I think just automatically directs people
into preparedness kinds of issues. It may be a little broader than that,
but that tone.

From my focus, we were looking at broader than that for safety. So I am
wondering if \"safe\" wouldn\'t be a better word. So I just throw that
out as people are talking about this.

MR. KELLAM: This is Shep Kellam.

I think it is an important issue to see \-- first of all, I think the
word \"safe\" is probably a lot more close to what we are talking about.
But I want to throw in a developmental and research perspective for a
minute.

The kids who, in fact, cause trouble in schools through aggression and
violence are also kids who are most frequently drug-users, and they are
also mostly kids who are underachieving by a dramatic sense.

The developmental antecedents, going back to first grade \-- and
there\'s plenty of data now even earlier than first grade \-- suggest
that the problems of behaving without aggression and violence and of
achieving stem from a common antecedent, and that you can identify kids
who are going to have difficulty by failure to learn and aggression and
disruptive behavior as early as first grade classrooms.

So what we are talking about is understanding the co-occurring and
developmental patterns of kids who get into trouble and who cause
trouble as stemming from common antecedents highly associated with poor
achievement in the first grade classrooms.

So from a prevention point of view, many of us have been addressing
first grade classrooms from the point of view of improving classroom
behavior, management by teachers, more efficient and effective
socializing of kids into the role of student, and, of course, improving
instruction as the other side of the model.

So if you can think about it in those ways, it is really an issue of
getting kids off to the right start with more effective tools for
teachers and probably also more effective family/classroom partnering.

MS. TAFT: This is Hope.

To me, that is more on what was meant by safe and drug-free schools than
having the schools prepared for terrorism attacks or pandemic disease or
things like that that are really not of an interpersonal nature.

MR. PIMENTEL: This is Michael.

I am going to have to just totally agree with Hope and Shep there. In
fact, we just had a meeting this morning on all the crisis and critical
incident planning. I think that goes way beyond the scope of what the
original intent of safe and drug-free schools is.

MR. JONES: This is Russell.

I do think it is important that those other factors are included, the
natural as well as technological disasters.

MS. TAFT: Well, the beauty of having a universal-funded program like
Safe and Drug-Free Schools is because, when one of those things happens,
at least you have someone in every school building that can be contacted
quickly who has the well-being of the child uppermost in their mind.

MR. ELLIS: This is Fred.

One of the things we find is that these terms do get mangled a lot and
they get interchanged a lot. That is why we try to use a definition or
terminology that at least we find helpful. I am not sure that it is
going to be helpful other than to add more confusion to this.

But, for instance, safety, we refer to safety as unintentional harm
issues. That, I think, for us refers to fire prevention, theater safety,
chemical hygiene, all those things that are unintentional harm issues.

Security refers to for us intentional harm issues in terms of violence,
theft, intentional problems or disruptions on our campuses.

Then, of course, drug-free, which you can have drug-free, alcohol- and
drug-free campuses, and they\'re neither safe nor secure.

So those are the kinds of differentiations we make, those terms that we
find helpful.

CHAIRMAN LONG: In this discussion, I was looking on the paper which is a
compilation of all the things we talked about when we were in
Washington. Looking on page 4, where it talks about primary
recommendations, the first one follows right along with the bullet that
we are talking about now with safety. It talks about things that we
said.

I was just listening again to what four or five of you were saying. If
we look at the last paragraph on the bottom of page 4, it talks about
the Committee has heard Recommendation No. 1, \"the definition of safety
for purposes of the grant program be interpersonal safety focused on
issues related to alcohol and drug use.\" So it pulls in safe and/or
safety with alcohol and drug use.

Then, secondly, \"the Committee suggests improved coordination of the
various federal resources related to school safety.\" We talked about
Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

If I heard that correctly, you were talking about those two as it
relates to funding and the safety with the focus on alcohol and drug
use, if I heard that right.

MR. ELLIS: This is Fred again.

I don\'t think we are going to get away from the word \"safe\" because
that is part of the legislative title, and it is rampant through all
this different documentation and whatnot.

I don\'t know any more about interpersonal safety than I do about
safety. To me, the terms are still confusing.

If you want the program to talk about alcohol and drug use, fine, so be
it; say that. I think by mangling and commingling the words \"safe\" and
\"safety\" with drug use and alcohol use, I think you are doing a
disservice to those because I would submit that they don\'t necessarily
speak to the same issue.

MS. PRICE: This is Debbie.

I would agree. I think Fred, when he first spoke, he mentioned that you
can remove drug and alcohol from campus and it doesn\'t necessarily make
that campus safe. We have found that often in dealing with the various
schools that we deal with and comments that we get from schools
regarding problems that they have.

I do think that what Fred said about safe, secure, and
drug/alcohol-free, you know, those three aspects kind of reflect some of
what we talked about at our August meeting here. We talked about the
environment being a secure environment for students to feel that they
can come to; it is safe and alcohol- and drug-free.

My ears perked up quite a bit when I heard those three used in that way.
I thought it helps with the clarity about safety. I just throw that out.

MR. LEDBETTER: Debbie, this is Tommy Ledbetter.

You have been dealing with this longer than any of the rest of us. So
what was the intent of the Congress when they added \"safe\" into the
Act?

MS. PRICE: Dealing with issues related to violence, and as you see in
the legislation itself, it says that for anyone to receive funds under
this program, they have to have in place a crisis plan. It doesn\'t
define or outline what that crisis plan is, but the safe related to
schools having a plan in place to deal with the term \"emergency
crisis,\" but to deal with crises.

In working here, I can honestly say that often the drug and alcohol and
the crisis on the campus, whether it is a school shooting or issues of
harassment that are fairly extreme, or even the minor ones, they seem to
have some relationship with each other, but not always.

I think that schools do a disservice to themselves when they focus only
on one aspect of safe, and that being only \-- you know, a school does a
disservice to itself if it focuses on having the world\'s best emergency
crisis plan and not dealing with the violence, the individual violence,
and the drug and alcohol use on campus, and vice versa, I think schools
do a disservice to themselves when they focus specifically just on the
drug and alcohol. They are intertwined, but they also are separate.

But I really did think the three terms, \"safe,\" \"secure,\" and
\"drug/alcohol-free,\" that that is the desire for our schools to be. It
rang very true to me when Fred said it.

MR. LEDBETTER: Is there a state that does not require a crisis plan for
all the schools?

MS. PRICE: It really varies. Because there\'s no definition to that term
or the legislation doesn\'t go into depth, a school that has a fire
drill can say, \"I have a crisis plan. We have done a fire drill.\" So
they vary greatly.

There are some states that have taken very seriously the issue of
emergency and crisis planning. You know, Florida and Mississippi,
Washington State are three states that come to mind immediately when I
think about that, and there\'s others. There are some states that don\'t
do much of anything, but have probably done more since the Beslan School
shooting, maybe a bit more after 9/11, but it varies greatly from state
to state.

MR. KELLAM: This is Shep.

Let me try it again. I think it is very much my experience that, in
having conversations like this with school districts or folks like us on
the Committee, we kind of fluctuate between being focused on crisis and
crisis planning at one end and prevention or early intervention on the
other. Both of these are perfectly bona fide areas of concern.

It is important, however, to remember that the early predictors are the
opportunities for intervention that are most likely to be impactful. So
waiting for the crises should not be our only focus, and it should be in
context.

So, as predictors, we know for a school failure, school dropouts are, in
fact, a difficulty in learning and difficulty in behavior as early as
first grade.

MS. TAFT: This is Hope.

I agree with you; if we wait for a crisis, it is not prevention anymore;
it is intervention or triage; whereas, looking at the indicators is more
of a prevention focus.

MS. PRICE: This is Debbie.

Yes, not to get overly involved in the emergency crisis stuff, but the
first half, the first two prongs of like a good crisis plan has four
elements to it: preparedness, prevention \-- I mean there\'s a real
prevention side. It is not waiting for the crisis to happen, but the
prevention that you go through prior to those things occurring, one, so
that they don\'t occur, just like anything, prevention, and, two, if
they do, that you have the elements in place to deal with it.

And I am not trying to overemphasize it over drug and alcohol. I am not
trying to do that at all. I just think it is difficult to separate all
of those elements from each other.

If we were giving schools \-- in some schools, this is all the dollars
that they get to deal with these programs. I would be hard-pressed to
focus them in only one of those three areas to spend those dollars.

MR. KELLAM: Okay, nobody should argue that we are putting up these areas
to be in competition. What we want to do is to make them one thing.

MS. PRICE: Absolutely, absolutely.

MR. KELLAM: If you had, for example, to choose one intervention to offer
schools that actually is fairly economic, although there are issues of
precision and fidelity, but providing teachers in first grade with
classroom behavior management tools would probably rank high on the list
of one of the things you might want to do to prevent later crises.

These all are one picture. There is a developmental trajectory. These
kids are coming to school sometimes poorly prepared to sit still and pay
attention. When they start to fail, in addition, all hell breaks loose
in terms of their self-efficacy and their behavior.

We are talking in the long run about two ends of a problem. One end, we
need to do something about it when it becomes a crisis at the end, but
we need to do something about it early on, if we expect to ever reduce
the end.

MS. PRICE: We\'ve got to go upstream.

MR. KELLAM: Right.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I wonder for the sake \-- let me just throw this out.
Listening to all these things, I hear the safe and alcohol- and
drug-free. I mean, because we can probably continue down this road for a
long time, and I am not saying we shouldn\'t; I am just trying to bring
some clarity here and, with that definition, incorporate somehow \--
and, again, I am heading for that September 8th for this preliminary,
which we are talking about today \-- safe and alcohol- and drug-free.

I go back again to that second point that is mentioned there. Because as
this is diluted with things that we do in the educational world, there
isn\'t a direct correlation with the amount of money that we're getting.

So one of the things that we came out with over and over again in
Washington, and it is mentioned here as No. 2, to also suggest \-- and
this, again, for that September 8th report to the Secretary, preliminary
report \-- that we need some help in other areas like Department of
Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency.

We talked about the fact that they don\'t listen sometimes to some of
the things that we ask, and so forth. But I think for the report we need
to say some things like that, because we can\'t keep diluting \-- the
money is dropping and we are broadening the services that we do.

So if we come up with the definition that is close enough, and then also
ask for help for some of these others in that recommendation to the
Secretary \-- I\'ll stop there.

MR. JONES: Yes, Dave, this is Russell. I think that is an excellent
suggestion. Because to bring these partners to the table, I think that
kind of wordage is necessary

MS. TAFT: This is Hope.

I think that is a great recommendation that we would make because it,
again, would have the federal government modeling the partnership that
we want the local school districts to do.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Right.

MR. JONES: Exactly. Good point, Hope.

MR. PIMENTEL: This is Michael, and you\'re right on target there.

MS. TAFT: This is Hope again.

That kind of gets us off of the two-horned dilemma of what is safe or
safety or security, or whatever else.

MS. SIMS: Hi. This is Belinda. I have to break in. I have to head off to
another meeting.

So I can send more comments on the document itself, if that is needed.

CHAIRMAN LONG: We would welcome that.

MS. SIMS: Okay.

CHAIRMAN LONG: With this part of the discussion, then, I don\'t want to
cut it off, but at the same time I would like, if we could, to move into
the funding aspect for this preliminary report.

Let me try again that if we \-- Debbie and Catherine and Bill, for you
guys on the definition aspect, the first of part of it, to incorporate
the safe and alcohol- and drug-free, so that we tie them together so
that there\'s not a hierarchy, and then that we ask for help.

We are suggesting as a Committee improved coordination of the various
federal resources; i.e., that I mentioned before, the Department of
Homeland Security, and so forth. Would that make sense, as we move into
the funding aspect of it?

MR. KELLAM: Yes. Is that open to all of us, right, Dave?

CHAIRMAN LONG: Oh, yes.

MR. KELLAM: As we think along those lines, a couple of things are
important. One is that NIDA and SAMHSA are key players here. IES is a
key player.

People who are doing research need to be in a tighter partnership, both
with safe and drug-free schools, in my view, as well as the researchers
having good partnerships with school districts nationwide. We are far
too lax in allowing the research ship to be off in one direction and the
program and policy people going off and struggling with lack of funding
and lack of coordination.

Partnerships is a key issue with both the research groups and the school
districts at the state as well as local levels, and the funding people
need to be in on that partnership. There are a couple of precedents,
including Safe and Drug-Free Schools and also the Justice, Education,
and Mental Health, and I forget what the name of the program is \-- help
me \-- the Healthy Students \--

MS. TAFT: Safe School/Healthy Students.

MR. KELLAM: Yes, which in fact, began to a build a foundation of
partnerships, both across federal agencies as well as at research and
local school district levels.

I think that that effort should be a dramatic, important part of what we
are thinking in the way of who goes into these partnerships which we are
talking about now, not just the money, but also the nature of school
district/research group partnering and the relevant institutional
partners that need to join them.

CHAIRMAN LONG: If we could draft that part that you just said right
there, Shep, we are also going to get to that bullet on closing the gap
between research and practice.

MS. TAFT: That will help a lot.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Yes. So I think if we could \-- Catherine and Debbie,
listen to this \-- to remember to plug that right into that bullet,
because I think that is going to be an important piece of that. So we
will plug that right into No. 3 there.

If we could go on to the second one there, which is funding, there are
several things about funding that we talked about. This will be
interesting because there wasn\'t agreement, but that is a good thing
about this Committee. When we get to the funding aspect and this
preliminary report to the Secretary, and it is mentioned on the bottom
of page 4 and the top of page 5 on the information received this
morning, it mentions, No. 1,

\"appropriate monitoring of existing use of grant funds.\" So one is
monitoring.

The second was \-- and I am just going to throw these out and then we
can have the discussion \-- the possibility of developing a competitive
process that allows more limited set of local associations to get larger
grants. That was from our discussion, based on the belief funding is
spread too thinly to do much good in some areas. We heard information
both ways there.

Then the kind of prevailing argument that the only challenge related to
funding is the need for more funds to be available, I don\'t think we
want to get too far into that because we might shoot ourselves in the
foot.

In terms of partnering or the leverage concept where we talked, we got
into the discussion in Washington about matching funds, whether it be
money from outside sources, whether it be in-kind, but that way, we
could take the \$310 million and make it \$375 or \$425 million. I would
think from the standpoint of reporting to the Secretary, that this might
be something they would want to look at, especially if it is with the
business community.

But I\'ll stop there. I just want to throw out the ideas.

MS. TAFT: This is Hope again.

I would think that if we could develop some kind of new formula
situation where everyone got a base of money, and then they could be
incentivized, if that\'s such a word, to do things that researchers say
are effective to get more money or include a requirement to get above
that amount that you have to get match money, would maximize both
getting schools to go where they need to go and getting the money to go
there.

MR. ROMERO: Hi. This is Dennis.

Hope, I like your suggestion. One way that \-- I know that there are
some efforts here in the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention that we
do, is there are times that we award funding based on a base. Through a
formula, we come up with a base, and then add \"X\" amount per capita,
based on the population of the town or the village, the community in
general.

That helps to find some balance from one community to another because,
obviously, no two communities are going to be the same size or have the
same sets of issues.

MR. ELLIS: This is Fred.

One of my, I guess, concerns or caveats about the requirement, trying to
put some language in there requiring matching funds, I think we heard
from many of the panel members, particularly from smaller jurisdictions,
that the likelihood that they would be able to have matching funds is
probably remote, and yet they were able to leverage partnerships by
forming a consortium to take advantage of those opportunities to bring
more money to it.

So I hesitate to put in language to suggest matching funds, but we might
want to think about the possibility of a requirement or more
consideration given to those jurisdictions that are going to partner and
leverage the funds that they have together.

MS. TAFT: Right. When you say matching funds, if it could be in-kind or
dollars, then that makes a whole different picture when it comes to
small communities.

This is Hope again.

MR. JONES: Yes. This is Russell.

Yes, for me, it doesn\'t make any difference where it comes from,
whether it is in-kind or whatever, but I think it is important that this
matching fund, that this be made available because all of the groups
said they have a lack of funds.

So, again, I am just supporting this notion of matching funds, and it is
up to the jurisdictions in terms of where they get the funding.

MR. LEDBETTER: Dave, this is Tommy.

One of the things that we haven\'t even talked about is the Governors\'
part of the money, that 20 percent of set-aside funds there for the
Governor. I mean, if the program is set up for matching, based on some
matching monies, and so forth, it could be set up for a state, all the
state money be set up for competitive grants.

To be a part of this competitive grant process, you have to have some
matching money to go with it. Those smaller areas, where they can\'t
come up with the matching money, couldn\'t the Governors' money help
those schools and school systems?

CHAIRMAN LONG: That is a great question.

MS. DUDE: This is Kim.

My concern is, because I am from Missouri and so we have a lot of very
small towns that have like virtually no businesses in them, and there
are very small school districts that the person who is doing all the
prevention is wearing about 15 other hats. So they are just at a great
disadvantage.

I mean I have talked to a couple of them since our last meeting, just to
get a sense for what their lives are like from that point of view. They
just talked about how they are stretched so thin right now that, if they
had to find matching funds or write yet another grant proposal, that
they couldn\'t do it, or if they did do it, it would take away from the
time they are actually supposed to be doing the actual prevention.

So I just don\'t want to make it so hard for the smaller communities and
the poorer communities. I don\'t want to make it harder for them to \--
I would rather have a more equal playing field, so that they aren\'t at
a disadvantage.

MS. JACKSON: And this is Montean.

I just have a comment or a statement with a regard to the 20 percent
Governors\' funding. Also, as we move to a more formalized evaluation
and a structure, I was hoping as well that part of that 20 percent
funding for those states, especially for those districts that struggle
with having someone to be able to partner with, whether it is through a
university entity or someone on site that does evaluation, for part of
that funding to be utilized at the state level, for all the data to be
gathered, and the 20 percent would go for state evaluation for some of
our states as an option.

And the other piece, with the allocating of the funds, I like what I
hear about the match being in-kind services, and et cetera, but also
some of our, as it has been stated earlier, some of our rural
communities might end up struggling. I am concerned that we might end up
leaving some of the poorer communities, whether it is urban or rural,
behind because they don\'t have the mechanisms in place early on to
apply for some of the funding and to be able to meet that measure, that
leveraging, or the community partnerships, or the things that they need
just because those systems aren\'t in place for them.

MS. TAFT: This is Hope again.

As we have learned through the school shootings, it is not necessarily
the urban schools that get the shootings. It most often seems to be the
small, rural schools that have the violent outbreaks.

MR. KELLAM: Actually, Hope, it is certainly the small, rural schools get
more newspaper attention, but it is also very, very true that the
difficult schools in the major metropolitan poor areas have an enormous
amount of gun-shooting and violence that goes on perpetually. It
doesn\'t get very much attention. Sitting around in Baltimore, you just
don\'t hear about it.

MS. TAFT: Exactly.

MS. PRICE: This is Debbie.

I forget, I think it was Kim who mentioned it, but we have several
grants, discretionary grants. So it is a different program. It is a
discretionary program, that formula.

For example, our physical education grant, there is a required match
that school districts have to come up with, and it increases in the
second year and the third year. It is a three-year grant. That is the
most difficult element.

But what happens \-- and Kim sort of touched on it \-- the poor
communities are the ones who have the most difficulty getting the match
or, because it is there, choose not to go after it.

One of the beauties, even though it is kind of a complicated formula,
the current formula for Safe and Drug-Free Schools funds, because it
takes into case the number of free and reduced lunch students in those
schools, and the population of the schools, so it does, basically, from
the education standpoint, touch on what Dennis\' example is, looking at
the financially-lower income areas and the high-population areas. That
is how those funds are dispersed now. So there is the need aspect there
because of the free and reduced lunch relationship.

But Hope mentioned something and sort of touched on it. But here\'s a
question I have as well as a comment that I have. If you were to give a
minimum number of dollars a community could receive, so that you don\'t
end up with a school receiving \$300, a school district, or some of
those smaller amounts that some of the districts get, those small
communities could have more to use, but those dollars would have to be
taken from the larger school districts.

Do you see what I mean? I mean, you can\'t just increase the bottom line
for everyone without decreasing the top line. You know, that would cause
some complications, or instead of, say, a 20 percent Governors\'
program, you could reduce that percentage. That might help with it. It
certainly wouldn\'t eliminate the bookkeeping issue there, but that
might be \--

CHAIRMAN LONG: Fine. Thanks.

MS. TAFT: This is Hope again.

In Ohio, the 20 percent setaside that goes to the Governor goes to
community-based organizations who provide services to the schools. So if
you reduce that, then you are, in effect, reducing services to the
schools.

But if we are making recommendations for the 2008-2009 budget, or some
budget out there in the future \-- I may have the wrong years \-- is
there a way to recommend that we like the idea of the base amount that
the school will get now, and we would hope that additional funding could
be asked for which would allow a movement toward rewarding effort and
have additional amounts that would be available to schools if they did
X, Y, and Z, whatever we wanted them to do?

CHAIRMAN LONG: Hope, I think that is starting right down the line that
we are heading for for this preliminary report. If Debbie, and then you,
can write to it, as well as other Committee members, but from the
concept angle to take a look at the formula for the purpose of
leveraging dollars to increase the amount through that leveraging,
keeping in mind and of respect for the rural and smaller areas, and then
to tie into things, I think that is probably all we need, I am guessing,
for this preliminary report, mentioning bullets like base amount, and
keeping that in mind with the smaller, rural communities, and taking a
look at the match being either in-kind or dollars, I mean potentials,
that would be research-based. I think Hope had mentioned that earlier.

And that we also at least mention there to take a look at the
Governors\' 20 percent match, depending on what goes on in various
states, as a potential toward that match. So that there is a list of
bullet points as variables, but I think the important concept of
leveraging the dollars to increase service to districts across the
country.

Would that work, Deb, or do we need to go a little further?

MR. KELLAM: This is Shep.

I think we can go just a little bit further, Dave. For example, if you
have a partnership with a research group and you are a school district,
and you\'ve got relevant local agencies involved, public health and
public safety, and the like, we have currently, for example, funding
from NIDA to do a prevention program in Baltimore in 12 elementary
schools. We\'ve been doing that kind of leveraging for years.

The fact is that research groups get a great deal out of the
partnerships when they go in for research money because it is very
impressive to review committees to know that you can randomly assign
schools, kids, classrooms, and so on, that the parents and partners in
the piece, the partnerships are all involved, and you can demonstrate
it. So leveraging money can also be leveraging research money.

The superintendent here and CEO is a co-principal investigator on our
current funding from NIDA. I doubt if we would have gotten the money or
could even do the research without the partnership. So the partnership
really is everybody\'s self-interest, including the research groups.

One of the things that we haven\'t talked about, and I don\'t know
whether we need to for this quick report now, but talked about the role
of the No Child Left Behind assessment, statewide assessment systems.
Those assessment systems, as I mentioned earlier at meetings, can be the
epidemiology which tells you where the high risk and where the problems
are and provides a rationale to both other school districts and the feds
as to why you would put more money in some places rather than others in
order to avoid crises.

So the assessment system in a sense is a wonderful opportunity to do
what we call demographic epidemiology, just to give you a picture of
where the problems are, what they are, how extensive, and what the
message might be for addressing them, as a background rationale.

So I think that the partnership continues to be critical, and the
leveraging of funds can be matching as well as additional funds from
both federal and local levels.

MS. TAFT: This is Hope again.

I think we need to keep in mind that every child is at risk for alcohol
and drug use, for a violent act against them, or to commit a violent
act, particularly, as Shep says, you can identify them in the first
grade. I can\'t think of any first grade that is probably immune to kids
who have behavior or acting-out patterns, now that could stand a little
help.

MR. KELLAM: Right. Well, you know, it is more a question of giving
teachers good tools to socialize kids, Hope. I think that I\'m not
advocating sort of addressing individual children based on first grade
behavior. But it certainly is the case that the universal interventions,
which aim at improving, structuring and improving classroom behavior
management, have huge importance.

MS. TAFT: Yes.

CHAIRMAN LONG: If we then take those \-- and, again, I think the last
few comments, back to that concept of leveraging and then looking at
that formula, that for the sake of this report, this preliminary report,
that that might suffice. Is that a true statement, Debbie?

MS. PRICE: Yes, I think so.

Let me just throw one thing out. It is kind of a nature-of-the-beast
kind of thing. The federal government has the focus of providing dollars
for disadvantaged students. If you look at Title I, the dollars are for
disadvantaged students. It is based on the free and reduced lunch
program. The fewer students you have, the fewer dollars you get.

So we want to make sure that we keep a consistency with the overall
federal role for education. As much as we would like it to be that the
federal role is to give a dollar for every student, it doesn\'t.

So it isn\'t unusual in the Title IV program to have some sections of
that which give credibility to focusing on those schools in need. Often
those are the schools where we see problems related to the office.

But I just throw that out kind of as a nature-of-the-beast kind of
thing. I think we are talking along that line, but to keep in context
with the overall Department focus.

CHAIRMAN LONG: The last two things to mention here, because we have
already talked about getting the information in for the October 23-24
and that set of panels, would be research.

Is Shep still there?

MR. KELLAM: Yes, I am.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Okay, I mentioned research. Okay, but research and
evaluation. On that page 5, it talks about the research aspect, to
address the gap between research and practice.

I think, Shep, that is why earlier I said I think that really plugs in
very well with what we are talking about here, and that \"the
Committee,\" meaning us, \"has noted the possible expiration, and the
benefits and risks of encouraging adoption of strategies other than
specific programs.\" Then, secondly, \"encourage and study work at the
Centers for Disease Control and the other agencies.\"

So to pull the research aspect back into this preliminary report to the
Secretary \-- I would just stop there and throw that out.

MR. KELLAM: It's really a matter of how much we get into precision and
specifics at this point. I think I keep feeling like I want to go
further than we probably can or should go at this particular juncture.

It is the case that the Secretary asked us to talk about or address the
assessment, you know, data that is being gathered by the statewide
assessment systems. I think that it is easy to put that front and
center, those data, as more than just finding out which schools are
failing and should be fired or something.

Those assessment systems really can be used to pinpoint where the
greatest needs are. If they could be enlarged in two ways with minimal
cost, one way would be to include problems around achievement, but also
around behavior and drugs and alcohol.

A second way is that these assessment systems, it is largely up to the
state, and I think it should be encouraged by us and the Department that
the assessments include unique identifiers, so you can follow a child
over time and across schools and look at progress longitudinally, which
is what we really are interested in doing, looking at growth and success
and needs. A number of organizations have called for that kind of
information system, including the Society for Prevention Research.

So I think that the assessment systems could be the backbone of
evaluation as well as identifying areas of greatest need, as well as
identifying growth over time for children. I don\'t know what you all
feel about that. That may be going too far.

MS. TAFT: This is Hope.

I just think that Congress might have a hard time reconciling that
identifier for each child with the desire to keep family sanctity
uppermost in people\'s mind.

MS. PRICE: This is Debbie, and \--

MS. TAFT: Is that a polite way to say it?

MS. PRICE: Yes, I think Hope could not be more right. We will never
eliminate the privacy restrictions that we have regarding school
information, school records. The term is FERPA, Family Education Rights
and Privacy Act. Congress is adamant. I don\'t think we will ever \--
you know, we might make a suggestion that we eliminate the barriers for
that unique identifier, but that personally-identifiable information is
not allowed.

MS. TAFT: That would open a hornet\'s nest I don\'t think we would want
to open.

MS. PRICE: That is a huge hornet\'s nest, and I think we have our own
version; we have a honey bee nest. We don\'t want to make it into a
hornet\'s nest.

When we look more deeply into the data, research stuff, we can get some
more specific information. In fact, we could even have the \-- it is the
Family Policy Compliance Office here at the Department \-- give us kind
of some summations and some understanding, because there\'s two pieces,
one that oversees all surveys that students take. The other is education
records, and that is FERPA.

So it would be good for us to have a good understanding of those two
things. There are a couple of others that are broader, but those are the
specific education ones.

CHAIRMAN LONG: For the sake of this discussion, listening to the last
five or six people, would it be safe for what is going in \-- and you
folks are going to be pulling a lot of things together very quickly, and
I think some of them will be concepts, and general concepts at that \--
for the sake of the research and evaluation, if we could take a look at
the last two paragraphs on page 5 and maybe just have the Committee just
look at those? If that makes general conceptual sense for the sake of
this preliminary report, we go with it, unless you have \-- I mean if
you have some very specific suggestions, we would be happy to get into
that.

But for the sake of this one, which this call is about, would that be
okay to do, those last two paragraphs on page 5 and 6 relative to
research and evaluation?

MS. TAFT: This is Hope.

I think that they make good sense.

MR. KELLAM: Okay, this is Shep. I don\'t want to be a pain in the neck.

I don\'t know that I understand what is meant: \"the benefits and risks
of encouraging adoptionist strategies rather than specific programs.\"
It is not clear to me what that means.

I do understand the political problems of having information systems
about kids. It is the case that we already do it in public health with
vaccinations and all kinds of ways. Of course, there are school records
on individual kids.

But I don\'t want to be fussing over that at this particular juncture
because it is not timely.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Yes, I think \-- and, Debbie, you could clarify this for
all of us \-- but I think those discussions will come into the final,
the June 12th report, rather than this one.

MS. PRICE: Yes. We can certainly expound \-- you know, while we might in
these two paragraphs here see that we need tweaking one place or the
other, I think they are basically introducing the general concept of the
general thought about the gap between research and practice. In the
final report we can delve into that more seriously.

MR. KELLAM: Okay, but I believe that. So you don\'t have to be too
persuasive. Don\'t worry about my psyche.

(Laughter.)

MS. PRICE: Well, but, do you know what, Shep, I think when we look at
the data and evaluation piece, it is really good for us to \-- and I
don\'t know that I\'m by any means as savvy as I should be on it, but
that relationship with what does the health community collect, what does
the education community collect, what are the parameters, you know, the
similarities, we can look at that in the longer picture, looking more
toward the final report.

MR. KELLAM: Right. I just think that, for example, right here in the
paragraph just before the last paragraph is where we would want to put
in that in the long run the partnership that involves research groups
and school districts at local as well as state and federal levels, those
partnerships are going to be a foundation to build on. I think that is
the biggest point we could make right here.

The information systems we have already got in the field are enormously
powerful in indicating where the needs are, what they are. Those are two
key points. I think they need to be said.

I don\'t know that encouraging the study of CDC and SAMHSA \--

MS. TAFT: Well, SAMHSA I know is in the process of developing a
ground-up system, reporting system, that all the states are agreeing to,
which is very similar to what the Department of Education needs to do so
that you can get apples to compare with apples and you don\'t have
apples and oranges and bananas and everything else.

MR. KELLAM: Right.

MS. TAFT: So they might have some expertise of working with national
associations like NASADAD, who in turn work with states to develop the
protocols, or whatever you call them, the questions, the reporting
mechanism that gets the information up to the national level that is
useful to the national level, but is also useful to the local level and
the state level.

MR. KELLAM: Right. No, I don\'t have any problem with \-- I think that
is correct. I just don\'t think these two points are quite as strong as
they might be. It is not obvious that this is what they mean.

MS. TAFT: Yes, I agree with you there, too, Shep.

MS. PRICE: Well, you know what, Shep, if you have some suggestions \--
and, David, I don\'t mean to jump in \-- for how to rephrase it, so it
could be more effective language at this level, we would appreciate it.

MR. KELLAM: Okay. Well, actually, about five minutes before the phone
call, I finally got a few minutes to sit down and write five points out,
and I sent it to Catherine Davis.

MS. DAVIS: Okay. I have been in Debbie\'s office. So once I get back to
my office, I will look for that.

MR. KELLAM: But I would be glad to help. Basically, what we are saying,
I think, is that the partnerships between school districts should really
be a major initiative, both in terms of getting research groups involved
in partnering as well as looking for leveraging funds, as well as
dissemination of new information across school districts around the
country.

I think that that is a major point that I would like to see us pull
together and maybe spell out a little more what we mean by the work of
CDC and SAMHSA.

It is interesting because Helping America\'s Youth, that website has on
it strategies, as you all know, for communities to use research to
assess their problems and to plan solutions collaboratively, in
partnership with researchers.

You know, there is some precedent for thinking about how these
partnerships might work. They\'re just not off the ground.

MS. JACKSON: Debbie?

MS. PRICE: Yes.

MS. JACKSON: Debbie, this is Montean.

One other additional thing, as we are looking at the FERPA connection
and the consents and pulling all those pieces to the pie together, there
is one other piece, 42 CFR. Many of our districts also have drug and
alcohol programs within their school districts as well as partnerships
with community providers. So when we start talking a little bit at our
next opportunity to talk a little bit about FERPA, I think we need to
bring to the table also 42 CFR.

MS. PRICE: Okay. Yes, that would be fine.

And I think Shep\'s comment about the HAY website is a very good
comment. That is a useful tool that gives an example. First, it helps
communities, as Shep said, develop some of those research relationships.
It is a good example as well as a tool for communities to use.

So we might want to, here in this last paragraph, we might want to use
HAY as one of those elements that we are identifying.

MR. KELLAM: Right.

CHAIRMAN LONG: And I think you made a good suggestion. If people have
other ideas on the things we have talked about, to fire those in, but
get them in probably within the hour, because we have covered safety,
funding from the leveraging standpoint, research and evaluation, and
this is a very tight timeline, like in the next 24 to 36 hours. So if
you have those suggestions, please fire them in quickly to Catherine, so
they can be considered.

MS. TAFT: David, this is Hope.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Yes, Hope.

MS. TAFT: I think we are leading down a path that is talking about
consolidating efforts at the local level, so that local people don\'t
have to do a thousand reports that say basically the same thing. If we
could somehow encourage that to happen, so that it is okay at the
federal level, and makes life easier for people at the local level, I
think that would be good.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Yes, that is important.

Any other, as we bring this to a close, any other thoughts, suggestions?

(No response.)

Please get those names in for our next panel. We have already discussed
that process.

Then, as you hang up, if there\'s any thoughts, \"Oh, I wish I would
have said that or written that down,\" fire those right in to Catherine,
so that they can be considered.

MR. LEDBETTER: David, before we break up, just an observation that in
the panelists that made presentations to us, it just appeared to me,
just as a practitioner, that hearing two sides \-- we were hearing the
researchers on the one hand say that the program wasn\'t working because
the research didn\'t bear it out, and then we were hearing the state
representatives, and so forth, say that the programs were working. They
had their own statistics to prove that it was working.

When we look at all of these bullets, these first five bullets that we
had here on page 2, the closing the gap between research and practice to
me is probably the crux of the whole thing. That is where everything is
at.

Because, first off, if all the money that has flowed from Congress
through to all the states, if all of that money, if every penny of it
had been spent in a manner that the research showed that it was
effective, that money would still be coming, and I would venture a guess
that we wouldn\'t even be discussing this today.

But, you know, there are some perceptions that the money is not being
used properly. The most important thing that we need to do is to make
certain that the research and the practice are tied very closely
together.

My perspective, from listening to everything up to this point, I feel
like the states will have to know up front exactly how they are going to
be evaluated, how those programs will be evaluated. If they don\'t pass
the test, well, then the money needs to be pulled from the states, and
just leave it with the states where the states know that to participate
in this program, their programs will have to be evaluated well.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I agree.

MS. TAFT: Yes. That\'s why it would be nice to have the states involved
in the creation of that evaluation plan, so that everybody knows upfront
what is expected.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Right.

Any other comments as we bring this to a close?

MS. TAFT: One more question about the October 23rd-24th. Is that going
to be one panel or is it going to be a series of panels? Will there be
questions that you want those panels to answer, or how is that going to
be done?

CHAIRMAN LONG: It will be more than just one panel. It will be a series,
so that we can hear different points of view. It might not necessarily
be four panels, but it will be at least two or three, depending on the
names that are put forth and the subject matters at hand, and then, of
course, the questions to be formulated.

MS. PRICE: And regarding the questions, the questions for the last panel
we took from the list of questions that the Secretary had asked us to
address. When I talked to those panel presenters, I tried to stress
that, here are those questions that the Secretary has asked for; it is
not an exclusive list; it is those questions. There are certainly
others, and we, as a Committee, probably have come up with a few
ourselves, questions regarding any of those aspects.

So it is not the short list, these are only the questions that they
should address, but, hopefully, I would assume we would give them the
same kind of direction this time and have them understand that this is
the food for thought, and they may have thoughts beyond these questions,
and we would want to hear those. But those questions that the Secretary
addresses are specific ones that we need to look at, and they are
getting us off and rolling on looking at the issues.

MS. TAFT: Okay, that helps.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Well, in closing, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

A lot of information, a lot of things discussed, and I think we can put
this together in a palatable form \-- and go Debbie, Catherine, and
Bill.

So thanks to all of you, stretching from Alaska to Alabama. Everybody
have a wonderful day.

(Whereupon, at 3:35 p.m., the conference call was concluded.)