UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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PRESIDENT\'S COMMISSION ON EXCELLENCE IN

SPECIAL EDUCATION

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FIRST MEETING

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TUESDAY,

JANUARY 15, 2002

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The Commission met at 8:15 a.m. in the Sky Room of the Two Continents
Restaurant, Hotel Washington, 515 15th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.,
Governor Terry Branstad, Chair, presiding.

[PRESENT]{.underline}:

Terry E. Branstad Chairman

Adela Acosta

Steve Bartlett

William Berdine

Paula C. Butterfield

Jay G. Chambers

W. Alan Coulter

Floyd Flake

Thomas Fleming

Jack M. Fletcher

Douglas H. Gill

David W. Gordon

Nancy S. Gramick

Stephen Hammerman

Bryan C. Hassel

Douglas Carl Huntt

Michael James Rivas

Cheryl Rei Takemoto

Katie Harper Wright

[Ex Officio Members Present:]{.underline}

Elizabeth Ann Bryan

Edward Sontag

Robert H. Pasternack

G. Reid Lyon

Wade F. Horn

[Commission Staff Present:]{.underline}

Linda Emory Senior Policy Advisor

C. Todd Jones Executive Director

Troy Justesen Deputy Executive Director

Marisa Munoz Confidential Assistant

I-N-D-E-X

Chairman\'s Welcome - Terry E. Branstad 5

Introduction of Members 11

Chairman Branstad and Commission Members

Paperwork and FACA Briefing 15

Gloria Mounts, Office of Intergovernmental

and Interagency Affairs, U.S. DOE

Welcome, Swearing In - U.S. Secretary of 30

Education, Rod Paige

[Commission Comments]{.underline}

Adela Acosta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Stephen Bartlett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

William Berdine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Beth Ann Bryan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Paula Butterfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Jay Chambers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Alan Coulter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Floyd Flake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Thomas Fleming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Jack Fletcher. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Douglas Gill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

David Gordon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Nancy Grasmick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Steve Hammerman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Brian Hassel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Wade Horn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Douglas Huntt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Reid Lyon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Robert Pasternack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Michael Rivas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Ed Sontag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Cherie Takemoto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Katie Wright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Approval of Agenda - Chairman Branstad 100

Ethics Briefing - Sergio Kapfer, Office of 104

the General Counsel, U.S. DOE

Description of Draft Meeting Schedule, 122

Task Forces, and Hearings - Todd Jones

I-N-D-E-X

Discussion and Approval of Meeting Schedule 145

Task Forces, and Hearings - Chairman Branstad

Overview of Budget - Todd Jones 188

Discussion and Approval of Budget 190

Chairman Branstad

[Public Comments]{.underline}

Paul Marchand 199

Jane West 200

Susan Goodman 204

Leslie Jackson 206

Katie Rae Neas 208

Justine Maloney 210

Myrna Mandlawitz 211

Kim Mucheno 213

Connie Garner 214

Michael Yuden 217

Patty Ralabate 218

Nancy Reder 220

Jamie Ruppmann 222

Deb Ziegler 224

Sharon Walsh 228

Barbara Raimando 229

Linda Vankeuren 232

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

(8:18 a.m.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Good morning and welcome. It\'s a beautiful day in
Washington, D.C. and we\'ve got a beautiful view. The sun is shining and
glad to have you all here this morning.

I want to take a couple of minutes this morning to welcome everyone,
fellow commissioners around the table, old friends, new colleagues,
viewers and staff, to this first meeting of the President\'s Commission
on Excellence in Special Education. This day has been a long time
coming, postponed in the first place by the tragic events of September
11th, then announced by President Bush on October 2nd, only to be
postponed again by the wrangling on Capitol Hill over the appropriation
bills.

Actually, the timing is great since President Bush, just last week,
signed H.R. 1, the No Child Left Behind legislation. It\'s great to get
started. President Bush has made education his highest priority. His
education agenda has four pillars; accountability for results, local
control and flexibility, expanded parental options, and doing what works
to improve student performance.

The first stage in this agenda was President Bush\'s plan to reauthorize
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The second stage in this
agenda will be the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act, IDEA. The children served through IDEA deserve and demand
the same thorough review, the same deliberative attention, and the same
significant reform, and this is where we step in.

President Bush is asking us to apply the same four principles to special
education that he applied to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

A\) Accountability. Accountability for results is just as important for
children with disabilities as other kids.

B\) Flexibility and freedom from Federal red tape can help school
districts tailor their services to the needs of their students,
something that has eluded our special education policy under current law
and practice.

C\) Expanded parental options will help parents of disabled children
choose a format for services that fits their child\'s needs.

And finally, supporting teaching methods and procedures based on
scientific research will ensure that we are doing what works for our
children with disabilities.

The commission was formed by President Bush to recommend policies for
improving the educational performance of students with disabilities. The
commission will supplement and complement the standard process of
reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, but
it is not intended to replace the process which has already begun at the
Department of Education.

The commission will collect information and study issues relating to
Federal, state and local special education programs. It will hold
hearings and meetings around the country, and all meetings will be open
to the public.

The commission is charged with producing a final report to the President
by this summer, containing findings and recommendations in the following
nine areas:

1\) Cost Effectiveness: The effectiveness and costs of special education
and the appropriate role of the Federal Government in Special Education
programming and funding, including an analysis of the factors that have
contributed to the growth and the cost of special education since the
enactment of the Education of all Handicapped Children Act, a
predecessor of IDEA.

2\) Improving Results: How Federal resources can best be used to improve
educational results for students with disabilities.

3\) Research: A special education research agenda.

4\) Early Intervention: The impact of providing appropriate early
intervention in reading instruction on the referral and identification
of children for special education.

5\) Funding Formulae: The effect of special education funding on
decisions to serve, place, or refer children for special education
services and possible alternative funding formulae that might distribute
funds to achieve better results and eliminate any current incentives
that undermine the goals of insuring high quality education for children
with disabilities.

6\) Teacher Quality and Student Accountability: How the Federal
Government can help states and local education agencies provide a high
quality education to students with disabilities, including the
recruitment and retention of qualified personnel, and the inclusion of
children with disabilities in performance and accountability systems.

7\) Regulations and Red Tape: The impact of Federal and state statutory,
regulatory and administrative requirements on the cost and effectiveness
of special education services, and how these requirements support or
hinder the educational achievement of students with disabilities.

8\) What Models Work in the States: How differences in local education
agencies, size, location, demographics, and wealth and in state law and
practice affect which children are referred to special education and the
cost of special education.

And, 9) Federal versus Local Funding: A review of the experience of
state and local governments in financing special education, and an
analysis of whether changes in the Federal \"supplement not supplant\"
and \"maintenance of effort\" requirements are appropriate.

Each member of the commission, each of you bring a fresh perspective
about special education services, providing the President with new ideas
to better serve children with disabilities. We are lucky to have members
who represent all areas of the country. You come from all over America,
and you can think outside the box. The President is looking for exactly
that kind of insight from you to help us as we bring focus and attention
on special education policy.

You are parents, educators, researchers, and administrators. You will
bring the President an understanding of what works and what doesn\'t in
places like California, Iowa, Washington State and elsewhere. You are
experts who know that new ways of looking at special education are
critical to making sure that children with disabilities can reach their
full potential.

You also know that current policies do not always deliver the excellent
education that every child deserves. Each of you has real life
experiences and you\'ve used your expertise in your own unique way to
benefit special education teaching and instruction for disabled
children. Your time has been spent in the classroom, doing research,
serving children and parents in your communities.

Most importantly, you are results-oriented people who know what can be
done to deliver on the promises of special education. I know you are
just as enthused as I am about this special opportunity to serve
President Bush and America\'s children with disabilities.

Now, let me introduce you to our commission staff. Todd Jones is the
Executive Director of the Commission, as well as the Acting Assistant
Secretary in the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights.
Prior to joining the Bush Administration, he served as an Education
Trade Association President and as an attorney on the staff of the U.S.
House Education and Workforce Committee.

During that period, he was the chief negotiator of the IDEA Amendments
of 1997. He holds a B.S., B.A., and J.D. from the University of Denver,
and an L.L.M. from Georgetown University Law Center. And this is Todd. I
think you all know Todd.

Troy Justeson and Troy told me  Troy is back in the back here. Troy
told me he\'s got a brother who graduated from Drake Law School who
works in the Justice Department, and I thought, that\'s pretty good
Justeson in the Justice Department.

But not talking about his brother now, talking about Troy, he serves as
a Deputy Executive Director for the Commission, and prior to this
position, he served as a policy analyst for the Office of Special
Education Programs Director. In the mid-1990s, Troy served more than
three years in the U.S. Department of Justice, working on the
enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

He also worked at Utah State University\'s University Center for
Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, Education, Research, and
Service. Troy has participated as a group member in numerous IDEA
eligibility determinations, and as an IEP team member.

He\'s a former adjunct professor of Special Education. He holds a B.S.
in Education and an M.S. in Special Education, each from Utah State
University, and has a Doctorate in Education from Vanderbilt University.
He has several publications in the field of assistive technology and
secondary and higher education.

Linda Emory, Linda is over in the back here. Linda is the Senior Policy
Advisor. Prior to this appointment, President Bush appointed Linda to be
Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Special Education and
Rehabilitative Services, with Bob Pasternack.

Before this, she was an education budget analyst for the U.S. House
Budget Committee. She held appointments in the Reagan and Bush
Administrations and first came to Washington, D.C. as a staff member
with U.S. Senator Don Nickles.

Linda began her career teaching Special Education in Gallup, New Mexico,
also taught in Oklahoma City and Norman, Oklahoma working with children
with cognitive disabilities and emotional disturbance. She holds a B.S.
in Education, an M.E.D., each from the University of Oklahoma.

Marisa Munoz is a Confidential Assistant to the Commission. Is Marisa
here? Okay. Marisa Munoz is the Confidential Assistant to the
Commission. Previously, Marisa was employed in the Office of
Presidential Personnel at the White House. Some of you may remember her
calls during your clearance process.

Prior to moving to Washington, D.C., Marisa worked on George W. Bush\'s
Presidential Campaign in Austin. Her public policy service also extends
to the state level, where she worked in former Governor Bush\'s Office
of Constituent Services, and as a Fellow in the Texas Governor\'s
Appointments Office.

Marisa is a graduate of the University of Texas in Austin. She also
attended Baylor University and also studied abroad in Mexico. A native
of Texas, Marisa was born in San Antonio, and grew up in Forest Hill, a
small town just south of San Antonio.

I\'m confident with this small, but very competent and qualified staff,
they will provide us with excellent service to you members of this
commission, to the President, as we work on this in the coming months.

My goal as Chairman of the Commission is to have a very open and
transparent process that will give everybody an opportunity for input.
Our commission\'s operations have no preset policy agenda. We will be
traveling the country for our meetings and hearings, seeking information
on what works and what needs work in Special Education. We will be
collecting data on best practices and looking at exemplary programs.

I\'m sure that you as commission members will agree with me that we have
no preconceived ideas or conditions as we begin this process. Our only
agenda is to serve President Bush by recommending policies that promote
excellence and achievement for children and adults with disabilities.

On behalf of the President, I want to welcome the commission members to
Washington, D.C. and thank the members of the commission for their
service and for the good work that they will do this year for this
country. But, we must remember that we are going to be serving as a
government body, and we can not start a government entity without
following official procedures.

In today\'s case, that includes paperwork. To help us finalize our
paperwork, we\'re joined by Gloria Mounts, a Committee Management
Officer from the Department\'s Office of Inner-governmental and
Inner-agency Affairs. It may look like a daunting task and

when I looked at the stack of paper and notebooks and everything before
me, I said \"oh my goodness. What have we gotten into.\"

But even though it may look like a daunting task, with Gloria\'s
excellence guidance, I\'m sure it will be done in no time. So at this
time, I\'m pleased to introduce Gloria Mounts. Gloria, do you want to
come up here and lead us through this?

MS. MOUNTS: Good morning, and this isn\'t going to be as bad as it
seems. I have nothing to do with that big notebook in front of you. I\'m
Gloria Mounts. I\'m a Committee Management Officer for the Department of
Education, and I\'m here to give you a very brief briefing on the
Federal Advisory Committee Act, and explain some of the management
procedures mandated by that law.

I think I\'ve gotten a letter out to most of you already, and enclosed a
copy of the GSA overview of the FACA. I don\'t know if you\'d had any
chances to rad any of this information yet, but this is a very condensed
version of the Act\'s requirements. So we\'re not going to take the time
today to go through each area here. But, if you\'re really, really
interested in what the Act has to say, this little brochure from GSA
does a very good job in that.

FACA was enacted in 1972 by Congress, to formally recognize the merits
of seeking advice and assistance from our nation\'s citizens. The
department pocket folder that I passed out this morning in front of you
is basically what I\'d like to deal with this morning. I think they gave
me 15 minutes. I\'m sorry. Should I lower it a little bit? Okay.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: This is the folder right here?

MS. MOUNTS: This is the folder and it has everyone\'s name on it, and on
the left-hand side of the folder are the personnel forms that you will
need to sign and date for me, and I\'ve highlighted the areas in which 
I\'ve tried to make this as simple as possible. I\'ve highlighted the
areas that you really need to focus on, but if you\'re really into
reading government forms, you know, be my guest there.

I\'ll be glad to go over these if I\'ve got enough time at the end of
the short briefing I want to give. On the right-hand side is the short
brief I\'m going to be doing this morning. There\'s a copy of the
Commission\'s Charter which is probably a duplicate. You probably have
this one already in your large folder, but I wasn\'t sure, so I included
the charter.

There\'s a copy of an SF-1199.A, which is a direct deposit sign-up form.
This is for reimbursement for when you attend, when you go on travel and
you attend these meetings. This is a reimbursement form that you need to
sign and date. You need to take this home with you, because you have to
get your financial institute to also address Section 3 of this form.

And then if you\'ll just return that form after your financial  after
you\'ve signed it and your financial institute has signed it, we\'ll
make sure you get reimbursed from the department for your expenses that
you\'ve incurred.

So, I\'ll just begin with a short briefing. There are three information
references that are very important in regards to FACA. There\'s the
Federal Advisory Committee Act itself, and you\'ve heard me say FACA,
F-A-C-A is the abbreviation that we use for the public law. There is a
GSA Federal Advisory Committee final rule, which is the management
guidelines for managing department committees, and there is also Public
Law 94-904, which is the Government and Sunshine Act, which requires the
openness of the meetings for Federal Advisory Committees.

These three sources of information can be found on GSA\'s website. I did
not include them in this packet. If you\'re interested, you may pull
them up, but basically I\'m going to hit the highlights of what these
three sources of information contain.

Basically, the law requires the Department of Education to appoint a
person, such as myself, to be responsible for the establishment and
overseeing of the operations. The CMO established a policy and maintains
information about the committee, such as your membership. I provide
assistance to the Office of the Secretary in advisory committees that he
makes appointments to, and I provide guidance and assistance to the
Executive Directors of advisory committees.

The Department of Education writes and files a charter for each advisory
committee. The law also requires that no committee can meet without a
charter being filed on the Hill with the Library of Congress, and of
course, yours has been signed by the Secretary and it has been filed,
and there\'s a copy of your charter in your briefing packet.

A charter basically contains your authority, your purpose and your
function, your structure, your meetings, an estimated costs of what this
committee is going to incur, any special reports, and this particular
committee is a Presidential Committee. Therefore, it has a follow-up
requirement and that basically is required by FACA. It is a response
that the department is responsible for, once your recommendations and
your report is made. The department must, within a year, respond to
those recommendations.

At a point, a designated Federal official or Executive Director, which
has been done, Mr. Jones is acting in that capacity, and his principal
responsibility is that he serves as the liaison with the committee and
the department. The designated Federal official must be present at all
meetings. He has several responsibilities too that are listed in the
laws, and he and I will be having a briefing, just to go over and make
sure he understands what his duties are in regards to this commission.

The chair, of course, calls all the meetings and works with the
designated Federal official, and approves the agenda, working back and
forth with the chair and the designated Federal official. The commission
must, and this is the DFOs responsibility, he must notify the public of
all the meetings and hearings, at in at least 15 days, this notice must
appear in the [Federal Register]{.underline}. This is one of the
requirements of the law.

If we can\'t meet a 15-day requirement, we are required in that notice
to say why, and sometimes that happens. It\'s just a matter of making a
notation. Basically what they\'re trying to say is they want you to let
the public know when you\'re having meetings so that they have the
opportunity to attend and participate.

You must have a quorum to meet. It\'s very important. There must be 10
commissioners present at each meeting in order to have an official
meeting. So it\'s very important that  we\'ll probably have a full
commission at all times I\'m sure, but it is important to keep that in
mind, that if we can\'t pull 10 of you at least together at one time, a
meeting can not take place.

Commission and we\'ve mentioned this before, the subcommittee meetings
are open to the public. If you\'re going to close a meeting at any time,
or partially close a meeting, we must have our Office of General Counsel
approve that. There are exemptions in the Sunshine Law that say you can
meet in privacy.

But the department really likes to keep these meetings as open as
possible, and there are only a few exemptions that you can close
meetings, and those are listed in the law and they basically are if
you\'re going to be discussing something on a personal nature, you know,
where you\'re discussing maybe personal information about a body or an
entity that might cause some kind of conflict with the public if it were
to be released, you know, in a public forum.

But contact me or Mr. Jones if the chair wants to or thinks that he has
exemptions for closing a meeting, and we will review that and our
Department of General Counsel will approve those meetings after
reviewing them.

Members of the public may file written documents with the commission,
either before or within a reasonable time after the meeting, but
participation in the commission\'s meetings is at the discretion of the
chair, and there are several ways, I will talk with Mr. Jones, which we
can get this public participation. And I think we\'re going to be
working on a website, where the public will be able to  have a
commission\'s website where everyone can go online and make comments.
But I\'ll be discussing that with Mr. Jones. Several of our other
Federal Advisory Committees have done this and this has worked very
successfully.

Okay, minutes of course, are kept of these meetings. They are official
records. You are a Presidential Commission; therefore, all of your
actions and your attendance and everything that goes on at this meeting
will be recorded, and the chair must verify and sign those minutes
within a 90-day period of the meeting. And those minutes are made
available to the public within that time so they can get copies of the
minutes from the Initiative Office. Todd Jones\' office will have those
available for anyone who wants to see copies of that.

Each year, we must the department must prepare an annual report for all
of our advisory committees. So, I\'ll be working with this committee to
give them those procedures. But basically, it will list the membership.
It has the accomplishments of the commission, and it lists all the
meetings that have taken place during that fiscal year.

It is a fiscal year report that is required by the President to
Congress. And the General Services Administration has been delegated by
the President to be the overall government overseer of this report, and
also of Federal advisory committee acts in general. And, I will be
working with  this is an online report.

I had given you the website at the top of this briefing. If you\'re
interested in going in and looking at any other department activities,
we have four Presidential Advisory Committees in the department at
present, and that\'s something if you want to just take a look at that
is available online through gsa.gov.

Let\'s see. This commission may establish subcommittees, but it must be
from members that are sitting at this table. You can not go outside and
pull in any additional assistants for your subcommittee membership. I
must be notified if you decide to do this. I don\'t know if in your
working, when you start developing your working plan, whether 
sometimes committees like to break off and give tasks to a smaller group
to get a task accomplished, and I will just need a copy of who those
members are and what subcommittees that they\'re going to be working
over.

The committee may conduct business by teleconference, with advanced
approval of the Assistant Secretary for OSERS. Dr. Pasternack is
required by the department to approve this teleconferencing type of
meeting.

Special provisions for this commission: The members serve as special
government employees. You have on your agenda today, Sergio is coming to
give you your ethics briefing. That\'s an interesting time, and he will
go over all the standards of conduct that you will be expected to adhere
to, when you\'re serving as a special government employee, which we call
SGEs.

And that brings me to the point, that\'s the reason you have the forms
on the left-hand side of your packet. Those are the personnel forms. In
order for me to get you into the employment part of this action, you
need to sign these forms, and I\'ll be able to put you into our
Department of Education personnel system.

By not later than April 30th, the Executive Order calls for this
commission to submit a report to the President, outlining its findings
and recommendations. And as I discussed before, this commission invokes,
it\'s Section 6-B of FACA, which concerns the disposition of
recommendations to the President contained in your report. So one year
after your report is completed, our department is delegated the
responsibility of responding to those recommendations, and that is in
your charter.

Are there any questions about FACA that someone might have that I might
be able to answer? If not, I would  how much time? Oh, I\'ve gone over
a little bit. But I\'d be glad to, if you\'d like, to just run through
the forms on the left-hand side. Do you feel that\'s important or? Do
you want to do that? Okay.

The very first thing that you\'ll see is your Affidavit of Appointment.
This came with your  most of you I hope have received your commissions
from the President. I still have three that have not come from the State
Department yet, but they will be mailed, you know, as soon as I receive
them. They were sent certified mail. So if you haven\'t received them,
you should be receiving them. And the Appointment of Affidavit, I think
the Secretary is coming to swear everyone in.

Once he has sworn you in, if you\'ll just sign where I\'ve highlighted,
you just sign that you\'ve been appointed. You\'ve taken your Oath of
Office. The reason you have to sign two copies is, I have to return one
to the State Department for their records. So that\'s not too difficult.
The second form is your Declaration of Federal Employment. Basically, if
you fill this form out, I can really take the information from this form
and help you where you won\'t have to be putting your Social Security
and your date of birth on all the other forms. So it\'s just a matter of
having to sign them.

So I would be glad to do that for you if you would like that. I can
transpose this information because this will all be coming back to me.
And there are some questions that you must answer, the yes or no
questions, and there are also questions on the back of this form, and
also under Item 17  I\'m sorry 16-A and B. That\'s basically where you
will sign and date that. You can put today\'s date on all these forms.

The Personnel Office has  if you all would like to just fill those out.
I mean, that would be heavenly. I just don\'t want to take up too much
more time. But the next form is just a simple, it\'s race and national
origin identification form, and that\'s a matter of, like I said, I will
fill in your Social Security and your birth date on this if you prefer.
All you need to do is check one of those boxes. If I\'m doing this too
quickly for you, please just let me know.

The next is a Memorandum of Understanding. This just, you are a non-paid
commission and our Office of Personnel wants you to really understand
you\'re not being compensated for your work, so they insist that I get
you to sign this form. I think I\'ve attached the Executive Order to the
back of that just for your information, that highlights the compensation
issue that the President wrote into the Executive Order.

The next form is your request for official correspondence. Again, I\'ll
add your Social Security Number if you\'d like. All you have to do is
answer the question if you\'ve been employed by the department for the
last three years, check yes or not, and then your official
correspondence address is needed and your signature at the bottom of
this form. You sign your life away.

We\'re almost done. The next one is your employment eligibility
verification. In the letter that I mailed to you, I asked each of you to
bring a copy of a passport or a copy of your driver\'s license and a
birth certificate. If you have a passport, that is the only copy I need.
If you only have a copy of your driver\'s license, I do need two forms
of identification there.

If you don\'t have that with you, you may send that to me or fax it to
me even. I have put my fax number and my telephone number and my e-mail
on that very first three-page briefing sheet, and like I said, all you
need to do is basically, on that employment eligibility is attach the
copies of your ID and then check the appropriate box that you are a
citizen or a national of the United States, or either of those other
boxes.

And then the last form is the self handicapped identification code, 05
is \"I have a handicap but I\'m not listed below,\" or 05, I\'m sorry,
is \"I do not have a handicap.\" The department has been asked by the
Office of Personnel Management to pull this information in for different
studies on employment of the handicapped.

Are there any questions on these forms? And, if you didn\'t have a
chance to finish filling those out, if you will just at some time today
look through those and just sign and add your attachments, that would be
great. You can return those forms to Linda or someone on the staff here.

MR. JONES: What we\'ll do is, because there\'s going to be a break here,
after the swearing in, we\'re going to have photographs with the
Secretary taken. During the course of that if you finish, we\'ll collect
them. Linda, would you be willing? Linda\'s at the door and she\'ll
collect them from you and we\'ll take them away from you and you never
have to see them again.

MS. MOUNTS: That\'s right. And the only other form, of course, that I
need you to mail back is on the other side of your packet and that\'s,
like I said, is your self deposit form for your reimbursement check. I
need that back as soon as possible, because we can\'t process any of the
forms until they\'re all completed.

So if you can get those completed and back to me at your earliest
convenience, that would be most helpful. And, I will be here for a
little while if there\'s any questions on the form during the break,
I\'ll be in the front row. I\'ll be glad to assist anyone who might need
some help.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Why don\'t you just continue to fill our your forms,
because the Secretary isn\'t scheduled to be here for a few minutes yet.
So, this would be an opportunity to just complete that. We\'ll take a
little break and give people a chance to complete their paperwork.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record.)

The Secretary of Education, I just had the opportunity to be with him
last week at the signing of H.R. 1, the Secretary of Education, Rod
Paige, and he will give us a welcome. The Secretary of Education, Rod
Paige, welcome.

(Applause.)

SECRETARY PAIGE: Mr. Secretary, thank you. Good morning everyone.

PARTICIPANTS: Good morning.

SECRETARY PAIGE: Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, welcome to the
nation\'s capitol, and welcome to the President\'s Commission on
Excellence in Special Education. I want to thank each of you for your
willingness to serve. This is what makes our country great, good men and
good women willing to serve. Thank you so much.

President Bush, Thursday in his office announced to the nation that
education was his highest domestic priority, and he asked Congress to
undergo a vigorous bipartisan debate on how we can use the Federal role
in education, to create a culture in education that was based on
achievement, and to create a system of American education that leaves no
child behind.

He proposed four pillars for this reform: accountability for results,
flexibility in local control, expanded parental options, and a use of
education practices that are based on science. Congress responded in the
tradition of that great American institution, and last week President
Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act and so a landmark in
American education was thus established.

Another landmark in American education was established in 1975, for it
was then that Congress passed the first version of the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act. This important legislation was good for
America and it had made great strides in helping students with
disabilities.

The idea insured access to public education for millions of children who
had otherwise been denied it. Children who were once excluded from our
schools were not sitting in classrooms alongside their non-disabled
peers. They were graduating from high school. They\'re pursuing
post-secondary education and productive employment.

Yet despite this great legislation and despite the progress we\'ve made,
all is not well for many children with disabilities. There are still
significant achievement gaps between children with disabilities and
their peers. Children with disabilities are not completing school and
perform at levels of their non-disabled peers. Our system fails to teach
many children fundamental skills like reading, and then inappropriately
identifies them as having disabilities.

Our system identifies many children who have disabilities much too late.
Some state data tells us that the proportion of minority students,
identified in some disability categories, dramatically greater than
their share of the overall population. This is especially true for
African-American students in the categories of mentally retarded and
emotionally disturbed, and the list goes on and on and on.

But let\'s just sum it up by saying, many children with disabilities are
being left behind. That\'s unacceptable. When the President says he
wants a system of American education which leaves no child behind, he
means it literally, and he means children with disabilities also. And
so, we ask your help. We ask you to take a look at how this law is
performing and help us fix it. We need your help.

Some have advised that all that\'s needed is to spend more money. These
well-meaning people fail to notice how poorly this law is performing.
They\'ve also failed to notice that President Bush\'s funding is at a
historical level. Some of President Bush\'s commitments to the belief
that every child can learn, has led him to ask for the largest increase
in spending for IDEA ever requested by any President in the history of
our nation.

But money alone can not improve our student results. Additional funding
must be accompanied by reform. Some have advised that, just like Social
Security is the third rail of American politics, IDEA is the third rail
of American education. They advise that it is political suicide and said
it is politically dangerous. Better just give it more money and leave it
alone and hope it fixes itself. President Bush believes they\'re wrong.

This is not about political safety. It is about our children\'s future.

Not only is President Bush the first President to speak publicly about
excellence in special ed, he\'s also been willing to fund it at
historical levels, as I\'ve indicated. He\'s just as concerned about
reforming special ed this year as he was about reforming ESEA last year.
He\'s committed to the bold proposition that every child can learn, and
we\'re going to keep saying this until America understands that we mean
this literally, every one of them.

This doesn\'t mean that after you siphon off children with disabilities
the rest of them can learn. Nor does this mean that when we move away
children who have never been properly taught to read in early grades,
the rest of them can learn. This does not even mean that when we take
the children who have limited English proficiency and push them aside,
that the others can learn. Or even the children who are disruptive in
their classroom, this means them too, all of them, each and every one of
them.

(Applause.)

SECRETARY PAIGE: In fact, when the President says no child left behind,
he means children with disabilities most of all, for they are the
children who are most often left behind.

And so, we turn to the reauthorization of IDEA. Now we can build on the
progress and the momentum that that great law has provided us thus far.
The four pillars that reformed ESEA last year: accountability for
results, local control and flexibility, expanded parental choice, and
doing what works based on scientific research, apply to IDEA just as
well.

And also, the bipartisan spirit with which ESEA was constructed should
also apply to IDEA. Your task as commissioners is to discover what works
to improve the performance of the students with disabilities receiving
special ed services.

Talk to the experts. Examine the research. Study preventative reading
programs. Look at how funding affects students with special ed.
Investigate how different school districts succeed or fail. Think of
ways that we can recruit and retain high qualified teachers for our
special ed kids. Listen to what states and districts need to improve
special ed services. Think broadly. Think creatively.

Bob Pasternack, the Assistant Secretary for Education for the Office of
Special Ed and Rehabilitative Services has just completed a seven city
listening tour to learn what educators need to improve such special
education. He\'s the Federally designated officer with the commission
and is prepared to help you. Use his services. He\'s a committed
professional.

Bob and I have many concerns, including our desire to make sure that the
right kids are in special education and that they\'re getting the right
services. The wide range of expertise of this commission is a great
strength, and we\'re so pleased that you\'ve agreed to join. Among your
parents and teachers, administrators and researchers, and policymakers
and elected officials.

Many of you bring practical experiences, so it should bring a vast store
of theoretical knowledge. But your goal is all the same. You all care
deeply, as we care deeply about our students, and we\'re here to do them
good. You may disagree along the way. Remember that disagreement is
fine. We\'ll disagree without being disagreeable, because our goal is
the same. We want better services for our children.

IDEA is up for reauthorization next year. Your report will be of
immediate help, but don\'t limit your thinking to the recommendations in
this legislation. Think deeply and think creatively. The way we educate
our children reveals our character. Let\'s show strong character. No
American should be satisfied until every American child is learning, and
I look forward to working with all of you to reform IDEA, so that all of
our students with disabilities are receiving great services.

Under President Bush\'s leadership, we\'ll transform the role, the
Federal role in education. We\'ll fix it so that every child has an
opportunity. I\'m confident that the same commitment and dedication that
went into ESEA, if applied to IDEA, our children will benefit greatly.
Thank you again for your willingness to undertake this great mission.

Now, I\'m pleased to administer the oath of membership to the
commission. So, if you\'ll raise your right hand and repeat after me.

(Members of the Commission Sworn.)

SECRETARY PAIGE: Congratulations for each of you, and thank you so much
for joining us.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Mr. Secretary, thanks for your inspiration and your
challenge to us. Now, I\'d ask you to take your name tags off. We\'re
going to get an opportunity to have our picture taken with the
Secretary. I think we\'re going to go over here for this.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record.)

MR. JONES: Actually, we\'re going to be right here.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Oh, between the banner, under the banner. But take
your name tags off. We\'ll go around. We\'ll go in alphabetical order.
We\'ll start with Adela here, just go right on around the table.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So if you could retake your seats, we\'re going to
start in about 30 seconds. Congratulations, you\'re all official, have
now been sworn in, and I think the Secretary challenged us and I think
did a great job of giving us a welcome and the charge of our
responsibilities coming up.

It is likely that our mission will be extended until mid-summer. That\'s
not official yet, but as you know, it was anticipated our first meeting
would be in October and since it got pushed back to this time, it looks
like our final report, because of the  and this is an ambitious
schedule that we have anyway, we\'ll probably be extended.

So those of you that heard that April 30th deadline, I just wanted to
assure you that I think there\'s a good chance that we\'ll be extended.
First of all, we just want to get acquainted with each other. I want to
tell you a little bit about my background and we\'re going to go around
the room and give everybody an opportunity to spend two or three minutes
just telling about themselves.

I guess being a politician, you know, it\'s not too hard to talk about
yourself. I had a lot of experience doing that. I come from Iowa where
we\'re taught to be humble, and so I\'ve had to learn to overcome that.
But, I grew up on a farm in Iowa and educated in a state that cares
deeply about education, had a mother, a Jewish mother that really was an
advocate for education.

I came from this little town of Leland, Iowa and we didn\'t have
Kindergarten, but our high school kids went to Four Cities where they
did have Kindergarten, so my mother and Mary Jane Holland, another
mother, put Martha Holland and I on the bus to go with the high school
kids to Four Cities to start Kindergarten and shamed our school into
starting Kindergarten one week late. So I did get to go to Kindergarten,
and eventually graduated from Four Cities High School, the University of
Iowa.

I was a Vietnam-era draftee. I went in the service September 7, 1969 and
I served in the military police at a time that wasn\'t very popular to
serve, came back and with the help of the G.I. Bill, went to Drake Law
School. And Mr. Justeson\'s brother also graduated from Drake Law
School, and I went to Drake after going to the University of Iowa
because it was in the capitol city and I was interested in government.
And low and behold, my second year of law school, I ran for the
legislature.

I lived on a farm on the northern edge of the state. You may have heard
of Winnebago Industries that makes the motor homes. I\'m from Winnebago
county. I saw that company start when I was Age 11 and I don\'t have any
stock and it\'s doubled in the last year. And I\'m now in the financial
services business. I may not be that smart. I don\'t know.

So, when I was in my second year of law school, the Iowa Legislature was
reapportioned, and my mother who cared deeply about education says,
finish law school before you run. I said \"this is the opportunity. I
got to do it now. I will finish law school.\" I did run for and get
elected to the legislature in \`72, when I was 25 years old, and at the
same time, continued and took 10 hours in law school, passed it,
completed my law school just a summer school late.

I served three terms in the legislature and practiced law part-time in
Iowa. We have a citizen legislature. When I was 31 years old, I was
elected Lieutenant Governor of the state, and then four years later, our
very popular governor, unexpectedly decided not to run again, and I ran
and was elected governor. He served 14 years and low and behold, I went
from being the youngest governor to the longest serving. I served 16
consecutive years as governor. During the farm crisis of the \`80s
through the flood of \`93. It wasn\'t always disasters while I was
governor, but I did deal with a lot of them.

Education has always been a priority in Iowa. It was one of mine. We
built a fiber optics network. We focused on improving education in
making teacher salaries more competitive. I was in the legislature when
we passed the Special Education Law in the state before the Federal law
was passed. I think it was 1973 or 4 when we passed that. In fact, Chuck
Grassley who is now our senior Senator, I think managed that bill that I
voted for.

We also have had a long tradition of support for education at all levels
in Iowa, and I was honored to serve the people in that capacity. I did
leave office after serving 16 years. I chose not to run again in 1998,
and I\'m not working as a financial advisor with Robert W. Baird. It\'s
a Milwaukee-based company. So if any of you are interested in stocks,
bonds or securities, you want to talk to me about that.

No, that\'s probably not the appropriate thing to do here. That\'s
before the ethics discussions, right? So, I\'ll probably learn now that
I can\'t do that.

But I want to say this, I believe  while I was governor, I had a press
conference every week. I come from a state that\'s had a history and
tradition of clean, open and honest government, and we may disagree on
issues and also I had the opportunity to work with legislators of both
parties, and most of the time I was governor, the other party controlled
the legislature. And, I\'ve learned that it\'s important to work in a
bipartisan basis to focus on ways we can make things better.

And I know it\'s a controversial and a challenging issue, and talking
with Steve Bartlett here who was saying, you know, it\'s almost kind of
a love-hate relationship. People love the law, but they hate some of the
results and want to see them better. I think our responsibility is to
take what\'s been done, build on it to try to make it better and to try
to, indeed, make the President\'s vision of leaving no child behind
something that truly works for everybody, including the handicapped and
disabled.

So, thank you for the opportunity to serve with you and I\'m honored to
be your chair, and I\'m looking forward to the next five or six months
that we\'re going to spend together. If any of you have any suggestions,
or ideas, or criticism that you would like to direct, don\'t hesitate to
give me a call. And, again, I want to reiterate the fact that I\'m
excited about this opportunity and I appreciate the chance to work with
all of you. So Adela, we\'ll turn it over to you.

MS. ACOSTA: Wow, how do you top that? Hard act to follow. Buenos dias.
My name is Adela Acosta, and I have the privilege of being the principal
of a school named Cesar Chavez Elementary school in Hyattsville,
Maryland in the great state of Maryland. I have a bifurcated background,
if you will.

I come from two islands, the island of Manhattan and the island of
Puerto Rico, and some of you already know that I am called the
\"newyorican\" on the commission. I bring to this commission gratitude,
first of all as an American, to serve on this commission and I\'m deeply
grateful to President Bush for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime,
and I serve here with great appreciation and gratitude to my
grandparents who brought out family to the mainland.

I serve, hopefully, as the voice of practicality. I have been in
education for over 25 years, and not only am I a practitioner in the
field on a daily basis, but I am a person that the Secretary mentioned.
I was placed in a class for the mentally retarded because I couldn\'t
speak English, and because I was disenfranchised and marginalized by
poverty and race. So I serve with great passion.

I have been able in this great country of ours to receive an excellent
education, and not only is it now theoretical and practical, but I bring
to this commission a great passion and a great desire to ensure that,
like myself, no child be left behind.

So I thank you and I also invite anyone to share with me their insights,
their experiences, because together we will form the voice the President
Bush needs to move the education of all children forward at this great
time to be an American. Thank you.

MR. BARTLETT: I\'m Steve Bartlett. I\'m from Texas, where we were not
taught to be humble. But my wife of 32 years, and my three grown
children have tried to teach me a little bit about it ever since. I\'m a
recovering politician, having served for some 20 years in elected
office, both politics and policy has long been my passion. I was quite
involved in the 1980s in Congress. It was a decade on disability issues,
in which I believe that the country moved from programs to dependence to
laws of independence.

I think that\'s a lot of what we\'re here today. Students are graduating
under IDEA. Our task, I think, is to cause all students to graduate,
using the tools available at IDEA. I was involved in the issues during
the 1980s of ADA and IDEA, both the 1990 act that converted what was
called the Public Law 94-142, into what\'s now called IDEA.

I look forward to the challenges ahead of us. I thought that the
secretary\'s challenge, as he laid it out and as he represented
President Bush\'s challenge to us, is a challenge that I think this
commission can rise to, and I look forward to working with you, Mr.
Chairman, and each one of you towards meeting those challenges.

DR. BERDINE: My name is Bill Berdine. I\'m a professor of special
education and department chair at the University of Kentucky of the
department of special education and rehabilitation counseling. While
this youthful visage might fool you, I\'ve been around a little longer
than I look, not to be humble. I\'ve 30 years of experience in higher
education, and I bring that to the commission very respectfully. I have
very strong interests in the transmission of research from the
university campuses into the schools.

I think we\'ve done a very poor job in that area. I think the research
agenda that this commission\'s been asked to look at is an area that I
think I can add to. I think it\'s one of the areas that higher education
really does need to attend to. I\'m also very concerned about the
quality of the product of special education practitioners or higher
education. I think we all are pretty aware, I think, of the shortages of
practitioners in the field. It\'s pretty well documented.

What a lot of people are not aware of is the shortage in higher
education faculty. A recent study released by the Higher Education
Consortium for Special Education (HECSE), in conjunction with OSEP,
showed very clearly there\'s about a 30 percent shortage of faculty in
special education.

If you translate that to the development of teacher practitioners, you
may have some understanding of why there\'s a concern about the
relationship between the shortage of faculty and the shortage of
fully-qualified practitioners. So I hope to bring some of that attention
to the commission, as well as in the area of early intervention.

After 30 years, I see very clearly that we need to start prior to birth.
When we talk early intervention, I\'m not talking about three and
four-year-olds. I\'m talking about prior to birth. Parents need to be
better educated about human development, growth and development,
emphasis on literacy in the home and the impact on schooling. So those
are my areas of interest. I\'m looking forward to the experience. Thank
you.

MS. BRYAN: I\'m Beth Ann Bryan. I\'m an ex officio member of this
committee. I\'m currently the Senior Advisor to Secretary Rod Paige. In
my previous life, I was Education Policy Director for Governor George
Bush, the very first year he was in office. Then I worked for the
Governor\'s Business Council on various of the governor\'s education
initiatives, and have done a lot of work with Mrs. Bush\'s initiatives,
in particular her early childhood and obviously now teacher preparation.
Both of those issues obviously apply in this circumstance.

Prior to that, I taught elementary school for a number of years, and for
12 years I was in a private psychological practice, and I saw children
and their families in therapy and I was the one who went to the ARD
meetings and was the advocate for the child and the families.

MS. BUTTERFIELD: I\'m Paula Butterfield and I think I come as a
practitioner as well. I\'m a recovering superintendent. I\'ve been a
superintendent for a decade and stepped back recently to work as a
deputy superintendent in the Pittsburgh schools and work on reform in
literary primarily, literary, mathematics, and special education are
major initiatives that we\'ve begun there.

As a school administrator, top level school administrator, I\'ve been
somewhat of a gypsy and so I\'ve had an opportunity to work in Maryland,
and I was superintendent in Montana for a decade, and I\'ve worked in
Kansas and a few other places. I think a moving target is harder to hit.
But I have a Masters Degree in Reading from the University of Maryland
and Ph.D. in Special Education from the University of Maryland as well.

DR. CHAMBERS: My name is Jay Chambers. I\'m a senior research fellow at
the American Institutes for Research. I really come to this as somebody
who happens to have done work in the last eight or nine, ten years in
special education finance. But I really come to this commission as
somebody who has done work in school finance for the last 25 or 30 years
of my career, whatever that is. Well, anyway we\'ll leave the age out of
this.

I\'m currently serving as the President-elect of the American Education
Finance Association and am  which means basically, I planned the
conference for this year, which is coming up in March, and I\'m doing
everything I can to get special education on that agenda.

I\'ve asked our new Assistant Secretary Bob Pasternack to be one of the
keynote speakers. So I\'m saying that publicly, so he can\'t back out.
Anyway, we\'re looking forward to have him come and talk to us about
IDEA and the implications for finance, so I can figure out what it is
I\'m supposed to have been doing for the last eight to ten years.

I have been in academic and in research virtually all my life. I started
out, my Ph.D. is in economics from Stanford, and I went from there to
the University of Chicago and ultimately the University of Rochester and
finally back to Stanford. I\'m a rare breed, native Californian and have
now concluded I really want to stay there for the rest of my life if I
can at all possibly do that.

At any rate, I am looking forward to the opportunity to serve on the
commission, and in learning a great deal from the practitioners. We get
out there once in a while, but I don\'t think enough to really talk to
people in the field. Right now, we are doing projects in about 13
states, 11 of those are in special education, and some represented
around this table, as well as nationwide. So I\'m the Director of the
Special Education Expenditure Project, which I am currently finishing,
well doing. We\'ll talk about finishing later, but doing for the Office
of Special Education programs.

MR. COULTER: Good morning. My name is Alan Coulter and I\'m very pleased
to join this group. I am, along with all the other recovering, I\'m a
recovering Texan. I live in New Orleans, Louisiana. I\'m proud of my
expatriate status. I currently working higher education as an academic,
but I came to higher education very late in life, because I worked in
special education programs in Texas and in Louisiana prior to that time.

I am a proud grandparent of six grandchildren, one of whom is a junior
this year, who said to me on Sunday, \"you know, gee whiz my teacher in
the 6th grade told me that I wasn\'t very smart and she said, you know,
so I don\'t really know if I\'m going to be able to go to college or
not.\"

I have to tell you, you know, it\'s one thing to read. It\'s one thing
to experience the numbers, et cetera. It is a much different thing to
encounter an individual child who is a product of public education. And
I believe that the role of law is to protect the dreams of children, and
that the role of law as it relates to children with disabilities, is to
protect the dreams of children with disabilities and their families and
the dreams that they have for them.

We have a program that has existed now for more than 25 years, which our
best effort is that two out of three kids with disabilities graduate
with a high school diploma. But I live in a state where one out of eight
children with a disability graduates with a diploma, neighboring a state
where 12 percent of kids exiting programs with disabilities educate with
a diploma. So I think that one of the things that for me is most
important is the results. I think it is one thing to make promises. It
is a great, great responsibility, you know, to follow up on those
promises.

I heard the Secretary say that the character  that the education of
children reveals our character, and I have to tell you, I think the
character of this commission will be revealed in the recommendations
that we make to make things much, much better than they currently exist.

So I am looking forward to serving, to working hard, and to getting to
know all of my fellow commissioners better. Thank you.

MR. FLAKE: Thank you. I\'m Floyd Flake and I am a fully recovered
politician, because when I went into politics, I was actually pastoring
and I still continue to pastor one of the largest churches in the state
of New York, although I too am an expatriate from the state of Texas.
Now I know why I am on this committee, when I saw Steve down there, I
knew something was happening.

But I am a pastor in the Great Allen Cathedral in New York, and I am
President of Edison Charter Schools, which is the largest private
management company in education in America. And back in 1976, I left a
job as Dean of Students at Boston University to go to that community in
New York, because I felt I could be more effective in ministry if I
could do something to seriously impact education.

So the first thing we did was build the school, pre-K through 8th grade,
and what we discovered was that many of the young people that admitted
some of them had been diagnosed for special ed in the public school
system, we found that those young people in this environment, with
uniforms on and a disciplined environment, actually were able to perform
exceptionally well. The majority of them, I think all of them as a
matter of fact, that we\'ve taken over these 20 years, have gone on to
high school and college.

So I have had this kind of bone of contention for a number of years as
it relates to trying to reform special education, and education in
general as it relates to the delivery process in urban communities, and
so I\'m grateful for the opportunity to be on this commission, and once
again be with Steve. We both served on the Banking Committee during my
11 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, and so I\'m glad to be
here with you and hopefully can be helpful and be helped.

MR. FLEMING: I am Thomas Fleming from Eastern Michigan University, and
of the Class of \`68 as a special ed teacher, in which I have been
teaching for over 25 years. But I started off as some of the names that
are given to kids when they come to school, and the name that you  your
proper name is not respected and you have to do certain kind of ways to
get your name back.

I was not successful in that, but was kicked out of the public school
and sent to, in those days something like a delinquent or a detention
school and that was on the East Side of Detroit, and I got beat at least
three times a week. And so, Carrie Belle, my grandmother who raised me
from almost when I was born, took me and moved the whole family to the
West Side of Detroit to save her little dear son\'s life.

But that delinquency followed me all the way through, because even on
the West Side, still not being one with the fisticuffs, I had to pay
protection dues, which was my lunch money, and then just wait until I
got home to really eat at the beginning of the day and the beatings kind
of went on.

But that kind of reality did not even still help me. I was a non-reader.
This is long before we had any definitions of learning disabled or any
of those things, and so I didn\'t really recognize that. I put my age up
at 16 and got into the National Guard in Michigan, not knowing that that
summer I wouldn\'t have to worry about school anymore, because Harry S.
Truman nationalized the engineers and we were off to Korea in 1950.

Believe it or not, when we got to Fort Lewis, I wasn\'t the only one
telling one that I had lied to get into the Army, but that didn\'t slow
us down. We still took our training, and to this day, I don\'t know how
that we learned that we were not going to Korea but to Germany.

So I get to Germany and I\'m in Frankfurt, just outside of Frankfurt,
and the cab drivers are taking our Deutsche/marks and saying for a seven
mile trip, 20 marks. And I didn\'t know what that meant until a fellow
helped me to understand a mark was equivalent to one dollar.

So they said and when the German cab driver says that to you, just say
to him (German phrase), which translates, you\'re crazy in the head that
I\'m going to give you \$20 for a seven mile trip. Well suddenly then, I
recognized as the fellows told me, you better learn a little something
about how to communicate with these people, like eins, zwei, drei, vier.
You better learn how to count.

And then if you really want to get next to the ladies at 18 and
everything burning inside of me, I certainly learned how to say Guten
Morgen Fraulein, du kuche bist schone, you look so good. I never
connected that with education. I came home and began to work on the
assembly line and go to night school, and started with first syllable
words, crawling back up through this whole educational maze.

And somewhere along the way, I went to Bible School, and the first book
I ever read comprehensively in my life was the 16 chapters of the Book
of Mark. It totally revolutionized my life, and so I went on from there
to do a little bit of preaching, Reverend Flake, and found out I\'d
probably be better in the classroom.

And so, I went into the actual classroom as a special ed teacher, and at
that point, I began for the first time to recognize, these are some of
the kids, some of my home boys and home girls. They act like me. They
talk like me. They have trouble reading and understanding like I did.

And so, that was the first connection and I tried to start telling them
how I learned how to read, write and spell, and somehow we had a few
successes, some to the level that approximately 25 years later, I\'m
standing next to George Herbert Walker Bush in the Rose Garden as the
1992 National Teacher of the Year, and still at that point recognizing
that if we give our kids a chance, if we give our kids a chance to
discover themselves, there\'s no limit of what they can do.

The President invited A. Whitney Brown, a student that I had had my
first year of teaching to the Rose Garden ceremony. This kid, when I saw
what was happening to him and talked to the administration, because in
those days in Michigan, a delinquent in lockup that could not still
conform to the program, they sent him to the crazy house. This child was
sent to the mental institution, and an English teacher who talked me
into my first year going up with her, we brought this kid back from that
and I got fired. So I hadn\'t even actually seen the kid until that
happened.

But again, I\'m just stressing to this committee, which I\'m so proud to
be on, that it\'s not just about leaving children behind. It\'s the
confusion between our community and the school. It\'s some of the things
that we still haven\'t really understood about the power of a Carry Bell
Starks, who never had education but had so much faith in her son that
she took me out of harm\'s way and continued to believe in me.

So that I hope that we will, all of us in this committee, remember that
our children, given the chance to decode the environment that they live
in, that\'s empowerment. That\'s the thing that\'s important for them.
And so hopefully we will be able to work with each of you and learn more
of your stories and your experiences and we will make a real kind of,
some kind of a statement to our nation that is still looking for ways to
educate every one of our children.

DR. FLETCHER: I\'m Jack Fletcher. I\'m pretty boring. I\'m a professor
in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Texas, Houston
Health Science Center, and I live a boring academic life. I have lots of
different identities.

Probably first and foremost, I\'m a scientist and I do research on
people with disabilities. My research spans kids and their families
across the gambit of the IDEA categories. I\'ve done research on
children with different kinds of learning and attention disorders. I
direct major projects that involve people with spina bifida and
traumatic brain injury.

I\'ve done research on kids with cerebral palsy. We do research on kids
that are high risk because of birth problems. It really cuts the gambit.
I\'m also a clinician, because I\'m a neuropsychologist, and I have very
commonly done evaluations of kids that are having school problems.

One of the dilemmas we face when I went to the medical school was what
to call the clinics that we were expected to run, and we wrestled with
things like the \"Developmental Disabilities Clinic\" and the
\"Neuropsychology Clinic.\"

We settled on School Problems Clinic, and we essentially took kids who
were having trouble with school and tried to figure out what the problem
was, and then advocated for them. We went to ARD Committee meetings. We
participated in mediation hearings on both side, the school side, the
parent side, different sides.

And then finally, my most recent incarnation is as a disseminator of
research, and I think I am probably most proud of the role I played in
the Texas Reading Initiative, which was started by President Bush. We
developed a statewide reading center with his help. We have been
systematically disseminating evidence-based information to teachers and
administrators across the state.

We developed an early identification instrument that\'s used in over 90
percent of the school districts in the state. It allows for the early
identification of children that are at risk for reading problems, and
helps teachers plan instructional strategies. It\'s actually
administered by the teacher.

We do statewide professional development of teachers, and we\'ve also
set up model demonstration programs for different special education
programs in the state. With the commission I believe there is a huge gap
in what we know from research and science, and how it\'s actually
implemented in the schools, and my goal is to help close that gap and
insure that we focus on closing the gap for all kids with disabilities
as they\'re served in schools. Thank you.

DR. GILL: Good morning. My name is Doug Gill. I\'m currently the State
Director of Special Education in the state of Washington. I have been
State Director for the past 11 years, and I wish my life were a little
boring at times, but it has been anything but that.

I am not from Texas. I may sound like it. I\'ve been to Texas a couple
of times in my life and I appreciate it. I\'m actually from the state of
Georgia originally. I was born in Savannah, Georgia. My mother was a
home economics teacher at Ware County High School in Waycross, Georgia
for 35 years.

My dad was disabled when I was 12 years old, and I remember some of the
decisions we had to make as a family in 1962 regarding what choices we
would make in terms of what we would share or not share with the
community, and the ability of the work ethic in a small community like
Waycross, and some of the decisions we had to make as a family.

And that\'s sort of how I got into the field of special education,
before there was a 94-142, before there was a state law. I actually
began in state education as a paraeducator or teacher\'s aide in the
schools before I got my undergraduate degree. I taught special ed at the
4th grade level, the 7th grade level at high school.

I had the fortune of teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level in
college. I\'ve also now, as the State Director of Special Education had
a lot of wonderful experiences in special ed and hope that we remember
that balance is a key issue in special education.

There are a lot of things we\'ve done wonderfully well in special
education and some things we need to improve, and I hope we don\'t throw
the baby out with the bath water in some of our recommendations or
activities here as part of this commission. I think it\'s important that
we take an objective point of view of the issues that are before us. I
believe we can do that.

Certainly there\'s the expertise, if not in this room, within this
country to enable us to make solid recommendations that will improve
special education and not in some way limit or diminish the things that
we have been able to accomplish in this field.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here. It\'s certainly a culmination
of my professional experience to come from Waycross, Georgia all the way
to the nation\'s capitol and not be here for someone else\'s conference
or some other convention, and not be worried about answering the cell
phone because somebody complained back home about something that we
should have done in the state of Washington that we didn\'t do.

So I think we have a wonderful opportunity. It\'s great to be here. I\'m
pleased to have the opportunity to have at least some input into the
reauthorization of IDEA and hope in this reauthorization we won\'t
reauthorize in another couple of years and give folks out there a little
opportunity to stabilize some of the changes we felt in special ed.
Thank you.

MR. GORDON: Good morning. My name is Dave Gordon, and I work as the
Superintendent of Schools in the Elk Grove Unified School District in
Sacramento, California. We serve 51,000 children. We\'re growing by 300
children a month, so we project to about 85,000 in seven or eight years.
So we build an awful lot of schools.

We\'ve had an opportunity to do some innovative things in our district
around special education, and particularly around getting special
education to work much more closely with the regular program. So, I look
forward to sharing some of those ideas as we move along.

This is my 35th year in education. I started as a 6th grade teacher in
the South Bronx, New York and I worked 17 years in the State Department
of Education, finishing as Deputy Superintendent, and then the last 10
years in the Elk Grove School District, and I\'m particularly honored to
be on this group, because during the campaign in April of 2000, we were
honored to host now President Bush in our school district and had a
chance to spend about three and a half hours with him and, I was deeply
impressed with his personal commitment to children and to public
education. So, I am truly honored to be a part of this group.

MS. GRASMICK: Good morning. I\'m Nancy Grasmick and I\'m the Maryland
State Superintendent. I\'m beginning my 11th year in that position. I
developed a very special interest in special education when I was a
senior in high school and had a temporary hearing loss. It guided my
career. I received my Masters Degree from Gallaudet College for the Deaf
in Washington, and went on to receive my doctorate in communicative
sciences from Johns Hopkins University.

I have been a classroom teacher and a principal, working with special
needs children 17 years prior to going into administration, and I am
really inspired by the success of many of the children I taught and
worked with who now hold important positions throughout this country. So
I know, having high expectations and standards really will work.

In Maryland just last week, through the Quality Counts Report, Maryland
was listed as number one in the nation for standards accountability and
assessment. And as part of that, we are insistent on disaggregating
data. And when we do, we recognize the achievement gaps between our
students with special needs and those who are not identified that way
has nothing to do with their ability. It has to do with the
opportunities, the expertise that is given in terms of the teaching
methodologies within the classroom and the application of current
research.

I\'m particularly excited to be involved in this effort because Reid
Lyon has been a mentor to me and to many people in the state of
Maryland, with his outstanding research and effort, and Bob Pasternack
who enjoys such a wonderful reputation. So, I intend not only to
contribute what I can, but to learn a lot.

I think this is a very pivotal moment with the reauthorization of ESEA,
and to look at this companion reauthorization, and to say for children
with special needs, there ought to be the same accountability. There
ought to be the same commitment to high quality research and the
application of that research, so the timing couldn\'t be better. So I am
extremely appreciative and expect to learn a lot from all of you. Thank
you.

MR. HAMMERMAN: My name is Steve Hammerman, and I\'m nervous because I
have no political background and I have no education background. I sort
of scratch my head and say, I\'m not sure whether that\'s good or bad,
but it does make you nervous realizing the tremendous expertise that is
sitting in this room.

So where do I come into this particular, very important commission? I
guess I had my background in special education basically based upon two
very important people in my life. Neither one is still with us. One is
my father who helped start the Brooklyn School for Special Children,
which is a school for mentally retarded children which started with two
and today right off the Bell Parkway in Brooklyn have well over 1,000
students there.

Key to my background and education and knowledge in this area was my
beloved brother-in-law who was also a friend of mine from teenage years,
Dr. Burton Blatt, who had been the Dean of Special Education at Syracuse
University, was one major person responsible for closing Willowbrook
down, was the author of a tremendous book called, [Christmas in
Purgatory]{.underline}. And Burt, while at Syracuse, invited me and I
participated on his visitor\'s committee. Burt was unique in his genius
and unique in what he was able to accomplish and was, like too many
others, taken prematurely.

Sometime back, I got involved with a state school in New York, the
National Center for Disability, which also carries the Henry Viscardi
School, and Hank Viscardi who is still alive today in his \`90s, is a
remarkable gentleman who was born without any legs, did not get
prosthesis until he was in his 20s because he was too poor to get them,
went on to start a manufacturing company, which Governor Rockefeller
recognized as a unique situation and then the state developed a school
to get children out of the home where children with disabilities were
then taught, and get them into an environment which was a school
environment and one which could be socially inclined.

It\'s a wonderful school, which has been helped dramatically by
technology, and it also assists not only in sending children off to
college, but also in getting them jobs.

There\'s an organization in Washington, D.C. that I\'ve been on the
board of for some time. It\'s called NOD, the National Organization on
Disability, with folks like Alan Reich and Mike Deland, and Jennifer,
are you here? Jennifer, who was with me on the board now works for the
President of the United States, and that group has done remarkable
things and continues to do remarkable things. And I might also add, it
took six years for that group to push to get the Roosevelt Memorial to
contain a certain segment of the memorial with Roosevelt being depicted
in a wheelchair, and they fought very hard, the two of them, Michael and
Alan both being in wheelchairs.

I\'m Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch and Company and I\'m glad that
Reverend Flake is here as being the only other New Yorker, although I do
not have any words about Texas, since I never lived there Reverend. But
I\'ve spent 64 years living in New York and I love it and I\'m very
proud of it.

At Merrill Lynch, we have defined diversity to include, as an employer,
those with disabilities. It is very important to us as an organization
to hire people with disabilities. I look on education sort of as the
grease that gets people to be independent, but we\'ve got to get jobs
and meaningful jobs for these people.

Governor Branstad, I know you have a conflict of interest in attracting
clients in this room, but I will tell you that we have folks who are
disabled, who are in sales, trading, and management, so if anybody does
want to set up an account, I\'ll be happy to refer it to those folks.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Good suggestion.

MR. HAMMERMAN: My wife of 42 years started a program. She\'s on the
board of the Hospital for Joint Diseases, which is part of Mount Sinai
in New York, and she started a group there. It\'s fascinating to
realize, it\'s called the IWD, which is the Initiative for Women with
Disabilities.

There are not many hospitals in the country, let alone on the east side
that take special care of folks with disabilities, women with
disabilities, so that they can have examinations with dignity, whether
they be gynecological examinations or examinations. In fact, acupuncture
has become a very major thing for these women.

And I guess sort of as the trite expression, the whipped cream on a
cake, it\'s come down to, and Alan I don\'t try and one-up you, but we
have 13 grandchildren. Although clearly in their presence we tell each
one we love each one the same way, we do have a star and that is our
12-year-old who is a twin, Stephanie, who is disabled. She has cerebral
palsy, and is a remarkable young lady.

I was so proud to bring her here when we had the unveiling for President
Roosevelt\'s memorial, and she met so many of the people from the NOD
Organization, who were quite familiar with her because Stephanie has
been writing an article for [We Magazine]{.underline}, which you may
know is a magazine for folks with disabilities, every month that it gets
published, and what they do is they send her toys to evaluate the toys
as to how a disabled child would be able to deal with the particular
toys.

She was asked on CNN one time as to what the best part of the job was. I
would have stammered and stumbled, and she said \"well, keeping the
toys, of course.\" So that made a lot of sense.

I think that where I come in on my part is I have been an observer and
the need for education and fair education, removing stumbling blocks to
education for those with disabilities is vital. My granddaughter did
that on her own. She was at the National Center for Disability, the
Henry Viscardi school, and one day woke up and decided she wanted to
mainstream herself.

There were discussions within the family, of course, but she won out and
she has been mainstream now for almost six years. And, what you learn by
taking a disabled child and putting them into the public school system
is, yes they do need certain special care. They do need some expensive
aides to take them to the bathroom and do other things, but the end
product is what we should be looking at, and if the end product can be,
if she desires to be one who will be able to teach sign language to
those in Galudet, or whether or not they want to be a trader at Merrill
Lynch, or whether they want to be a politician, or whether they want to
be a teacher, it doesn\'t matter.

It\'s our divine obligation, I think, to make sure we clear the clutter
away so that they can achieve those things. So I\'m very proud to be on
this committee, and I look forward to participation in this special
needs program we have here.

MR. HASSEL: I\'m Brian Hassel. I\'m from Charlotte, North Carolina. I\'m
very pleased to serve on this commission. I am an education policy
researcher and consultant. Some of the areas of focus for my work are
improving accountability systems and education, making them more focused
on results in ways that appropriately provide an environment in which
everyone works hard for the results that kids achieve in the classroom,
and that work has included some focus on special education.

And secondly, a focus on improving the number and quality of options
that families have for their children, and improving the information
that families have about the options their children face.

On a more personal note, due to some of the public policies that folks
have mentioned around the table, I spent a long time in school, from the
time I was young up until young adult, and I had the great opportunity
to go to school with a lot of different people, including many students
with disabilities. And, in college, devoted quite a bit of activism to
try to make our old university campus an accessible place for people of
all kinds.

And now as a grownup, have several friends whose children have special
needs and have watched them and worked with them as they\'ve struggled
with that within the educational system. And those experiences have
really inspired me and challenged me, and I hope to bring that
inspiration and challenge to this commission.

DR. HORN: Good morning. My name is Wade Horn, and in contrast to
William, I am a lot younger than I look, and I am the Assistant
Secretary for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, where I oversee a wide range of programs that support
the healthy development of children, including welfare, child welfare,
child abuse and neglect, youth programs, and so forth. And I want to
acknowledge too the staff members of ACF who are here as well. Pat
Morrissey, who is the Commissioner for the Administration on
Developmental Disabilities, and Sally Atwater, who is the Executive
Director of the President\'s Commission on Mental Retardation.

My interest in special education date back to when I was in graduate
school, a time when a comb had a function in my life. Though I\'m a
clinical psychologist, my minor was in special education and my
dissertation\'s title had the sexy title of \"Early Identification of
Learning Disabilities using Multiple Analysis in a Model.\" From there,
I went to teach at Michigan State University, where I ran a series of
treatment outcome studies, examining different treatment modalities for
children with Attention Deficit Disorder.

From there, I went to Children\'s Hospital here in Washington, D.C.,
where I established the first Washington, D.C. specialty clinic for
children with Attention Deficit Disorders. I then served under George
Herbert Walker Bush, as the Commissioner for the Administration on
Children, Youth and Families. I left that position on January 20th, 1993
at noon, if I remember correctly, and went on to be the Executive
Director of an organization called Children and Adults with Attention
Deficit Disorder.

I then left that in 1994 to help found the National Fatherhood
Initiative. I\'m also a bit of a commission bon vivant. I\'ve been a
Presidential appointee on the National Commission on Children, appointed
by the Speaker of House to the National Commission on Childhood
Disability, appointed by the Secretary of HHS to the U.S. Advisory Board
on Welfare Indicators, and also served on the U.S. Advisory Board on
Kinship Care.

I look very much forward to working with all of you. I particularly look
forward to, over a drink, discussing my Merrill Lynch portfolio and get
his advice as to how to have a better 2002 than I had in 2001.

DR. HUNTT: Hello, my name is Doug Huntt, and much like the chairman, I
too went to Kindergarten. Unfortunately, I barely made it through. I
still can remember not getting my star because I was coloring
horizontally instead of vertically, but I soon got over that.

I grew up in social services. My parents were active in the Salvation
Army, so from the age of eight years old, I was out ringing bells in
front of Kmart, which stock isn\'t doing very well, and spending my
summers in an inner city camp here for D.C. kids, and not far from here,
Fredericksburg, Virginia.

At that point, after 18 years in the Salvation Army, I rebelled and
decided I didn\'t want anything else to do with social services, so I
went into the Marine Corps and two years later, became disabled. So I
became a disability advocate, went back to school, and received my
Bachelor\'s in Secondary Education at Asbury College, a small Methodist
college in Kentucky.

I have my Ph.D. in social work from the Ohio State University. I\'ve
been considered confused at times, because I happen to be a Republican
with a disability, and I think all two of us are here today. I\'m also a
social worker that\'s a Republican, and that\'s even more rare.

I believe, one thing that I am sure of is that education is the
cornerstone for independent living for people with disabilities, and
whatever we do here, we need to enhance and increase independent living
for people with disabilities and full inclusion.

I don\'t think it would be a government commission unless there was one
complaint. Never put a Buckeye next to somebody from Michigan. It\'s
very bad form. And I have one observation. I could not figure out why
our Certificate of Commission was so large. For those of you who didn\'t
get one, it\'s about the size of that banner up there. Now I realize why
with so many Texans here. Todd, I still haven\'t found a frame yet. But
I\'m looking forward to serving with all of you.

MR. GORDON: Actually, Doug, yours is twice as big because you\'re a
Republican.

DR. LYON: I think they\'re so big because they don\'t pay you a heck of
a lot. Good morning. My name is Reid Lyon. I\'m delighted to be here.
I\'m also an ex officio member of this commission. My main day job is as
chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch at the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development. My other day job is I
do whatever Beth Ann, Bryan, and the President want me to do.

My road to interest in special education is not borne out of an
identified disability. I grew up on a farm, luckily so because I had all
the underpinnings to be a juvenile delinquent. But when you grow up in
the country, there\'s not a lot of people out there to catch you. I
didn\'t do well in school for whatever reasons, whether they be behavior
drove lousy grades or something else.

But I found myself in an infantry tour as a young paratrooper in Vietnam
in 1968 and \`69 where I grew up a lot and then returned for an aviation
tour for another eight months. And it wasn\'t until I think I went
through those experiences that I felt like I wanted to do something with
my life, other than say yes, sir and no, sir, which I frankly feel like
I\'m doing more now than I did in the military.

I started out my training as an experimental and physiological
psychologist and I studied macaque monkeys. I was trying to understand
whether the periventricular gray in brain supported certain kind of
vocal things. The thing I really did learn about macaque monkeys is they
bite and bite heavily and so I decided to change my focus to children,
because I didn\'t at that time see a big different macaques and kids,
and the kids didn\'t bite.

But of course, there are large differences, and I was in a dual doctoral
program at the University of New Mexico, where I was specializing in
special education as well as neuropsychology, and I had a wonderful
committee that told me to go teach if I wanted to do the business of
children. So, I taught the third grade and I did horribly. I didn\'t
know what I was doing and that was the first time that I saw that the
course work that I received in the preparation courses was so dismal,
all I wanted to do, when I got into that third glass classroom, was call
the role. That\'s all I knew how to do.

In that third grade classroom, I saw at least 30 percent of the kids
that I was trying to teach, struggle mightily with reading. They didn\'t
get it, and it not only obviously encumbered their academic development,
but it made them feel lousy about themselves.

So I spent another year in a special education classroom as a teacher in
what was called a self-contained classroom, working with kids with
severe reading difficulties, and likewise didn\'t do them any good
either.

But that certainly set in motion a number of questions that I think has
taken me through the years since then and that is, how do kids learn to
read and what goes wrong when they don\'t. But most importantly, what do
you do about it? And I try to bring some of those experiences to the
research program I direct at the NIH.

I hope that I can be of whatever support this committee needs, as an ex
officio member. I hope we can bring all of the resources to bear to you
all, as you go about addressing your task. I think clearly what is in
front of us is looking at a way of providing services to children, which
has for years, done a wonderful job of opening access and making sure
kids have the right to a free and appropriate public education.

But the job in front of us is obviously to make sure that that right
actually leads to an education that works, that no child is left behind,
and it hasn\'t ever done that. We have got to figure out how all of our
children can receive the most scientifically, relevant-based instruction
so that they, in fact, indeed feel no difference from their normal
achieving counterparts. So if I can help everybody in any way, I\'m here
to do that. My other main job is to write jokes for the Assistant
Secretary of Special Ed.

DR. PASTERNACK: Good morning. You have to pardon my back. You have to
pardon my front. But either way, I\'m privileged to be here this morning
with you. I\'m privileged to serve our country as the Assistant
Secretary for Special Ed and Rehabilitative Services. I have a brother
with Down\'s Syndrome who is 58, and who was at Willowbrook and
subsequently went to Letchworth Village, which was another very
large-scale institution in upstate New York.

I\'ve been around kids with disabilities my whole life and have learned
that, as a country, if we look down the road that we\'ve been on, we\'ve
come a very long way and there are people in this room behind me who, in
large measure, deserve a great deal of credit for the work that\'s been
done to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities, the
challenges that too many young people with disabilities, and too many
adults with disabilities continue to be left behind.

As Mr. Reid was just saying, I think one of the things that we need to
do is acknowledge the wonderful work that goes on across the country
everyday, but change the perception that instead of just being in school
and having the free and appropriate public education, kids with
disabilities have the right to high quality education. Many families,
unfortunately, feel that their kids are not getting that kind of
high-quality education.

There are many challenges ahead of us, and as an ex officio member and
as a Federally-designated official, I look forward to working with you
all. I think that my boss, who was here this morning and talked so
eloquently, the Secretary talks about the need for us to move from the
culture of compliance to the culture of performance and I think nowhere
is that more evident than in the area of special education.

With all due respect to the work that\'s gone on before I arrived on the
scene, we have evolved a system that is so overregulated. It\'s so
complex. It\'s so focused on compliance and process, that we\'ve ignored
the important issue, which is producing results and outcomes for kids
with disabilities in public schools and private schools and parochial
schools across this great country of ours.

I think Reid and I taught at the same elementary school. I was down the
hall teaching first grade, had the great blessing of being best friends
for over 30 years, and have struggled together to try to come to grips
with some of the issues that you now will be helping us come to grips
with, and I\'m very excited to have the opportunity to work with you.

From being a teacher, I\'ve done a lot of different things, was a
superintendent myself, 13 years spent working in the State Institution
for Delinquents in the great state of New Mexico working with kids that
really face incredible challenges.

I recently looked at convening a group of people to talk about the fact
that 70 percent of kids in juvenile facilities are purportedly kids with
disabilities, and what are we going to do to really fulfill the
President\'s mandate that no child be left behind.

When I had the privilege of meeting the President the first time and
looked him in the eye and he looked me in the eye, he made me a
believer. He really cares passionately about this issue and is totally
committed to it, as represented by you all being selected to be on this
commission.

I started the first residential treatment center for kids with very
serious emotional and behavioral problems in New Mexico, and went to
other states and brought those kids back to New Mexico, because at that
time, people in New Mexico did not have the culturally competent family
center system of care, community-based. I just have been very blessed to
have done a number of wonderful things before coming to this job.

Before I came to this job, I was the State Director of Special Education
and a colleague of Doug\'s, and understand and have great empathy and
compassion for the difficulties inherent in trying to lead a state
system, as I now lose a great deal of sleep given the awesome
responsibility that I\'m entrusted with of leading the country\'s
system.

I think that in just saying how excited I am to have the opportunity to
work with you, I sort of look at my job as two-fold. One is to comfort
the afflicted and the other is to afflict the comfortable, and I think
unfortunately people have gotten comfortable, and feel that just getting
kids into public schools is sufficient, and it\'s a necessary condition,
but not sufficient to producing the kinds of outcomes that the kids have
a right to and the families demand.

Beth Ann and I had an interesting experience a month ago. We went to
California and as soon as we got off the plane, she said \"come on,
let\'s go see a school\" and so we zoomed over and we went to see a
school as we like to do when we\'re out on the road. And I met a teacher
in the school. Beth Ann went and met with a group of people and I went
my way and met with a woman there who has been teaching in that same
school for 22 years, teaching special education.

And I asked her if she was in my seat, what would she do to change
special education in the United States. She went to her desk and
unwrapped a book that she had received in the mail that day, and the
book was bigger than the notebook that the staff has done such an
excellent job preparing.

That book was entitled [The 21st Annual Compilation of Special Education
Law in California]{.underline}. I\'m sure David knows that book, and my
question to her and my question to the Secretary and to Beth Ann and to
others is, what does the teacher need with a law book?

I think that to me, it\'s so indicative of the system that we have
created in this country. It\'s so heavily focused on process and
compliance and legal issues, rather than education, rather than
outcomes, rather than results. I think that one of the many exciting
challenges that we have in front of us is the opportunity to really
create excellence in special education. As Nancy was saying, the moment
is now and I\'m really blessed that we have this opportunity together
and really look forward to working with you.

I think that as the Secretary said, I just finished with meeting with
lots of folks around the country in an effort to talk with them and
really, just by my current moment, I\'ve been telling people that I
think God gave us two years and one mouth for a very particular reason
and that\'s to listen twice as much as we talk. I think that in
listening to people, I\'ve learned a great deal and some of those
wonderful people are in this room, many of the families who were
counting on us to really evolve a system that does demand and produce
excellence, and excellence in results.

I want to also say that with the reauthorization of the ESEA, it really
to me dramatizes the fact that we\'re never going to fix special
education by only looking at special education. We have to look at all
of education. It\'s not, as Reid and I have talked a lot about, it\'s
not just about general education, nor is it about special education.

It\'s about kids, and it\'s about families, and I really am here as the
other ex officio members are to offer our support to make this effort
successful in your goal of advising the President on how we get to
excellence in special education as I struggle with the very difficult
issues of approaching the reauthorization of the IDEA.

And finally, I\'ve been involved with the IDEA since its inception, when
I was told to cut my hair and come to Washington and be an intern at
what was then the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped, where I had
the great pleasure and privilege of working with Ed Sontag, and that was
in 1976, and I hadn\'t seen Ed since. It was easy to recognize him
because he hasn\'t changed much of the years. He\'s still as handsome a
guy now that he was back then.

But it\'s amazing how from an internship, have the awesome
responsibility and great privilege of serving the President in the role
of Assistant Secretary and I look forward to working with you all and I
congratulate you all on being selected by the President to serve on this
commission, so thank you.

MR. RIVAS: Good morning. My name is Michael Rivas. I\'m only from the
great state of Texas, born and raised. I think I contribute, or will
contribute a lifetime of experience to this commission. My experience is
more on a personal level than on a professional level, like most of you
all.

I have an older brother who is mentally retarded and is currently in the
state school system, lives in San Antonio right now. Having to deal with
that from a very early age through the stigmatisms and everything else
that we had to go through as a family, my younger brother included, and
I still keep real close contact with him and my family and trying to
keep him some sort of a public lifestyle as a family.

Also, I come as a parent. My second son was just recently diagnosed with
autism. He is currently in the public school system special ed classes
right now. He is five years old and he was diagnosed about a year ago.
In talking to some people, I find out that was kind of later, but
that\'s what I\'m here for.

I don\'t really have much of a political background, other than a little
bit of student council in junior high, but that\'s about it. What I
bring to this commission is basically some of my past experiences, some
of my current trials, and some future questions that I have, that my
family has, and other people that I\'m associated with that are in the
same predicament that I am in.

I appreciate the opportunity to work with all of you all with your
expertise, and so with interaction I think we can, you know, have some
accomplishments. I talked to my son\'s teachers and my brother\'s state
school workers and they know that I was being appointed to this, and I
have them doing some research and coming up with some ideas, you know,
what they see, what we can improve. I think in future meetings, I would
like to bring that to this table. Again, I appreciate it. Thank you very
much.

DR. SONTAG: My name is Ed Sontag. It\'s a pleasure to be with some of my
older colleagues, Reid, Bob. I do appreciate this opportunity. It is an
honor to be on this commission. My background is in special education.
My Bachelor\'s Master\'s and Doctorate are all in this field. I love
this field and I think this is a rare opportunity to talk about some
significant change.

One person who has had a great impact on my professional life was
mentioned earlier by Mr. Hammerman. I was fortunate to be a doctoral
student with your brother-in-law, and I often think of him. He clearly
had an impact on, not only my mind, but I think my soul and my advocacy
in this field.

I\'ve had opportunities to serve with other members of this commission.
Governor Branstad was the chair of the President\'s Summit in 1989 in
Charlottesville, Virginia an event that fundamentally changed the course
of public education in the United States. It\'s really good to be
associated with Governor Branstad. And to the two doctoral students, I
remember as quite surly, Bob Pasternack and Reid Lyon. It\'s nice to be
associated with them again.

I\'m reminded of another person who has had an impact on my life, Bill
Cosby. Bill Cosby produced a record in 1967. I still have this aging
record, and I play it once in a while.

In this record, he talks about his life as a student in an urban school
system and he comments on special education. His comment on special
education was, \"gosh, I wish I was in special education. They\'re
always going on field trips. I have to stay here in school and they\'re
always going on field trips.\"

I think the era of field trips for special education students has ended,
but I think the future lies in some of the words that we\'ve heard here
today, analyzing data, disaggregating data, teaching fundamentals of
reading. It is time for change. I think we need to look at the basic
efficacy of the field. Does special education work? So I am very pleased
to serve on this commission, Mr. Chairman.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Hi, I\'m Cherie Takemoto. I\'m very nervous today. I\'m a
parent of a child with disabilities. I have two kids. As a professional
parent, I\'m never without pictures, so I\'m going to send my picture
around. This guy is Peter. He\'s 13 years old, goes to Arlington County
schools, and his sister is 15, Margaret. Pass that around.

DR. SONTAG: Yes, ma\'am.

MS. TAKEMOTO: One thing about Peter is that you can\'t put a label on
that guy. You can\'t say, or people have tried to say, \"oh he won\'t
read. He won\'t go to college. He won\'t do this. He won\'t do that.\"
Sometimes I don\'t think he\'s every going to get organized, that he\'s
going to keep up with us. But I also have the awesome responsibility
because Peter is a consumer. He loves to go spend money, and it\'s about
the gifts.

So right now I have the responsibility of a child who is going to have
to have two or three jobs so that: 1) he can buy what he wants to buy;
and 2) that he doesn\'t have time to buy everything that he wants to
buy.

And sometimes Peter doesn\'t know what a gift is. For Christmas, it\'s
about opening a present, being excited about the toy or whatever, and
then that gift goes away. We have this barking dog that we\'ve shoved
into a drawer because it won\'t be quiet, but we don\'t know what else
to do with it.

I say that because I think that I have been given a wonderful gift of
being appointed to this commission, and I am always remembering the gift
that I have been given, and using those gifts to the best of my ability.
I am the Executive Director of PETC, Parent Educational Advocacy
Training Center.

I\'m one of the many Federally-funded parent training information
centers that helps families who have children with disabilities in the
United States, both at the state levels and the community levels. I have
the privilege and the burden of talking to hundreds of parents for whom
special education is working, and for whom it isn\'t working.

I take that responsibility as seriously as I take the responsibility of
being a parent of a child with disabilities, that somehow I need to be a
part of, and the people that are a part of whoever I\'m around, need to
be a part of making this world a better place for people with
disabilities.

I\'ve learned from families. I\'ve learned from students, from adults
with disabilities many, many wonderful things. I\'ve learned a lot from
teachers and from the research that many of you around the table have
been writing. I am one of those consumers of those research, and I try
to share that information where I can.

Most of all, I guess my greatest concern is not just the importance of
parent involvement, but there are many teachers and parents who haven\'t
gotten the message about how important that parent involvement is, who
haven\'t seen the wonderful things that can happen when students with
disabilities, or students who don\'t have disabilities, but someone
might think they have disabilities, when there\'s someone that believes
in them and believes in them strongly, and tries to be realistic at
times.

But we have big dreams. Right now, my son  he always tells me what I
have to say when I\'m in front of folks. So what my son wants you to
know, two things: 1) that he wants to be a special education teacher
when he grows up. That\'s going to take a lot of work and he might not
get there.

But that\'s what it is he wants to do, and he wants to let everyone know
that. If not that, he\'s going to work at Safeway. So he\'ll have
something out there for him. And, 2) that he wants to make sure that we
get to go to the White House. So when you have your  Governor Branstad,
when we have our meeting at the White House, you have to remember to
make sure that family members are invited. Thank you so much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you.

DR. WRIGHT: Mr. Chairman, may I go to the podium?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: You sure may.

DR. WRIGHT: Is the microphone live?

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: It is.

DR. WRIGHT: I\'m not going to give a speech, but I just want everybody
to see me and hear me without craning your neck and all of that. Can you
see me?

PARTICIPANTS: Yes, ma\'am.

DR. WRIGHT: Can you hear me?

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: Mr. Chairman and other members of the commission and
everybody, I\'m Katie Wright and I come from the great state of
Illinois. Illinois was one of the first states in the union to mandate
special education. We were mandated in 1969, that was before 94-142. I
was one of the lobbyists for 94-142, which was signed by President Ford
in 1975 and so I do come from Illinois.

I\'ve been a special education teacher. I\'ve moved up through the ranks
from regular teacher to special teacher. I\'ve been an instructional
media director, a special ed director, superintendent of schools, and
college professor, where I help to train teachers. I was a learning
specialist at St. Louis University and now, I\'m a writer for the [St.
Louis Argus]{.underline} newspaper. So I do have a varied background.

I\'m so pleased to be on this commission. I have received my commission
certificate. It\'s so big. It cost me \$63 to get it framed, but I will
not add it to my expense account.

You will notice that I\'m wearing an elephant. I\'m a member of Delta
Sigma Theta Sorority, which is a public service sorority. Dr. Flake
knows about it and everybody knows about it, but Deltas always wear
these elephants. And so, in East St. Louis and I live in East St. Louis,
Illinois. We\'re so impoverished and everything. Most of them are
Democrats.

So, President Clinton came to East St. Louis to promise them money,
which he didn\'t ever send. I had on this elephant. And so he said, and
I had my tag on. He says \"oh\" he says \"Dr. Wright you are a Delta.\"
I was so shocked that here\'s a White man that knows about Delta
Sorority. I said \"yes, Mr. President, I am a Delta but I\'m also a
Republican.\" He said \"oh, Doctor Wright\" he says \"I won\'t hold that
against you.\"

I jotted down a few things that I wanted to tell you about myself. My
doctorate was done at the University of Illinois, my Bachelor\'s too and
my Master\'s. But my doctorate was done at St. Louis University. My
dissertation was on legislation and mitigation affecting handicapped
children.

My doctorate is in special ed and political science, and I was working
as a director of special education then, and I knew that I needed to
know something about dealing with politicians, Governor, in order to get
things for my students and for my department. So my doctorate is in
special ed and political science.

I did my Master\'s at the University of Illinois under Sam Kirk. Any of
you know Sam Kirk? He was one of the granddaddy\'s of special education,
and I was trained as an elitist, that nobody could teach special kids
but us. We\'re special people. But now we know better. We know that
there are some regular teachers who can do a better job, at least a good
job of teaching our kids, and so I\'m no longer an elitist in special
education.

As I say, I write for a newspaper, so I\'m here on two things. I\'ll be
writing about this conference too. I was one of the 100 Black leaders
summoned from around the country to meet a few months ago at the White
House and with Secretary Paige. So I am considered one of the leaders.

I\'m married. My husband is a retired educator. My daughter is an
educator. Her daughter is a radio ministry. My granddaughter is a radio
ministry and really does well. She can preach and she can pray and all
of those things.

One of my main concerns is teacher training, of course teacher
recruitment, special teacher recruitment, special teacher training and
retaining these teachers. And I don\'t play the race card, but I do say
this, I am very concerned about the over-representation of Black boys,
African-American boys in special education. So I\'d sort of like to zero
in on that.

I\'m with Secretary Paige when he says \"we want the right kids in
special ed in the right programs and getting the right education for
them.\" I wanted to tell you too that I do serve on the school board for
the Illinois Department of Corrections, having been appointed by
Governor Ryan. We have special education students, people in
corrections, of course, and so in Illinois, we do have programs within
our prisons for special people.

I want to tell you too that I have made presentations in this country
and abroad, and that\'s why I always go to the mike so people can see
and hear me. My last presentation was in South Africa, studied and
worked in South Africa in special education for a month. Several years
ago, I have lobbied for special education.

What else do I want to tell you? Oh, I want to tell you that one of my
main concerns, and I\'m so thrilled to be on this commission, one of my
main concerns is that no child be left behind, but particularly that
special children not be left behind. But I want to say too that I\'m not
greedy.

I was glad to hear Secretary Paige say that in the education
appropriations, there\'s more money for special ed and all like that.
But we have to have money for all of the children, and special ed not be
greedy and try to get all of the money, and that is certainly one of my
main concerns.

I want to tell you too that I bring to you, and I know there\'s
separation between church and state. I know that. But I bring to you
perspective of compassion, and religion as a special educator. I serve
as an elder at my church. I\'m on the Session in my Presbyterian Church
at home, because I feel that teaching and special ed and all these kinds
of things are ministries. This is a ministry that we\'re in.

I also want to tell you that I love public relations. I\'ve served as a
public relations director of my school district and I\'m a writer. I
like to write about things. I love the Internet. I know all about
Charles Todd Jones, from having surfed the Internet about him. I found
out he\'s a lawyer. I surfed the Internet on the governor. I know all
about you and it\'s all good.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: You didn\'t read it all then.

DR. WRIGHT: I surfed the Internet on some of you, and I know that it\'s
all good. So it\'s just a joy and a pleasure to serve with you. It\'s
just a joy to meet the people, the staff people.

One of my favorites is Marisa, and I\'ve named her down there. She\'s
still in here, I hope she\'s not. I don\'t want to embarrass her. But I
e-mailed her. I said \"are you  her initials are MM. I said \"are you
as nice and as sweet at M&M.\" She e-mailed me back. So I named her the
M&M girl. But it\'s just a pleasure to work with the staff and to work
with all of you, and it\'s just such an honor.

I\'ve done a lot of things in regular education and in special
education. Like I said, I\'ve come up through the ranks. I\'ve been
superintendent of schools. I don\'t ever want to be superintendent of
schools again. That is so tough and so hard. The parents are on you. The
kids are on you. The media is on you. The politicians are on you.

But my favorite, and I\'m going to sit down, my favorite population of
all to teach, and I\'ve taught all the way up from the 4th grade to
graduate school, my favorite population to teach is mildly mentally
retarded children. That\'s my very favorite to teach, and this is going
to be my favorite public service, Todd. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Dr. Wright. I think that was a  I don\'t
think you could sit through the last hour without being both impressed
and inspired by the diversity of background, knowledge and experience
and the compassion and commitment of the people around this table that
are the commissioners the President has appointed.

I am very proud and very pleased, very honored, to have the opportunity
to chair this very distinguished group and to work with you. And also,
I\'ve got to say I\'m impressed with the communication skills of the
people, every one of you, and the experience and backgrounds are
different. But the commitment and the desire to do a good job and to
meet the challenge that\'s been given to us by the President and by
Secretary Paige is something that we all share.

Now, it says in the agenda that we\'re supposed to approve the agenda,
and it says that before the introductions. Well, I did it backwards. We
did the introductions first. But now we know each other better. I think
it\'s important, and we\'ve all be sworn in, that we start with the
official business. I asked Todd, where is the agenda, and he said this
one-page deal in our book is the agenda.

MR. BARTLETT: Move approval.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Steve Bartlett makes a motion to approve. Is there a
second to approve the agenda?

MS. ACOSTA: I second the agenda.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: It\'s seconded by Adela. Discussion, all in favor of
approving the agenda, signify by saying aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Those opposed, signify by saying nay. The agenda is
approved. With that, I think we have some more paperwork  actually,
we\'re ahead of schedule. So, congratulations we\'re off to a good
start. I\'m really pleased. I like to see things start on time and stay
on time and that\'s not easy. But I think we have some additional
paperwork. We\'re going to explain the reimbursement and travel vouchers
and things like that. Todd, I\'ll turn it over to you.

MR. JONES: That\'s right. Since we have a few minutes before the ethics
official arrives from our Office of General Counsel at the Department of
Ed, we\'re going to have our staff distribute some reimbursement forms.
You don\'t have to fill out these forms unless you want to be
reimbursed. It\'s really a choice, but given that most folks would like
to be reimbursed.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: You\'re not getting paid, so that is all you get is
reimbursement of your expenses.

MR. JONES: So they\'re distributing packets, and actually I will have 

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Is this reimbursement just for these meetings?

MR. JONES: Linda, is this just reimbursement for this meeting?

MS. EMORY: This is for people who traveled here from out of town.

MR. JONES: Okay.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Today or?

MR. JONES: Today. And this will become more automated as we prepare for
various other meetings and hearings as we go. But the difficulty of our
commission not having actually official funding until five days ago. Of
course, we knew it would be by five days ago, when Congress agreed to
the bill three weeks ago. But it\'s one of the small difficulties of the
process for this first meeting.

Let me take you through this briefly. Section 1 is travel authorization
form. We have travel procedures. Important to note, especially for those
of you who ended up having to go through Chicago, which seems to make
absolutely no sense, or those of you that had to come into Dulles, there
are a variety of planning procedures that we must deal with at the
department being Federal employees.

There is a worksheet for you to prepare for your expenses as we go.
There is also international travel, which you will not have the
opportunity to do, unless you come to a hearing in say, San Diego, and
drive across the border for amusement the night before. I don\'t know.

This will give you the guidance you need to prepare for our
reimbursement processes as you will come to understand them. The only
thing I can assure you is that they will take far longer than it seems
evident for you to be reimbursed.

We will do everything we can to make it as efficient and speedy as
possible, but as one who now has over six months experience, being
reimbursed by the Federal Government as a Federal employee, it is
certainly something you will have a month or two of lag. But we will
move that as quickly as we can.

Troy, do we have our Office of General Counsel representative here?

DR. JUSTESEN: No.

MR. JONES: Well, Mr. Chairman would you like to take a recess for a few
minutes until we have our official here?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: That\'s right. Why don\'t we take a recess and you
can overlook the forms or get a cup of coffee. I don\'t know if there\'s
still coffee or not, but whatever.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Let\'s get started. We need to stay on schedule, so I
encourage the commissioners to take your seats. Now we\'ve come to the
part of the agenda that I probably need the most and that is the ethics
briefing so we don\'t get in trouble. And lo and behold, I find out that
our presenter is a native Iowan from Greenfield, Iowa. He\'s from the
same town as Hugh Side, and our presenter is Sergio Kapfer.

He is with the Office of General Counsel, Department of Education. He\'s
going to give us the background briefing on ethics, so we can do the
right thing and not get in trouble. Sergio.

MR. KAPFER: Thank you. It\'s a privilege and honor to be here before
you. Governor Branstad introduced me. I\'m Sergio Kapfer. What I want to
talk to you about today is the government ethics rules that apply to you
as special government employees. It\'s a whole lot different than is
sometimes considered as ethics training.

We\'re not talking about moral values, what to do in a difficult moral
situation with competing values. We\'re talking about the statutes and
the regulations that apply to you as special government employees, and
as special government employees, you\'re actually considered to be
Federal government employees, but in this special category.

So if you didn\'t think you were special before, you\'re officially
special government employees now. I want to go through this real briefly
because there\'s probably very, very little likelihood that any of you
are going to have a conflicting financial interest, which is the most
problematic type of ethics problem that people working for the Federal
Government encounter.

Because of the nature of your commission, it\'s very unlikely that
you\'re going to be faced with a conflicting financial interest. And
what that really is, it means that if  a conflicting financial interest
situation would be where you might have a financial interest in some
entity that you\'re going to be working on a matter that involves that
entity.

What you\'re prohibited from doing is working personally and
substantially on a particular matter before the commission that involves
a financial interest that you might have, if the actions of the
committee are going to have a direct and predictable effect on that
interest.

Now, as I said, it\'s very unlikely given the nature of the commission,
that this is going to come up, because my understanding of the
commission, you\'re going to be collecting data. You\'re going to be
studying the data. You\'re going to be inviting people to present
information to you, and then you\'re going to be issuing a report.
You\'re not going to be  you don\'t have grant funds to give out. You
don\'t have contracts to let, so it\'s going to be highly unlikely that
you\'re going to be faced with this situation.

If for some reason the commission is going to let a contract out for
someone to do some work for them, then the situation might come up. If
that happens, I\'ll try and keep abreast of whether or not the
commission is going to do that. If that happens, then I\'ll probably be
contacting most of you for a little more clarification on those
financial disclosure forms that you sent in, to make sure that there
isn\'t going to be any conflicting financial interest with respect to
that contract.

Now the major issue that you\'ll probably be faced with as a member of
this committee, and some of you probably find this surprising, is gifts.
You\'ll be surprised how often this issue comes up. People, you know,
when you have meetings, may come up after the meeting and say \"we
really appreciate what you\'ve been doing\" and offer some little gift.

You, as a member of this commission, may not receive a gift given to you
because you\'re a member of the commission or from a prohibited source.
Prohibited source means someone whose business is going to be affected
by what this commission does. Obviously, that would be anyone in the
special education area. It includes school districts, states,
organizations dealing with special education.

There are some exceptions to this prohibition. The major exception is a
gift that\'s valued under \$20, \$20 or less. If somebody says \"here\'s
a book\" that\'s valued at say \$19.99 or something on special education
or the law surrounding special education, you would be able to accept
that book from anybody. Obviously, it would be given to you because of
your position, and it could very well be from a prohibited source. That
exception would allow you to accept that gift, as long as it\'s valued
at \$20 or less.

Throughout your time of the commission, the commission, my understanding
doesn\'t have a real long life. While the report\'s going to be due
earlier, you may still be on for several years. The further limitation
on that \$20 is, you can\'t accept more than \$50 in gifts from that one
source over a calendar year. So, you know, if that same source says
\"here\'s another book\" and it\'s still under \$20, you can accept that
second book. But then that third book comes in the mail to you and it\'s
again close to \$20, you\'re over that \$50 limit and you would not be
able to accept it.

Another exception is gifts that are given to you as a result of a
personal or family relationship. Obviously, we\'re not going to say you
can\'t accept gifts from personal friends and family, if it\'s clearly
motivated from friendship and it\'s not because of your position on the
commission.

And also, all of you have your own business relationships. If it\'s a
gift that arises from your business relationship, again you\'re not
prohibited from accepting a gift. The other two exceptions I\'m talking
about, you know, it doesn\'t matter what the value is. I mean if it\'s a
\$500 gift from your family, your brother-in-law, whatever, it would be
okay. For business activities, again the \$20 limit doesn\'t apply.

Now there are some other types of issues that may come up that you have
to be aware of. One is fundraising. You\'re not allowed to use your
official title, position, or authority to engage in fundraising, whether
it\'s political fundraising or fundraising for non-profit organizations
or anything like that.

You may solicit funds or support from a prohibited source if the person
or entity does not have an interest before the commission. So if, say
for example, somebody wanted to raise funds for the National
Organization on Disability, it would be considered a prohibited source
because its interests are definitely going to be affected by what this
commission does. So that wouldn\'t be anything that you\'d be able to
raise funds for.

Well, actually it depends on whether or not the activities of this
commission are actually going to affect substantially their interest. So
if a situation like that arises, please feel free to give me a call.
Before I go any further, let me give you my phone number. It\'s
202-401-6003, and please feel free at any time that you have any
question whatsoever that involves ethics, to call me and I\'ll be more
than happy to try and provide you an answer right away or research the
question to give you an answer in as little time as possible.

If I\'m not there, let me give you the division number, the Ethics
Division number for the General Counsel\'s Office is 202-401-8309.
Someone will be able to get you in touch with another attorney who will
be able to answer your question if it\'s an immediate need.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Can you repeat that number again.

MR. KAPFER: It\'s 202-401-8309.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: And repeat yours too again, please, would you?

MR. KAPFER: It\'s 202-401-6003.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you.

MR. KAPFER: And there are four other attorneys that work with me and any
one of them will be more than happy to assist you and we\'ll be able to
get your questions answered.

Another area you have to be concerned with is lobbying. In your role as
a committee member, you may not urge others to contact Congress or State
Legislature to urge passage or defeat of legislation. There\'s some
additional restrictions on this.

Let me backtrack for a second. I\'ve passed out what we call an ethics
primer for special government employees. Each one of you has one.
There\'s an executive summary. It\'s just a two and a half page summary,
and then there\'s a more detailed summary of the ethics laws that apply
to you as special government employees.

Everything that I\'m talking about right now is covered in much more
depth in these materials that I handed out to you. So, you know, if you
have questions, if you want to refer to this summary, this primer that I
handed out, that would be your first source of information, if you want
to read that before you call me, or if you don\'t feel like reading it,
go ahead and call me right away. Either way is fine with me. But that
does provide you with much more detail about the rules that I\'m just
very briefly covering right now.

Another major area is political activities. As a member of the
commission, you may not engage in political activity while you\'re on
duty, or in a Federal Government building or a car, and you may never
use your official title as the member of a committee in connection with
political activities and this includes political fundraising.

Again, there\'s some additional rules on this that you need to be aware
of, so if there\'s any possibility that you\'re going to be engaging in
any kind of political activity, please feel free to call me or call the
division and we\'ll talk this out to make sure that you\'re not going to
inadvertently violate any of these rules and regulations that apply to
you.

And the final area that I want to talk about is teaching, speaking and
writing, as most of you have done one of these activities and will be
doing this activity. The restriction on this is you may not receive any
compensation for teaching, speaking, or writing if the invitation is
offered to you because you\'re a member of this committee. The
information that you\'re going to convey draws substantially on
non-public information that you obtain while working for the committee.

If the invitation was extended to you by an organization whose interest
may be substantially affected by your performance on the committee or
the subject of your work deals in a significant way with a matter
involving specific parties that you worked on while on the committee.

And there\'s lots of exceptions to this. The last one is probably one
that won\'t come up because you\'re not going to be dealing with
specific party matters with this commission to the best of my knowledge.
So you don\'t have to worry too much about that.

But there are a lot of exceptions with respect to this restriction on
teaching, speaking, writing. So again, if you\'re going to be doing any
of this, you know, that has any, any connection whatsoever with your
committee work, please give me a call to make sure that it\'s not going
to violate this restriction.

One last point that I want to mention to you that may be of value to
you. I don\'t know how many of you are aware that Congress and the
President just signed a law that now allows you as individual special
government employees, and we as Federal employees to keep frequent flier
miles earned while in government travel for our own personal use.

That had been a major, major issue for the last 30 or 40 years, that
under the law those frequent flier miles were considered government
property and you couldn\'t use them at all in any way, shape or form to
either upgrade or get free tickets or anything like that. Congress just
changed the rules on that, so any frequent flier miles that you earned
getting here to Washington and flying back are going to be yours to
keep, use however you want.

If anybody has any questions, I\'ll be more than happy to answer. Again,
I want to emphasize that this is just a very, very brief presentation on
what the ethics rules are that apply to you and the materials again are
also very brief, and there are lots of rules and regulations that apply
that, you know, you may inadvertently violate if you don\'t ask
questions. The major admonition that I want to give to you is to call me
whenever you have any question that you think might raise, you know, an
ethics issue.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes. Dr. Berdine, go ahead.

DR. BERDINE: I teach a doctoral pro seminar, an ongoing pro seminar and
I intended using this particular semester to focus around the
commission\'s activities. I\'m already compensated for that by my
university, so I\'m assuming that\'s okay. I was wondering about the
reproduction of materials.

MR. KAPFER: I\'ll give you a call and we\'ll discuss that in detail.

DR. BERDINE: I have a second question.

MR. KAPFER: Yes.

DR. BERDINE: As a department chair, I frequently work to educate the
Kentucky Congressional delegation about the interests of the University
of Kentucky. As long as I indicate that I\'m there as a department chair
from that university and not there as a member of the commission, is
that all right?

MR. KAPFER: Yes, the main thing you want to always avoid in that kind of
situation is using your title, position, authority as a commission
member with respect to those activities, as long as you make it clear
that you\'re not representing this commission in any way, shape or form,
then that should be okay.

DR. BERDINE: A third question. The Kentucky Council for Exceptional
Children, Kentucky CED, their division case division, division for
administrators has asked me to meet with them in the very near future to
discuss their interest in the commission. Can I do that as a member of
this commission?

MR. KAPFER: Probably, but let me get back to you on that.

DR. BERDINE: I anticipate I\'ll get more of those kinds of requests.

MR. KAPFER: It shouldn\'t be a problem. You\'re going to be getting 
all of you will probably get those similar types of requests.

DR. BERDINE: They\'re not interested in me as a University of Kentucky
faculty member.

MR. KAPFER: No, exactly. Yes.

MR. FLEMING: I\'m trying to understand now, because when I was first
made aware of the commission, I\'m at a university and a very large part
of our actual teaching is in the whole education and producing teachers.
And so I had gone to the dean to talk to him about possibly having some
input from the experts that are right there on campus. Are you saying
there is some contradiction or something that would happen if I was
trying to get information from them that I think would help me to
understand?

MR. KAPFER: No. Not at all. Let\'s say for example, this is not what
this commission does, but say that this commission was going to have
authority to award grants, you know, with Federal funds and your
university was going to be competing for that grant, that\'s the kind of
situation where you would not be able to participate in the
decision-making process of the grant process because your employer has a
financial interest in receiving that grant.

As I understand it, the commission\'s not going to be doing that. So,
the commission is going to be collecting information and studying the
issues issuing a report based on the information that you get from
experts and people in the field, and there\'s very, very little
likelihood that there\'s going to be any kind of conflicting financial
interest with any of you with any of your financial interests and the
work that you\'re going to be doing on this commission.

REVEREND FLAKE: That would be true also for a for-profit then?

MR. KAPFER: Yes.

REVERENT FLAKE: As in my case with Edison?

MR. KAPFER: Yes. Like I said, it\'s going to be very, very unlikely 
your report is going to be recommendations to the President. The
President may or may not take your recommendation. He may take some, may
not take some others. The President then is going to have to present
whatever actions he wants to take to Congress. Although there may be
some regulatory action he might take, but particularly if it goes to
Congress, it\'s in Congress\' hands.

The link that causes a problem is if you can say that there\'s going to
be a direct and predictable effect from your activities on the
commission, the commission\'s activities, and the financial interest of
some entity with which one of you or more of you is involved, you know,
under a covered relationship.

The covered relationship means if you are an employee, a general
partner, executor, officer, various other capacities of an entity, then
that entity\'s financial interests are imputed to you. Your spouse\'s
financial interests are imputed to you. Your minor child\'s financial
interests are imputed to you. So there\'s a range of people, other
entities, whose financial interests are going to be imputed to you that
if this commission\'s activities were going to affect the financial
interests of those entities or persons, then a conflict could arise.

But like I say, I doubt very much from my understanding what the
commission\'s going to do that that will be the case. The more likely
example, if in fact the commission ends up, and I\'m not even sure that
the commission has the authority to award a contract from somebody to do
the collecting of information or analysis of it, then you know, if there
was somebody, if one of you had a financial interest, an employer whose
spouse is employed by some kind of research group out there that might
compete for this contract, then you\'re going to have a problem and we
need to talk. But otherwise, it\'s highly unlikely.

MR. JONES: And as you\'ll see when we propose the draft budget, and of
course that\'s subject to commission approval, the draft budget only
contemplates a handful of out contracts, and that includes contracts for
design, for example, of the report for some outside communications
activities. But really, it\'s mainly airplane tickets and paper.

DR. WRIGHT: I have burning question. I write for one of the premier
black newspapers in Missouri. Many people in Missouri, in Illinois and
Missouri where I live, for examples, are fans of and know Reverend Flake
from his ministry. Okay, and I write a column for them and I get paid
for writing for them. Is it okay if I put his picture in there and say,
you know, Reverend Flake and I are on this commission together? Is that
out of line?

REVEREND FLAKE: If you pay me also.

DR. WRIGHT: Those people in Missouri and East St. Louis, say oh,
Reverend Flake, there\'s Reverend Flake and we want to  is that out of
line?

MR. KAPFER: Okay, we\'re going to have to talk about that.

DR. WRIGHT: Okay. I\'m glad I asked about that.

MR. KAPFER: Yes, I\'m glad you asked. This is exactly the kind of
question we want brought to us, to me and to my division. I wouldn\'t be
able to give you an answer right off the top of my head.

DR. WRIGHT: I\'ll check with you before I do that.

MR. KAPFER: Yes.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Is this something you suggest we submit to you in writing
and that you respond to us in writing or just verbal questions?

MR. KAPFER: Either way. I mean, if you\'re more comfortable, you can
either send me something in writing, you can send me an e-mail. My
e-mail address is my first name, S-E-R-G-I-O.

DR. WRIGHT: Wait a minute. Don\'t go so fast. What it it?

MR. KAPFER: S-E-R-G-I-O, Sergio, dot, my last name, K-A-P-F-E-R, Kapfer,
the @ symbol. I\'m not sure what it\'s called. I know there\'s a special
name for it.

MS. TAKEMOTO: It\'s called \"at.\"

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: The \"a\" with a little circle around it.

MR. KAPFER: The \"a\" with almost a full circle around it, and then E-D
for education, dot, G-O-V for government. So, sergio.kapfer@ed.gov.

DR. WRIGHT: do we use capitals?

MR. KAPFER: It doesn\'t matter whether it\'s capitalized or not.

DR. WRIGHT: So it\'s K-P 

MR. KAPFER: K-A-P-F-E-R. I think your agenda has my name on it.

DR. WRIGHT: I see it.

MR. KAPFER: Unfortunately, it\'s not on the primer that I gave you. And
so you can either e-mail me, telephone me, or actually  do you remember
what our fax number is, Sean? 260-5103? Do you have it?

SEAN: 260-5104.

MR. KAPFER: Okay, my fax number is 202-260-5104. That\'s the division
fax number, Ethics Division Fax Number. You can feel confident that if
you send a fax to that number, that it\'s going to be seen only by
Ethics Division staff, no one else. So you don\'t have to worry about
that.

If you feel you\'d rather call me right before you send the fax, that\'s
fine. Let me know and then I\'ll go pick it up right away. Otherwise,
it\'s going to be picked up by our secretary who we have full confidence
in will keep your information completely confidential.

Any other questions? Yes.

DR. GILL: I don\'t know if this is an ethical question or a protocol
question for us as a group. But I think the notion of what we discuss
outside the context of meetings, other than just input from other people
is something I\'d like to at least hear a little bit more about, because
I think we are going to have opportunities for a lot of people to come
to us and ask us questions and try to get advanced information about
positions that may or may not be taken. Whether that\'s true or not true
is a different issue, and I\'d like to have some guidelines in terms of
what we share or not share.

MR. KAPFER: Okay, I\'ll let Todd respond to that later. It\'s really not
an ethics question with respect to the rules and regulations and
statutes that I\'m discussing with you. Any other questions? Okay, well
thank you very much for your time and I wish the commission well. Thank
you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much, Sergio. We appreciate your
presentation. We\'ve got a little time, so since we\'re running ahead of
schedule, Todd has volunteered to begin on the presentation he\'s
supposed to make this afternoon. So that might just be able to move us
along.

So with that, I\'ll just turn it over to Todd who\'s going to talk about
the description of the draft meeting schedule, the task forces, hearings
and other things that are scheduled for the beginning of our afternoon
session. Unless anybody has an objection, we\'ll just go ahead and do
that because I don\'t think lunch is ready.

MR. JONES: That much I\'m certain of. Lunch is not ready. So, what I
thought I would do this afternoon is give you a little overview about
some planning work that I\'ve been able to do over the last two months
for your benefit, to offer to you as a commission for your consideration
of adoption as we go forward, because there are only a few constraints,
being a Federal commission on what we do.

But in the case of ours, there are particular constraints, and the first
one is time. When this commission was announced on October 2nd, it was
placed as an Executive Order. It was with the expectation that the
commission would be meeting, start meeting shortly thereafter and be
able to issue a report in the time line outlined in the Executive Order.

That time line was April 30th. Anyone with any understanding of how a
commission operates knows that you can have tight time frames and then
you have tight time frames. And, April 30 is clearly out of the question
for doing any sort of report more than all of us getting together saying
we had a good time and then issuing some papers saying that.

So instead, the White House is currently working and will shortly be
issuing a new Executive Order as to how soon the President would like
the results of our commission report and the work of this commission. My
expectation is that it will be sometime during the summer, and that\'s
the general understanding we have to this point.

In light of that, what I\'ve done is created some preparatory materials
for your benefit that would work within the time constraints that were
originally our time constraints. If it turns out we have more time than
that, we can certainly modify  you can modify your schedule to meet
those extra  that extra time availability. And if we do not, well then
we work from the expectation we had originally.

That\'s the first constraint.

The second constraint we have, and based on our Executive Order it\'s
not as strong a one as you might see, is the scope of what we\'ve been
charged to do. This is the President\'s Commission on Excellence in
Special Education. Special Education is not IDEA. Special Education is
not Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. It is not any particular
pedagogical approach. It\'s not any structure for administering special
education.

It is special education and the issues surrounding it, all of those
combined. And if you look at the charge that the President has set forth
for us, it certainly lays out a list of topics that must be addressed by
the commission as it goes forward, and by addressed, not necessarily
meaning coming to some sort of solution or conclusion or recommendation,
but certainly including as part of the scope of the work of this
commission, what the President has set forth needs to be done.

So with those two constraints, what I\'ve done over the last two months
with our staff is prepare a concept for you all to consider, and that\'s
what we\'ll do after lunch on this agenda is, you\'ll be able to
consider this concept as to whether you want to adopt it as how this
commission will go forward over the course of the spring.

One of the first things we did is offer you these. They are large,
bulky, and have lots of copied pages. But I assure you they\'re more
than that. There\'s actually useful information contained therein, and I
would certainly suggest folks take a look at it. It\'s a compilation
that\'s been put together by the staff of generally one page issue
briefs on a variety of topics around special education.

Some I\'m certain you\'re familiar with. Others you may have never heard
of before. And one thing I can assure you, it is not the definitive case
study on public policy around special ed. There are topics we haven\'t
included there in a couple cases because we thought of them in the last
week and thought they\'d be important and simply time constrained us
from doing so.

What I would encourage you to do is review those for your benefit and
also, if you have other areas where you would like to know more, or
believe there needs to be additional information for other commission
members, please let me know and we can have that material drawn up and
added to the materials that you have at hand.

Included therein at the end of the section is a copy of IDEA, as amended
in 1997. That will also be something I\'m sure, especially those of you
who are less familiar with the actual statute will be interested to have
at hand as there are certain issues such as maintenance of effort, which
is a concept embedded in IDEA, the statute, which are in our charge as a
commission, but which are also clearly linked to a specific statutory
provision. So that\'s there for your benefit as well.

The solution to the tight time frame, however, is more than just this
material. It\'s actually a structure which we would propose for your
consideration. And that would be to create a flexible structure in which
smaller groups of you can pull together the necessary scope of what the
President is charged with this, in a manner that allows you to also
define your own scope of what our work is.

There are a whole host of issues that this commission can consider, and
if we work for six months, there are only so many of them that are going
to make it on the plate. You\'re the ones who get to make that decision.
But based on the Executive Order, and frankly I can say I\'ve talked to
almost all of you or reached out and we have your interviews from when
you were being considered for the commission by the President, to look
at some of the relevant topics that you saw out there as important.

And what we did, and what we are suggesting is that you break the
commission into six task forces. There will be six different groups that
you can  six different topics that would broadly be put together for
groups of the commission to consider.

A copy of that breakdown is on this piece I\'m going to pass around
right now, Task force Overview. There are six task forces, or as we
would propose, and please if I\'m changing phrasing there to say there
are, please understand I\'m just saying this is for your consideration.
But in this proposal there are six task forces: Accountability Systems,
Research Agenda, Professional Development, Finance, Assessment Systems,
and System Administration.

And what we at staff did was put together groups of commission members
onto task forces broadly within those constraints that also fit with
their particular area of previously expressed interest. To give you a
good example of one the easy and most obvious ones, it\'s not surprising
that staff thought it useful that Jay Chambers, a man who has dedicated
his professional life to school finance systems and particularly special
education school finance systems, is on the finance task force of the
commission.

I want to say that there are a couple of other elements that came into
play here and I\'ll explain those in a second. But the idea would be
that the commission would have six broad areas in which it would conduct
its inquiry, and those who are on that task force then define what goes
into that inquiry.

The inquiry would take the form of six commission hearings. Each task
force would have one hearing. Each member of the commission, by the way,
is on two task forces. So you would have two hearings in addition to our
meetings that you would attend. The scope of those hearings would be
defined by the task force members themselves.

Now this is going to be on a quick time frame, and I\'ll explain more
about how that will function in a minute. But at this least this way, we
can quickly move to having hearings, hopefully starting in the month of
March around these issues.

The next is to try and put together a workable schedule within that, and
by going to a task force structure, we believe as staff you\'ll be able
to accomplish your mission by taking input from the public, by
considering the issues, by developing report language, more on that
later, that you can pull together all of by mid-April of this year.
Working from the presumption that sometime in June or July, we will have
to bring this to a close.

Lastly, there\'s an additional piece of support and that\'s staff
support. You\'re the commissioners. The ideas that you\'re putting
together are yours. It is our job to help you bring that to fruition.
And so, as we talk about what a hearing would look like on finance, it
will be the staff who go out and try to pull together those witnesses
that you\'re recommending, and others to meet the needs.

If you say, we want somebody to talk about X, can you find that person?
We, as staff, will be there to help you do that. But we\'re also going
to be looking for your recommendations. Who do you think should be at
these hearings? What should they be talking about?

The same is true in the report language. There are going to be a lot of
ideas that you bring to the table but, of course, you have busy lives
and this is a commission position. You want somebody to bring that into
text reality. We, as staff, will be available to help you with that as
well, and that will be part of our job.

The task force, as I said, will have one hearing and each member would
serve on two of them. But I also want to say it\'s not the exclusion of
the other members of the commission. First of all, you\'ll notice that
none on this list, none of the ex officios are listed, nor is Governor
Branstad listed as members of task forces. That\'s because they\'ll be
ex officio members of all of the task forces.

The same will be true of you all. If you have an area of particular
interest that you want to involve yourself and make the time commitment,
you can participate in other task forces during the conversations about
report content, about what the scope of the hearings should be.

But to get us going  and you have practical lives to live  you can\'t
be involved with everyone of the hearings preparations we have, because
I\'m sure certainly you don\'t want to dedicate all of your life. Well,
that\'s what I get paid to do in my actual job. So you\'re all going to
be looking probably to truncate that a bit, and that\'s what the task
force structure lends itself to.

In addition to that, there\'s also the flexibility, and I\'ll pass out
in a moment a draft schedule, of additional hearings. What we\'ve done
is structured  in fact, why don\'t I just pass that out right now. What
we\'ve done is put together a schedule that would allow commission
members to learn from the process as they go and then have meetings
where the substantive topics that have arisen during the hearings can be
addressed as a larger group and have the conversations in between as
task force members.

So you\'ll note the proposed schedule would have four meetings. Our
first meeting would be here. Our second will be in Houston at the end of
February, and it would in a sense also  it would have a hearing
attached to it, which is intended as an overview hearing, bringing
together some generalists about a number of topics that are raised in
the President\'s charge. And then we\'d have a series of four hearings,
and those would be task force hearings around the country.

We would then have another meeting of the task force in Miami in early
April. It would also have a hearing attached to it for all commission
members to attend, so one day of meeting, one day of hearing. Then we\'d
have another two hearings and then we have a fourth meeting.

Now before getting into the alternate site additional hearings, let me
tell you a little bit about how the locations were selected. As a
practical matter, we used two primary criteria, larger cities and
geographic distribution. We have  well I\'ve mapped it. Most of you
probably haven\'t. I\'m sure all of you haven\'t. We have a task force
that\'s heavily slanted toward the right side of the map, if you\'re
looking at the United States and, in fact, Mr. Rivas is the fourth most
western member of the commission, and he\'s in central Texas.

We have two members from California and one from Washington. As a
practical matter, we try to structure it so that the hearings that
involve the task force members from the West Coast happen on the West
Coast and the rest of the commission members are as close to the
location selected as we could.

The first location we actually selected for the second meeting was
Houston. We thought that the President from Texas and the Secretary of
Education from Texas would see the wisdom of having an early meeting in
Texas, and Governor Branstad saw that as wise as well.

We also proposed as staff to Governor Branstad that Des Moines would be
a wonderful place to have a hearing, and Governor Branstad 

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Especially in the winter.

MR. JONES: He did concur. From there, we did try and work for larger
geographic areas, distributed across the country, and that\'s what
you\'ll see here. There was an additional function though in a few cases
where the location was targeted for something in particular associated
with a topic.

The assessment systems topic, and as you\'ll notice on Tuesday, April
16th, there\'s a proposal that you meet in New York City to look at
assessment practices, identification practices, and minority
over-identification. New York City actually has a recent modest success
story to tell, addressing minority over-identification.

In fact, in my day job as Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights,
the Office for Civil Rights in New York in 1998 concluded an agreement
with New York City, and over the last two years, New York City has
substantially changed the input ratio of young Black men and other
minorities going into the New York City School system, special ed
system, which was significantly disproportionate and there\'s a success
story to tell. Given where some of these issues are, we thought New York
would be a good place to have a hearing like that. So that\'s on the
proposed list.

And lastly, we would drag you back to Washington for the last hearing,
to have our last meeting here, to finalize the report and for folks to
get together and talk about it.

Let me mention one other issue on this and that is, how the hearings are
going forth. I\'m somebody who has worked on Capitol Hill, and I\'ve
worked in trade associations and dealt with meetings, and one of the
skill sets you bring to bear when you have that kind of work life is
holding public events. There are a whole lot of ways to go about holding
commission hearings, and our suggestion to you is to adopt a rough model
of how Congress goes about it, and that is holding public events where
you invite people to come speak to you about particular topics and bring
you the substance of the knowledge around which they have information.

If you\'re able to do that, it will not only make the best of your
limited time, but it also allows you another piece of flexibility on the
table. You can have facilitated discussions with those folks. You can
have it set up so that we\'re sitting at a square like this. The
witnesses you bring in sit down with you, and not only do they testify,
but they interact with you. You can ask them questions. You can bring in
a facilitator to talk about what are some conclusions that this might
lead one to, where is there a consensus in this area?

It can be structured as any kind of process you want, but our suggestion
to you is that you make it primarily a process of your invitation. The
reason we say that is a couple fold. First of all, the public recently
has had an actually grand chance to make input to the administration on
the issue of special education. That was done through the IDEA hearing
process that Bob Pasternack had a chance to chair this fall.

Bob and Department of Ed visited seven or eight cities  eight cities
around the country, open all day and night in a number of cases, to
bring folks in to talk about areas that were of interest to them.

Now, of course, this leaves the question of what about the commission\'s
interest in public input? That actually is still something that you\'re
able to facilitate as well, and I\'m going to do so right now, or I
should say after this. This is a stack of letters we\'ve received for
the commission. It\'s not this thick. It\'s actually copies of letters,
one for each of you that we\'ve received to date from various interested
parties around the country.

We\'ve been advancing letters that, it struck staff, are particularly
noteworthy to you early on. The Consortium for Citizens with
Disabilities, for example, last week we forwarded to you a letter that
they sent to us last week. When we have larger organizations come, we
forward those electronically whenever possible, but of course we have
parents, teachers, administrators around the country who are writing in
and making their comments and suggestions.

We want to facilitate the distribution of that as best we can. What I
have here is the first wave of those letters and we\'re going to offer
them for your input, and you\'ll still have the opportunity to hear from
people in a written manner. But also, from what Doug brought up a little
while ago, and that is what about people who want to come to you. Your
name is out there. You\'re now a public official, and want to talk to
you about the commission.

My answer is, listen and talk to them as actively as you have time for.
You have your own lives in addition to this commission, but if somebody
wants to talk to you about the commission, you can feel free to talk
about any public matter that goes on that you\'d like. There will be
certain offline conversations that you have that may or may not be
appropriate to bring in the public domain, and task forces when we have
conference calls, are not public conference calls. That\'s how the task
force structure allows you to work.

But you certainly, as independent commissioners, are free to talk to
whomever you\'d like and garner the input you\'d like from your own
experience, because fundamentally it\'s no different talking to somebody
in this six months about these issues than it has been the rest of your
life. That was useful information as you learned it the rest of your
life. The next six months of input you\'ll get from people is equally
valid. And so, we want to offer that to you. You\'re certainly free to
talk and gain public input, however other informal means that you\'d
like.

So the structure that we\'ve offered you is essentially this. A task
force structure breaks you up into smaller groups. Everyone\'s on two
task forces. Every task force holds one hearing, so you attend two
hearings around the country, and in fact, to facilitate your
understanding of that, I have another chart conveniently, which has the
draft suggestions of who is on what commission, and what cities you end
up going to.

And yet, you as commissioners are going to have the ability to
participate in any aspect of this commission\'s business that you think
is important. If you want to talk about professional development and
you\'re on the finance and systems administration task forces, you can
be included in those conference calls.

Within our budget constraints, which I\'ll talk about this afternoon,
you can attend commission hearings. We\'ll even bring you, depending
upon how airfare is going, especially as we have an idea of how much the
commission is costing, we\'ll have the ability for you to attend
commission hearings if that\'s what you desire.

So it really is an open process for you, but we as staff offer you this
suggestion as a way to get yourself organized quickly and quickly get
moving into the process. Because one other aspect you\'ll notice about
this proposal is that we start meeting quickly.

While the end of February does seem a long way away, it\'s actually just
six weeks away. Most importantly, the next seven weeks away is a hearing
in Denver, eight weeks away is a hearing in Des Moines, nine weeks away
is a hearing in San Diego, followed the next day by a hearing in Los
Angeles. That\'s a pretty active schedule.

Two more things before I conclude, and then at that point, we can look
at heading down the hall to lunch, and afterward you can come back and
have your discussion about this proposal.

The first is, alternate additional hearings. At the bottom of this page,
you\'ll notice that we have suggestions for makeup slots. We actually
have four of them scheduled. As you\'ll remember from my introduction, I
went to law school and undergraduate college in Denver. It\'s a little
known fact that April is the snowiest month in Denver, and March is the
second snowiest month in Denver, despite the fact you think that all
occurs earlier in winter. In Denver, it snows in March. We, of course,
have wisely chosen to go to Denver in early March.

So there is the distinct possibility that in Denver at that time, it
will be 65 degrees and sunny. It is also equally possible that there
will be two foot of snow on the ground. Recognizing that and that that
could happen in Des Moines, or otherwise, or that airports get shut down
and commissioners can\'t make it to the meeting, we\'ve listed a series
of alternate slots.

My suggestion would be to compare which meetings you are planning to
attend, and the alternate slots, and block those alternates on your
calendar, because if on March 5th it turns out that Denver is closed,
we\'ll be relocating to Friday, April 5th in Denver and attempting to
work that around.

The other thing we\'ve put down here, given the time constraints, is the
possibility of additional hearings. The fact is, we\'re constrained by
our budget. We only have so much money, and that was part of the
consideration of how many hearings to do and how actively to be out and
about doing so.

But there may be the budget ability to do more hearings, and that
depends again on how you structure it. Is it done in a space that\'s
small? Are the witnesses local? Those will all play into it. But you as
a task force will have the opportunity to do additional hearings if
that\'s what you desire.

We\'ve even suggested, and this will show you the honorable mention
cities. The other three cities we were looking at as options, because of
their geographic distribution and because of their accessibility from an
airline standpoint, Seattle, Detroit, and Baltimore. Again, you may have
a particular issue you want to go to a particular city to investigate,
but our hope is that we would at least, even then, have some guidance
about how you might go about it.

That leads us coming back into Washington at the end of May to discuss
the final report, and hopefully have presentations on pieces and have
the commission sign off. But I realize that everyone here also has their
own opinion, and one possibility is that folks won\'t agree at the end
of May, so we ask you to put a tentative date in June, in case it turns
out that everyone doesn\'t reach consensus by the end of May, and we\'ll
drag you back to Washington, D.C. again in June.

As one who lives in Washington, I can assure you the longer you drag
this out, the more unpleasant it will become to come to Washington, D.C.
So it\'s another form of encouragement to bring things to a close.
That\'s the scope of what we have.

The last piece I want to say is, I asked the Chairman if we could also
offer you draft chairs of the task forces. We did so again to get this
off to a much faster start, based on the interests of the people
involved, and you\'ll see those names at the top of those lists in bold
italics. I talked with all six of those folks before coming here.
They\'ve all agreed to do it, but again, that depends upon the
willingness of the commission to accept this plan.

So with that, it is 12:27. We\'ve reached the time for our luncheon, and
the next item on the agenda is for the governor to lead the discussion
on this topic, and we can do this after lunch.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: With your concurrence, we\'ll recess for lunch and
then we\'ll convene back here, what time?

MR. JONES: 1:30.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: At 1:30. At that time, we\'ll have an opportunity to
discuss this. Thank you.

(Whereupon, the above entitled matter went off the record for a lunch
break until 1:30 p.m.)

A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N

(1:46 p.m.)

MR. JONES: Before we get started, I want to tell you about the letters I
just gave you, which  well, I put my spare ones over here. You\'ll
notice a number of them are from parents. Parents tend to hard copy and
e-mail us more as we receive it, as opposed to e-mailing us documents
that we can then e-mail to you, which is what organizations tend to do.

These documents we\'re going to continue to forward to you. If you
receive letters like that, you can forward them to us, or you can
distribute them to other members of the commission as you see fit.
That\'s the nature of being a commission. You\'re in charge.

But I will also tell you as to a matter of completeness again, if you
forward materials to us for a request for a response, we then have to
engage the response. The more letters we get, the more responses we
write, and given the short time frame, what we would suggest is if
you\'d like to circulate something, unless you just want it distributed
in this manner, where we make copies and ship them to you, we\'d be glad
to do that.

But if you\'re directing more letters to us, requesting responses, and
people are asking you \"should I write to the commission,\" the easier
method would be just to have them write to you. We\'ll make copies of
it, but then we don\'t have to send a series of responses out, which
increases that burden.

The other aspect is you\'ll notice the dates of some of these letters
stretch back into October and November.

As I think I may have mentioned in one of my e-mails to you, this is the
important nature of the anthrax scare, and large volumes of mail got
shipped off to, I believe, is it Lima, Ohio? Is that how it\'s properly
pronounced? To Lima, Ohio and received some mysterious treatment that
when they came back, they were slightly crunchy and crispy paper and
germ-free as best we\'ve been told.

We\'ve had a delay in mail, and I\'m sorry I\'m sure it\'s going to
continue, and if people out there have sent us letters and you haven\'t
heard a response, please understand it could the anthrax scare, and if
you want a fast response, send us a new one. They seem to be coming a
little faster now. So, with that, Governor.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay. I\'ve been given a gavel, so watch out. Let\'s
do it from here? Okay. Well, I\'ll just preside, I guess, from here.
We\'re really ahead of schedule, so I think the next item of business is
listed as discussion and approval of the meeting schedule, the task
forces, and the hearings.

Before lunch, Todd went through that, and I think this is an opportunity
for us now to review that information and decide if this is an
acceptable schedule or adjustments or changes that you all might be
interested in. So I guess, I would open it for discussion at this time.
Yes, Nancy.

DR. GRASMICK: This just concerns my personal situation.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes.

DR. GRASMICK: I have a major budget presentation that conflicts with my
participation on March 13th with the accountability. So I was requesting
that perhaps I could be considered for the assessment system, as my
second committee.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So you\'d rather be on the assessment system?

DR. GRASMICK: Just because I\'m interested in both and the dates worked
out better for me on the assessment system.

MR. JONES: Bill, did you want to make your comment?

DR. BERDINE: Well, I mistakenly e-mail or I e-mailed and I made a
mistake in my e-mail in indicating to Todd a preference. I really had a
strong interest in the professional development area, obvious to where I
am at the University of Kentucky and ask to be included on that,
although I also have an interest in assessment.

MR. JONES: What\'s notable about that is, it\'s like a professional
sports trade. Under accountability systems, we actually had a large
number of people, in part because of the interest expressed by
commissioners before coming on about that particular area. If Ms.
Grasmick went from that group to assessment, which is Mr. Berdine is,
and Mr. Berdine then went to professional development, which is actually
short of people, it actually works out that we have an even number of
people across the board, as opposed to a disbalanced number of people.

DR. GRASMICK: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Assuming that no one else has any objections.

MR. BARTLETT: That works.

MR. JONES: Assuming that no one else objects.

MR. BARTLETT: And we\'ll see if there are any more trades coming up
here.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Are there any free agents out there?

MR. BARTLETT: Well, we on accountability, could we like get a utility
infielder or a draft choice or something?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Are there others that have comments? Yes.

MR. FLEMING: If we actually have a chance to trade, I\'d probably be
more at least in the area of professional development over against where
you have me on assessment. That\'s probably more of my strength there.
So I could take that professional development if no one else wanted it.

MR. JONES: That would still  part of the goal here also is to make sure
there are at least five people on every group, and that still would be
the case if, again, the number of switches going on. But right now, that
would still keep five on there and that would be fine. Or, I should say,
no fewer than five, no more than seven, which is why the chart looks
like it does.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Are there others that have comments or suggestions,
changes that they would like to look at? Dr. Wright.

DR. WRIGHT: I haven\'t necessarily a change, but I am intensely
interested in how these children are assessed. I am intensely interested
in that and have some expertise in that, but I don\'t need to change if
it\'s going to bother anybody or anything.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: It is possible I think to attend these task force
meetings even if you\'re not on the task force?

MR. JONES: That\'s correct. Unless we have 40 requests that don\'t align
to this, and then we get into budget difficulties, no it wouldn\'t be a
problem at all. If you\'re willing to come, it would fit within the
structure and the budget.

DR. WRIGHT: Because that is really one of the big issues, how our
children are assessed, and I really would like to work on that if I
could.

DR. BERDINE: Then you and the staff will redo the X\'s?

MR. JONES: Oh, yes.

DR. BERDINE: Do we get rid of this then?

MR. JONES: Yes, you may.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Are there others?

MR. JONES: Yes.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Nancy.

DR. GRASMICK: This is not a trade. This is just an inquiry. Can you just
give us an idea of some of the time parameters when we have multiple
days involved, like February 25th through the 27th? That makes a
difference. When would it begin?

MR. JONES: The design of that would be to start on the morning of the
25th and we would end by noon on the 27th, so that all of our East Coast
members, and you and I are on that list and Mr. Hammerman, Mr. Flake, so
that we can be home for dinner. That\'s the commitment we would make for
that one.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: The first day it would start at what time, 9:00,
8:00?

MR. JONES: 8:00 or 9:00.

DR. WRIGHT: On the 25th?

MS. TAKEMOTO: We\'d have to come in the night before.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'d probably have to come in the night before, but
you could leave in the afternoon and still get back the third day.

MR. JONES: That\'s right, and the composition of that one and the Miami
event would be one day, and actually the Miami date should say April 9
through 10.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, it\'s not through the 11th, it\'s just two
days?

MR. JONES: It\'s a two-day event. In each case, it\'s one day of hearing
at the beginning, and in the case of Houston, a day and a half of
meeting. In the case of Miami, one day of meeting.

DR. CHAMBERS: So it\'s Tuesday, Wednesday for Miami?

MR. JONES: Right.

DR. CHAMBERS: Not Tuesday, Thursday.

MR. JONES: Right.

MS. TAKEMOTO: So we fly in?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: That\'s right. We fly in the night before or the day
before for both Houston and Miami, is that right?

MR. JONES: That\'s right.

MS. TAKEMOTO: We fly in on the 8th?

MR. JONES: Right.

MS. TAKEMOTO: And we\'re leaving?

MR. JONES: On the 11th, unless of course particular people, and you
would be one, could probably return that night.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So that would be all day on the 10th, instead of half
day?

MR. JONES: That\'s right.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So it\'s a two-day. It\'s all day the 9th, all day
the 10th?

MR. JONES: Yes.

DR. GILL: And you couldn\'t leave until like after 5:00 on the 10th,
right?

MR. JONES: Right.

DR. GILL: 6:00 on the 10th?

MR. JONES: Right.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So, Mr. Horn.

MR. HORN: So is that also true for the May and the June dates? They
should be two dates, not three?

MR. JONES: Yes, thank you. Actually, the June day is to be three,
because it\'s a contingency day and we just, again it\'s because it
would be in the case of there being disagreement on the final day in
May. The May event is actually intended to be the 30th and 31st.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Not the 29th?

MR. JONES: That\'s correct, and the 31st would be a half-day meeting. So
it would be the full day on the 30th, half day on the 31st.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So the Houston one gets done at noon, and the last
one in May, hopefully that\'s noon on the 31st?

MR. JONES: Yes.

MR. BARTLETT: So not the 29th?

MR. JONES: That\'s right.

MS. TAKEMOTO: So the committee meetings that aren\'t one of these
multiple day meetings, is it all day, no other hearing or anything else
that day?

MR. JONES: That\'s right.

MS. TAKEMOTO: So someone would fly, if it was far, they\'d fly in the
night before and then leave that night?

MR. JONES: Right, or in the case of, for example, San Diego and Los
Angeles, no one would be expected to fly back that night unless they
wanted to.

MR. RIVAS: I had a question on the 

DR. WRIGHT: On the Houston one, the time frame on the Houston one? What
time would the commission start meeting?

MR. JONES: It would start meeting at 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning on the
25th.

DR. WRIGHT: Okay.

MR. JONES: And that would be the first hearing. Then the first meeting
is the next day. So, it\'s a day of hearing and then a day of meeting.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: And then the second day, we would be done at noon?

MR. JONES: That\'s right.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Second day of meeting, the third day but the second
day of meeting.

MR. RIVAS: I had a question on the dates for the task force meetings. Is
there any particular reason why they\'re going to be held in the middle
of the week?

MR. JONES: Yes. It was actually to avoid imposition on, as much as
possible, on the weekends of the members. It also, as a practical
matter, went to media. We discussed the possibility of doing a Sunday
meeting and because part of the purpose of the commission is to bring a
higher public awareness, or one of the intentions is to bring a higher
public awareness to issues around special education, having events on
weekends 

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Reduces the media coverage, is that?

MR. JONES: That\'s right.

MR. RIVAS: Well, I wasn\'t talking about weekends in particular. I was
talking more like on a Monday or a Friday, where for flight times.

MR. JONES: Right.

MR. RIVAS: Because, you know, that\'s in the middle of the week and
you\'re talking three days out of a work week schedule, with one day
before and one day after for some people.

MR. JONES: We actually went through and this chart  I wouldn\'t even
dare to show you this chart now compared to what we have. We actually
tried as effectively as we could to group commission meetings, the
location of particular topical meetings closest to the people involved
to decrease the amount of time spent on travel.

As described here, there are nine total meeting days that each person
will participate in. That includes two half days and the full days. The
most anyone, as we estimated based on our knowledge, traveled, the most
anyone would have to additional commit is five additional travel days,
out of a total of all that you see here.

That would mean, for example, that Mr. Flake and Mr. Hammerman can get
up in the morning and fly to Washington. But for example, Ms.
Butterfield can not return to Pittsburgh at night from Washington
because there are no flights that allow her to get back.

We worked through a good deal of that in an effort to reduce the total
flight burden on folks, and we in fact at the end of the day, I won\'t
say what, but we did switch two people because it suddenly appeared that
we were going to be sending someone across country for most of their
meetings. But I will say that our chart, the maximum was five days of
travel on top of the nine days of meetings, which struck us as a pretty
reasonable burden, given what it could be for the number of meetings
we\'re having.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Maybe what we ought to do is kind of go about this
systematically, and look at first, are all the issues involved with
membership on the task forces, are you satisfied with the membership on
the task forces? Should we have a motion then to approve the membership
on the task forces, with the changes that have already been made?

DR. GRASMICK: So moved.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So moved, is there a second?

MR. HUNTT: Second.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We have a motion.

MR. JONES: Ms. Grasmick moved.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Made the motion. Mr. Huntt seconded the motion to
approve the task forces with the amendments that have already been made
from our previous discussion. Yes.

DR. JUSTESEN: Second, you said you needed a second.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: It\'s been seconded by Mr. Huntt, so thank you. Is
there a discussion on that motion? All in favor.

DR. FLETCHER: Could you review the changes please?

MR. JONES: Absolutely.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes.

MR. JONES: Ms. Grasmick would move from accountability systems to
assessment systems. Mr. Berdine and Fleming would move to professional
development, and Ms. Wright would be added to assessment systems.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Which committee did he move from of the two committees?

MR. JONES: Mr. Fleming?

MS. TAKEMOTO: Yes.

MR. JONES: Mr. Fleming and Mr. Berdine from assessment systems to
professional development, and we\'ll send you, everyone an updated
chart.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: An update, we\'ll get an updated chart. But I think
before we vote on it, you wanted to know exactly the changes. Any other
questions? Any other discussion on the motion? All in favor of the
motion, signify by saying aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Opposed say no. The ayes have it. The motion is
approved. Next, let\'s look at the meeting dates and the hearings. Does
somebody want to make a motion to approve the place and times of the
meetings and the hearings?

MS. ACOSTA: So moved.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We have a motion.

DR. COULTER: Second.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: And a second.

MR. JONES: That was Ms. Acosta and Mr. Coulter.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I can\'t see the name tags and I haven\'t got your
names memorized yet. So is there any discussion on that motion? And
again, this is with the clarifications that have been made in our
previous discussion, so that everybody understands the locations and the
times of the meetings and the hearings.

Any discussion on that? We\'re ready to vote? All in favor of that
motion, signify by saying aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Those opposed, signify by saying no. The ayes have
it. The dates for the meetings and the hearings and the locations are
approved. I believe that completes that area of business.

MR. JONES: Well, this is going to be a much shorter afternoon than you
expected.

DR. HUNTT: Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes.

DR. HUNTT: I\'d just say congratulations to staff to boil down all of
our schedules and all of our interests into this. It\'s a good job.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: It\'s not an easy thing to do. That\'s a good point.

MR. JONES: Thank you, Mr. Huntt, very much and my thanks to our staff
who greatly helped on this.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Mr. Bartlett.

MR. BARTLETT: Mr. Chairman, my thanks also, and a second thing that I
have an additional request. I think it would be helpful for the
commission if the staff could provide us with kind of a chart in which
we list out the  as I recall it, there were nine charges from the
President and a number of charges from the Secretary and several charges
from the authorizing legislation, and sort of chart those out and then
show us where each one of those charges, and there may be some other
requests from commission members of areas that we want to study. We
could chart those out and see where those appear in each.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: The six task forces.

MR. BARTLETT: Yes, so we have nine and six divided by 15 and so forth.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Did everybody understand that? I think that\'s a very
good request, and that will help the task forces as they go about their
business, giving a clarification. Any other? Yes.

DR. SONTAG: Mr. Chairman, Secretary Thompson asked me to offer Madison,
Wisconsin as an alternate site on March 13th, given the horrible weather
that usually exists in Iowa that time of year.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Madison usually gets it one day later, so. I don\'t
consider that to be a friendly amendment. Yes.

MS. TAKEMOTO: I have a question about how the different committees are
going to be framing the questions to be discussed, the agenda for the
subcommittee meetings. Can you tell me more about that?

MR. JONES: The concept was that the rough description of what the
groups, the task forces would look into, would be based on their title
and the short additional information you see on this meetings and
hearing piece. Beyond the scope of that, it would be to the task force
itself to define the topic, to look in the right direction, to define
the topic as they see the need for the hearing to address it and the
report as they develop it to address it.

That information will be made available to the rest of the commission,
and the commission can then, and task force can look as to whether they
want to expand what they\'re doing, if two task forces are doing the
same thing, or two task forces are missing something that one of them
should take. But that was at least the concept.

MS. TAKEMOTO: I guess I\'m just wondering how are the committees
supposed to agree as to this  they can\'t just show up and say \"oh
gee, today we\'re going to discuss this.\" So how are the committees
going to be identifying those in advance of the meetings?

MR. JONES: As an organizational matter, and what we\'re covering now,
we\'re going to contact the six task force chairmen here over the coming
days and go through some of their preliminary thoughts and then have a
conference call within the next week and a half, and in fact, on my list
of things to discuss at our staff meeting tomorrow, is a list that
we\'re going to set up those conference calls so that very shortly,
within the next week and a half, we can have those discussions with the
task force members themselves.

I will tell you, based on doing these meetings, juggling your schedules
is a treat, but we should be able to do that in relatively short order,
and that will allow us to get a handle on that fairly quickly.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think the way it\'s envisioned is the task forces
would eventually have their hearings and make their recommendations, and
it would be like subcommittees coming back to the full commission, and
the full commission would have the opportunity to discuss and debate and
review and change if necessary those recommendations.

MR. JONES: Go ahead, I\'m sorry.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Just another question. So then perhaps in the February
meeting, there would be some time for us to be meeting in our
subcommittees or doing something so that we can also have a face-to-face
in advance of the committee meetings, where we\'re going to have to be
running over  I mean over a one-day period, we\'re going to have to
figure out some preliminary recommendations, listen and learn and figure
out preliminary recommendations?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: The recommendations don\'t come at the same day as
the hearing.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Okay.

MR. JONES: Right. No that wouldn\'t be the case. The purpose of the
hearing would be for you 

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: To get the input.

MR. JONES:  get the input.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Then the recommendations would come later.

MR. JONES: That\'s right.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So the hearings are truly hearings to get the input,
and then it\'s envisioned that the recommendations would be made by the
end of April?

MR. JONES: That would be the general idea. The task forces themselves
will have positions that evolve by early, probably early in April they
agree on a starting text. You get to the end of April, and task forces
agree to that text, and then you circulate those texts among
commissioners. Yes.

DR. GILL: So wouldn\'t the format of the task force hearings be very
similar to the format of the first commission hearing in Houston?

MR. JONES: Yes, it would.

DR. GILL: So use the same format and isolate some of the topics?

MR. JONES: Generally, two differences. One is the first hearing, and
we\'ve been working with the ex officios on this, is going to be an
over-arching hearing so it will be a lot more general, addressing a lot
of topics that are later going to be addressed. But second, frankly the
task forces can look at different formats for holding meetings. What I
alluded to about different ways of holding meetings, there are a variety
and we\'ll offer them to you.

It can be everything from sitting on a dais and having the people in
front of you, and you ask them a few questions and then they go away, to
sitting at a round table like this and having a facilitated discussion,
to having them testify in a position like this and then wait as more
witnesses come in and they participate in the Q & A as time goes on. It
will depend upon the topic at hand as to which tool you as a task force
want to use.

DR. GILL: But in essence, it\'s targeted hearings, is it not?

MR. JONES: That\'s correct. Yes, but they are targeted around a topic.

DR. GILL: Exactly.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: The first hearing at Houston will be more open.

DR. GILL: Right.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Wide open.

DR. GILL: Theoretically any of the nine topical areas, right?
Theoretically in Houston, you\'re getting any of the nine topical areas
in the task forces.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Right.

DR. GILL: Are focused on each of the nine areas.

MR. JONES: And some of the areas have crossover. Part of the problem is
that if we had nine hearings, that\'s just more time and one thing
we\'re short of is time.

DR. GILL: I understand. Thanks.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Other comments or discussion?

DR. SONTAG: Governor?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes.

DR. SONTAG: A question on the Houston meeting, not the hearing. Are we
going to have a chance today to comment on that agenda, to look at it?

MR. JONES: Actually there isn\'t an agenda developed, aside from a
conversation that I had, when I said ex officios, with Bob Pasternack,
with Reid, and with Beth Ann, about what would an overview look like. It
was actually that conversation which led us to some of the work on the
task force structure. There isn\'t a meeting plan at this point yet.

It would be circulated beforehand for review, but as someone who has put
together hearings before, I can also tell you getting witnesses to say
\"I will testify on topic X\" is a little more interactive process than
you would want to be looping back through an approval process every time
somebody says \"I can\'t come this week\" and that sort of structure.

DR. SONTAG: I was talking more about the content at the meeting itself,
not the hearing.

MR. JONES: Right. Oh, the meeting itself. No there isn\'t an agenda for
the meeting at this time.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Would you like to discuss what should be on the
agenda for the meeting?

DR. SONTAG: I\'d probably like to hear the task force or the staff
suggestions of what they\'re thinking of at this point.

MR. JONES: The suggestion we had was actually to structure it around the
topics that had been developed by the task forces and to get some, what
I would call, generalized input from the commission as a whole on topics
that they may not be on the task force of.

So let\'s take finance. If we have some discussions of finance during
the first day of the hearing, everyone\'s going to be thinking about
that over that day and the next day want to talk about it a bit. But we
only have six people or five people on the finance task force. At that
point, we can have a set period of time where there can be a generalized
discussion of finance issues among the whole of the commission.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes, Steve Bartlett.

MR. BARTLETT: Following on Mr. Sontag\'s question about the first
meeting. Staff may just want to think about the title you\'ve chosen. As
a recovering politician, as I said earlier, that may build us into a
trap. The topic is the \"Effectiveness of Special Education\" and some
will come and say it\'s absolutely, totally effective. Don\'t change
anything, and others will come and say it will change everything and
neither is true.

So I think what you\'re looking for is a balance of where we are and
where we want to go, so the effectiveness and challenges, some way to
sort of frame it in a way that we invite a candid assessment on where we
are and where we want to do.

MR. JONES: Well, being a good Washingtonian, I\'ll pass the buck. Bob,
would you care to comment on what you thought as effectiveness
encompassing? Would that be fair?

DR. PASTERNACK: Well, I think Mr. Bartlett makes a good point. I think
what we want to do is not -

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Speak into the microphone, please.

DR. PASTERNACK: Mr. Bartlett makes a good point and I think that
semantics is important or are important, as I just screwed up my
semantics, or my grammar, syntax. So think that I\'m open to, you know,
I\'m hoping that one of the things we can do as task forces evolve is
have reports from those task forces at our meetings, and I think that\'s
one set of issues.

But I think that the goal is to really look at excellence in special
education, and the only way to get to excellence is to really kind of
look at baseline data and kind of see an assessment, maybe it\'s rather
than effectiveness is this kind of current status or appraisal.

I think there can be some work done on the semantics, but I think the
intent was to have empirical data as much as possible, brought to the
table and to the attention of the commissioners, in terms of where are
we at in a variety of different topics.

Part of the reason that the decision was made to go to Houston was, as
I\'m sure you\'re familiar, the fine work that\'s been done in Texas and
things like the Texas Reading Initiative. And as I was saying this
morning, one of the things that the Secretary is very concerned about,
as well as the President, is to make sure that we make a link between
what goes on in general education with issues that the commission\'s
going to be studying and reviewing in assessing issues in special
education.

So I think that we can talk about maybe the current status of special
education for students with disabilities, as opposed to effectiveness.
So I think the intent is to take a look at how effective we\'re being
with perhaps without waving that red flag. I am here to serve the
commissioners and would rather play a supporting role, rather than a
lead role. So I appreciate your comments, Mr. Bartlett, and am willing
to help in whatever way we can.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, I think that\'s a great suggestion. You\'ve got
where we are and where we want to go, and I think that puts it in
ordinary, understandable language for people and I don\'t think it\'s
charged in any way. It\'s neutral. Does anybody have a problem with
that. I think that\'s a good suggestion in terms of the topic, so to
speak, and it\'s broad enough that I think it covers the waterfront.
Anybody have any suggestions on how to improve that? Yes.

DR. CHAMBERS: I was just going to suggest changing the word
effectiveness to excellence, after the name of the commission. Just
Excellence in Special Education, where we are and where we want to go.
Effectiveness is a little bit loaded.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Right. Well, I think if we say, Special Education,
where we are and where we want to go, and where we want to go is
excellence.

DR. CHAMBERS: I see what you\'re saying.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Steve, unless you want to work excellence into that.

MR. BARTLETT: I mean, excellence was our charge in our title.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: That\'s exactly right.

MR. BARTLETT: So that may also be charged.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Where we are and how do we achieve excellence.

MR. BARTLETT: I like the idea of Excellence in Special Education, where
we are and where we want to go.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, Excellence in Special Education, where we are
and where we want to go. Is that language okay with you all? I\'m trying
to learn how to talk down there in Houston.

DR. PASTERNACK: Where we are and how do we get there.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, where we are and how do we get there.
Excellence in Special Education, where we are and how do we get there.

DR. PASTERNACK: Someone suggested we\'re lost but we\'re making great
time. Maybe not.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, I hope that\'s not talking about where this
commission is right now, because we are ahead of schedule.

MR. BARTLETT: Leaving latitude for the staff and the chairman to word
smith that after you see it after the 24-hour rule of looking at it
after 24 hours from now.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think we\'ve got some good other suggestions. In
terms of also the hearing themes or any of those things that you think
could be maybe better categorized? Yes.

DR. GRASMICK: I\'m just interested in knowing how you\'re going to
engage the public in this hearing process in these various locations.
What sort of process will be used?

MR. JONES: As it was conceptualized, the task forces would look at the
topic they\'re at and look where they\'re going, and as a practical
matter, we would try and draw witnesses from the area where we are. As
you know as someone who has held public events, getting people to come
to your event is inversely proportionate to the distance from their
event, and the greater the distance the less likelihood they\'re coming.

And so, my expectation is it would be much like that, and in fact the
budget I will present works from that presumption as well.

DR. GRASMICK: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So you envision that we would invite certain experts
that we would want to testify and then citizens that wanted to testify
would also be given the opportunity?

MR. JONES: Well, as a practical matter, that\'s up to the task force
itself. But that would probably not be the case. And the reason for that
is, again, given the time constraints involved. When OSERs, Office of
Special Education Programs held public hearings on IDEA, well the only
one I attended was here in Washington, and I think I saw the number 100
and something being handed out to speakers, and speakers filled all of
the time available from people who happened to come.

That\'s wonderful if your goal is to solicit public input generally, but
to get it around a particular topic and advance your knowledge on the
topic, as staff of this commission, I would recommend that approach.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes, Ms. Takemoto.

MS. TAKEMOTO: As I said before, I learn a lot from students with
disabilities, adults with disabilities, parents and teachers and other
experts, and I notice that there are a number of folks who are here that
won\'t be going to most of the hearings because of the transportation.

Yet some of the folks in here have spent their lives in individual areas
of expertise that could provide data. They\'ve collected information. I
think part of it, we as a commission have excellent experiences and
perspectives. What I would like to see us do though is to make
recommendations that are going to work, and that are implementable.

So I\'m wondering what would be the interplay between folks, not only
here but around the country, who consider themselves an expert in say
assessment and over-representation to get us information, not
necessarily as part of a hearing, but just to get us information to
consider?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, I think your point is a good one. I served in
the legislature, and I know what public hearings can be like if you just
have one speaker after another that gets up and says the same thing over
and over again. We want to avoid that repetition but make sure that
individuals that have expertise or personal knowledge to share with us
have that opportunity, and that they\'re not prevented from getting that
input. So I think that\'s really the balance that we got to try to reach
here.

And I don\'t know, I at least we ought to try to make sure we have a
process that\'s not too closed in terms of the people that are invited
to make presentations, that in fact, people feel that they\'re being
prevented from having input. So, is that your concern?

MS. TAKEMOTO: Especially for universities or interest groups or whatever
that have data. We\'re supposed to be basing  we want special education
to be based on data, not just the individual experiences of the folks
who are implementing that. And so, I just want to make sure that we have
the data, not just the stories, but the data upon which to 

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: And the data can be supplied in advance too, not
necessarily just at a public hearing. But, I mean, I think we\'re
already getting a lot of data and I think there\'s a lot more that we
will receive. I think the real question is, how do we structure this in
a way that\'s open and gets the input and yet is structured enough that
it doesn\'t put us in a situation where we are having repetitious
presentations that waste our time.

MS. TAKEMOTO: And that this is not going to be our life\'s work.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: That\'s right because we only have a limited amount
of time and a limited amount of resources. Yes.

DR. HUNTT: Well, I think maybe one of the ways we can do that is to post
it early on, as to who the speakers will be. And then if someone is from
that group, they can then present the information to whoever the
spokesperson would be.

For instance, I would make the recommendation to have, since he\'s not
here I will make the recommendation to have Lex Frieden speak from
Houston. Lex is the Presidentially nominated person for the chair of the
National Council on Disability. I think Lex would represent a lot of
folks who would want to be there to talk at this meeting. So if he\'s
posted early on, then everyone can get to Lex and say \"I want you to
provide this material.\"

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So the people that are associated with that
organization or concerned about that area know their viewpoint will be
represented by him and they should get their input to him in advance.

MR. HUNTT: Rather than coming.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Rather than having 15 people coming with different
anecdotal stories about the same thing.

MR. HUNTT: Yes, sir.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay. Yes, Bryan.

DR. HASSEL: Have the eight public hearings that you held in the fall
then summarized or tallied or distilled in a way that we could read or
get information, since you\'ve done a lot of public outreach and had a
lot of opportunity for general members of the public to say things?

DR. PASTERNACK: Mr. Chairman, if I may, thanks that\'s a great question.
We are in the process of synthesizing the data, not only from the
thousands of people that provided oral testimony but hundreds who
provided written testimony, and very shortly we will have a summary.
There are some people who have been asking me to present sort of a
summary of those data and I\'m working on that and then will be happy to
get it to the commissioners as well.

I would also, Mr. Chairman, offer a suggestion that perhaps there could
be a short amount of time allocated at every one of the events that the
commission will have for public comment, so that people who are
interested, who may not have an opportunity to follow Doug\'s excellent
idea could just kind of come and share some of their wisdom with us.

And also because of the website, because of the publicity of the
address, there are other strategies and methods where people can get
information to the commissioners or to the commission without having to
actually come and be a part. Because of the reauthorization process, we
also have notice going out in the [Federal Register]{.underline} that
we\'re asking for additional comment from folks around the country.

So I think there are lots of different opportunities provided to the
stakeholders from throughout the country to give us input. But I think
that what we want to do is clearly make sure that the public is involved
and the public is aware of the activities of the commission, because the
people here are very interested in achieving excellence. I think that\'s
why they\'re here today. Their interest is obvious.

DR. WRIGHT: Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes, Dr. Wright.

DR. WRIGHT: I have something about the agenda again. I thought Attorney
Jones had said there wouldn\'t be an agenda, but there will be, won\'t
there? I\'m talking about the agenda for each hearing, because wouldn\'t
the agenda be something like this, the Chairman saying welcome?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: That\'s right. We don\'t have a prepared agenda yet
for the next one in Houston.

DR. WRIGHT: But you will? He said something about we would not have an
agenda, but you would have something, you know.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'ll have an agenda at that time. It\'s just not
prepared as of today.

DR. WRIGHT: Well, we know, yes. But I thought you meant there would not
be one.

MR. JONES: No, and I think you may be thinking of the Governor\'s
comment, when he said that this commission doesn\'t have a preset
agenda.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Preconceived.

MR. JONES: Preconceived agenda.

DR. WRIGHT: Okay.

MR. BARTLETT: Governor.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes, Mr. Bartlett.

MR. BARTLETT: One last suggestion. I think the benefit of the doubt to
whether someone or some group of someone is being heard or not, the
benefit of the doubt should go to the person or the group that wants to
be heard.

So my suggestion was, if anyone contacts a task force chairman or a
member or the staff and says \"we don\'t think we\'re being heard\" then
the staff should set out to try to be sure that that viewpoint or that
group or that person or group of persons are heard, and that\'s the
failsafe. Then if we just let it be known that we\'re going to hear the
breadth, the diversity of viewpoints, then work that out.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: And even if at each meeting we set aside a limited
number of time and maybe even limit the time to just the presentations
to one or two minutes or something like that, we could in each agenda
work in an opportunity where there was that chance if somebody wasn\'t
an expert but did have strong feelings and wanted to make a
presentation. I guess I feel if it\'s structured in such a way and
limited in time, at least they would have that input and maybe that
could be worked into the agenda. But it would be a limited period of the
time that would be set aside for that.

Because I don\'t want anybody going away feeling like they were shut out
or not given the opportunity for input. I think the importance of this
Presidential Commission on Excellence in Special Ed is, in fact, that it
is an open process, and one that gives all points of view an opportunity
to be heard.

DR. BERDINE: Governor, in addition to limiting the time for speaking,
oral testimony, I think that we ought to establish print limits. We
don\'t want to have groups coming in with four-inch binders. First of
all, it would save them the cost of that production and it would save us
the possibility of having to read through all of that. I think we\'ve
received, one Todd you sent out a thing from the CCD group.

MR. JONES: CCD.

DR. BERDINE: CCD. That was a very good example, I think, in terms of
it\'s very succinct on more than an executive summary, but it was bright
bulleted points right down to what their positions are. I think we
should establish that kind of standard. Otherwise, we or the task force
chairs, are going to have to do an awful lot of synthesis.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Do you have a suggestion on that, what that standard
should be? Or, should that be left up to the staff?

DR. BERDINE: Two to five pages, something in there I think would be
plenty. We could ask for more detail if warranted, but I think that if
you go much over five pages, you\'re asking an awful lot, particularly
when you consider the numbers of presentations that will made both
orally and in print or a combination thereof.

MR. JONES: Is that something about which there\'s consensus. Because
that\'s also something we can integrate into the hearing testimony
requirements as we put them out. People simply limit their testimony in
that manner.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Should that be kind of an encouragement or a hard and
fast rule? Do you think that maybe do that as an encouragement? If
somebody\'s presentation is six pages, I don\'t know that that\'s  yes.
But what you\'re trying to do is keep it limited. So the suggestion is
two to five pages.

DR. BERDINE: Right, and that also forces the presenters or the
organizations or the groups to give some thought to their testimony and
provide it in a very thoughtful, succinct way, yes.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Is there any more comment on that? From a consensus
perspective, does that make sense to the members of the commission? Yes,
Mr. Horn.

DR. HORN: I\'d just be a little concerned about that because I agree
with your earlier comment that this commission ought to be very much
data driven. And as a social scientist, I don\'t like to generally
simply be presented with conclusions of studies, but be able to examine
the methodology of the studies as well, so that I can make a reasoned
judgment as to whether the conclusions that are drawn by the
investigators are, in fact, warranted from the methodology and the
results that they actually obtained.

Consequently, I\'d be a little bit concerned that if there was a page
limit on written material that was submitted, we may not be getting that
kind of information, and instead be driven by conclusions, which may or
may not be warranted based upon a reasoned examination of the
methodology and actual results that study might have obtained.

Having just done this with TANF reauthorization, Secretary Thompson and
I went on a nine-city listening tour for input from those who have had
experience with Welfare to Work over the last five years. There is a
delicate balancing act between insuring that you have an efficient
process, yet at the same time insuring that people have an adequate
opportunity for public comment.

My guess is that most people don\'t, will not submit six, three-ring
binders full of material, knowing that they do have to be somewhat
efficient even in written material. But I\'d be a little  I think we
could encourage brief written statements, but I think there certainly
may be exceptions that would be warranted..

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Is that acceptable?

DR. BERDINE: This would be put down really as an expression of
encouragement in terms of what we would like to see, but not as a hard
and fast rule.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Any other suggestions or comments as to how this
should be structured? This is an opportunity for us to try to structure
this in a way we think can be the most helpful and effective. So if
there\'s other ideas that you\'d like to bring up at this time. Yes, Dr.
Sontag.

DR. SONTAG: As I understand it, the annual report to Congress is due out
sometime in the next month or two by OSERS. Is there any chance that it
would be available for review and discussion at the Houston meeting? If
not the full report, the data tables?

DR. PASTERNACK: Mr. Chairman, I think that we\'ll be happy to try to
bring to the commission reports that are available, and I think that
Ed\'s talking about the 23rd Report to Congress, which we\'re in the
process of preparing. So if, in fact, it\'s not ready at that time, at
least we will bring or try to get to people before the meeting, excerpts
that might be helpful.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Any other comments or suggestions? If no, we will 

DR. CHAMBERS: Just one other.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes.

DR. CHAMBERS: One other suggestion. To the extent that we can be
provided these materials electronically, as opposed to hard copy. I mean
it\'s nice to get hard copy, but also the electronic allows you to
search through documents much more effectively. I know the annual
reports are commonly put out there, but you know, for example even
getting this document electronically would be very nice.

MR. JONES: If you would like that, we can actually have that out this
week.

DR. CHAMBERS: That would be great.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay. We\'re running ahead of schedule. We\'ll just
move things up about a half hour and take our  actually, we\'re almost
an hour ahead.

MR. JONES: Are you going to complain about that Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: No, I\'m not going to complain about that unless
anybody else is going to. Why don\'t we go ahead with the budget
presentation then. I\'ll recognize Todd to give us the proposed budget.

DR. PASTERNACK: Mr. Chairman, I don\'t know if it\'s possible today, but
it seems like there was consensus that we would want to have public
comment at subsequent meetings of the commission. Even though the
agenda\'s been approved, since we do have so many people here today who
are vitally interested in the issues of achieving excellence in special
ed, I wonder if since people planned on being here the entire day
anyway, whether we might invite members of the public who are here to
take advantage of the opportunity and kind of speak with us if, in fact,
time permits.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think that\'s an excellent suggestion. How do the
other members of the commission feel? I think because we\'re going to
have an hour or better of time available, and maybe should we do that
after the break?

MR. JONES: Actually, what might help 

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: People might not have come prepared, but if 

DR. PASTERNACK: How many people are prepared?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, judging from when we went around the table, I
suspect the folks over here are probably ready to say something as well.
So, I think it would be good. I think our discussions with the
commission in getting a little background there and knowing some of the
background. So we can try and structure that since we\'ve got the time.
I think it could be well worthwhile. Does anybody object to that?

DR. BERDINE: I don\'t have any objection. I think it\'s a very good
idea, but in thinking of Sergio\'s earlier presentation, would we be
criticized for not having made advance notice that it would be a public
opportunity?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, I think there was public notice given of this
meeting.

MR. JONES: Let me make a call over to the General Counsel\'s Office to
make sure that that would be within our right.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay.

DR. BERDINE: I would just hate to get off, at our first meeting, off on
a very bad first step.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'ll check that out.

MR. JONES: Yes.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes.

DR. BUTTERFIELD: We were just talking and, if that turns out to be
something that isn\'t permissible, I mean I think that would be the
first choice. But if that doesn\'t turn out to be permissible, perhaps
we could have some time to talk with the individual task force members
about maybe setting some agendas or formatting how we would like to work
as a task force, just prior to having the discussions with you, Todd, by
way of telephone.

MR. JONES: In fact, Mr. Bartlett had asked me exactly that, if he group
could meet. My only caution would be everyone\'s on two of these and if
all of them met, everyone\'s going to be missing exactly one meeting at
the same time.

MR. BARTLETT: We could have each group meet at the break and then at the
end of the day also. We could have 15-minute meetings. If we have the
time, I think it would be well worthwhile.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: To have an initial meeting with each task force. Why
don\'t we go ahead and deal with this budget. Once we\'ve got that done,
then we have the time for dealing with both this and hopefully then,
we\'ll have an answer back with regard to giving the members of the
public, the interest groups that have an interest in this making a
presentation, being given that opportunity.

MR. JONES: In fact, Troy, could I have you call David Berthune. Thank
you. That\'s our lawyer who handles such matters over at the department,
and so we\'ll find out possibly sooner rather than later whether that\'s
the answer to that.

By show of hands, if the commission did go down that path, how many
people would be interested in talking, and then that can be divided into
the total time available to determine how long everyone gets to talk?
Could folks raise their hand and I\'ll stand up and count you?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Are there still folks downstairs too? They may want
to.

MR. JONES: There may be folks downstairs as well. Okay, we\'ll check
with the lawyers, and Linda\'s going to go downstairs. For those of you
who are downstairs, am I on camera? For those folks downstairs, we\'re
going to have somebody come down and see about folks down there
commenting. But we\'ll let you know after we get back with the lawyers.

The next piece of paper you have is the proposed budget. Believe it or
not, this is a more detailed budget than previous commissions. I asked
for previous commission\'s budgets. They were upwards of four and five
lines. So, this is not a hyper technical process when you\'re running a
commission apparently. So I did this for purposes of, frankly, my own
management as well as our work and, in fact, these have sub-budgets for
how I came about the calculations.

But really the budget is fairly straightforward, and as you can see,
it\'s heavily weighted toward a couple of pieces. One is travel and
there is a small portion of that that was set aside for bringing
witnesses to hearings. And so, if your task force is really interested
in saying this person is the definitive speaker on this topic and we
need to bring them to the commission hearing, there is some money for
that, but it was not a substantially large amount of money.

We have communications, which also goes to the development of the report
itself. We have graphic design costs and printing, which are not
surprisingly high as well. And then, of course, when you are having ten
meetings or nine meetings out on the road, you have advance and meeting
planning costs. Those are also a substantial cost associated cost here.

Transcription services, we are going to transcribe every commission
hearing and meeting, and we\'re going to make those transcripts
available online for those that have the patience to read them.

We\'re also going to have issues of security and badges. As a practical
matter, that\'s what you have to do when you\'re running public
government events.

I believe I\'ve hit just about everything here except for very small
items, room rentals, office supplies. Any of you who would like to come
by and visit our offices, we are at 80 F Street, which for those of you
familiar with the Washington area is just down from the Doubliner and
the Irish Times. We are in the American Federation of Government
Employees Building on the fourth floor, and you\'re certainly welcome.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: In the Irish section?

MR. JONES: Yes. Other than that, that\'s essentially the scope of the
budget and it all comes down to the bottom line of, we have \$400,000.
That was the amount we were given and no matter what we look at spending
more or less on, it all has to sum up at the bottom of this page to 400.
And so long as Microsoft Excel is still working, my assumption is that
those numbers do add up to \$400,000.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Comments or questions on the proposed budget?

MR. BARTLETT: Where\'s the telephone?

MR. JONES: Actually a number of the infrastructure costs, as well as our
staff costs are being covered by the department. So, telephone, building
maintenance, rental, the bill we had to pay for to set up our walls and
so on, the furniture, that\'s all covered by the department.

DR. WRIGHT: Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes, Dr. Wright.

DR. WRIGHT: Do we need a motion to adopt this budget or we do it by
consensus or what?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: No, I think we should have a motion to adopt this.

DR. WRIGHT: I\'ll give you that motion.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, Dr. Wright moves that we accept the budget. Do
we have a second?

MR. JONES: Ms. Butterfield.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: By Ms. Butterfield. Is there a discussion on the
budget, on the proposed budget? All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Opposed? It is approved unanimously. And in my
dealings in government, that\'s about the quickest I\'ve ever seen a
budget approved. Thank you very much. Yes, Ms. Takemoto.

MS. TAKEMOTO: I was reminded, and I should know better than this. I made
a comment about how the commission really does need to be data driven,
and I sometimes forget that my son is on the other side of a one percent
standard deviation  I mean one percentile, which means that a lot of
kids with disabilities, or at least by definition a very small
proportion of kids don\'t fit into that data driven model. They\'re
different.

I was reminded by a parent that, while we do need to be data driven, we
also need to spend a little bit of time at least listening to just good
old moms and dads and grandparents and people with disabilities, both
struggling in school, and who\'ve gotten to the other side and
understand what it took them to get to that other side to success.

So, as we\'re looking at hard data and everything, if we could reserve a
little time for a family member and people with disabilities who just
want to remind us that we\'re about individual students, that would be
wonderful for me.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think your point is well taken, and Mr. Pasternack
made that comment earlier as well, that we should make sure that
there\'s an opportunity at each meeting for input from the public.

And I think we can find that balance, and I think that\'s really our
challenge is to try to find that balance at each of our meetings so that
we\'re utilizing our time most effectively, but also we\'re giving
people the opportunity to have that input and be able to share their
experiences and their knowledge with us. Yes.

MS. ACOSTA: And I\'d just like to add that that will make whatever is
the result of this commission a much more valuable piece for this
nation, because it\'s a marriage of the practical and the scientific,
hopefully, coming together in a very real package.

As educators and as parents, or as special ed either providers or
receivers, we are really looking for what does make us excellent, not
just a theory but what can we take to the schoolhouse on Monday and what
can we take home to our children on Monday.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Anything else that you all want to bring up at this
time? We can take the break early and we\'re waiting to hear back from
the lawyers, I guess, with regard to having public input at this
meeting. And then also, we\'re looking at putting together an
opportunity for the subcommittees, for the task forces to get together
after the break. Why don\'t we do that right now, at least decide on
what task forces are  do you want to have one?

MR. JONES: I might actually suggest breaking it down just one at a time
meeting, and we\'ll have two meet here initially and then the other
four, either two and two or two and four meeting this afternoon. In
fact, would you like to start with yours.

MR. BARTLETT: If you want, accountability systems will meet right over
here for about five or ten minutes.

MR. JONES: Okay, then we\'ll pull together the other folks.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Accountability systems is going to meet in this
corner.

MR. BARTLETT: As soon as we\'re done, then you can go on to the next
one.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'ll break, and then  how long do you want to take
the break for?

DR. CHAMBERS: Well, you need 30 minutes if you\'re giving five minutes
for each subcommittee.

MR. JONES: Well, I\'m saying we would do some now. I was suggesting some
now and do some later.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Do you want to set another one. How long is yours
going to meet?

MR. BARTLETT: No more than ten minutes I would guess.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Do you have another task force that wants to meet
after that, then?

MR. JONES: Does somebody want to throw up a hand who\'s a task force?

DR. GRASMICK: I\'ll do one.

DR. CHAMBERS: Finance can meet.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, so we\'ll have finance meet second then. So
yours will meet for ten minutes, then yours will meet. We\'ll take a
break for about 20 minutes. These two task forces will have the
opportunity to meet during this break and then we\'ll come back and hear
the  if we get the approval, then we\'ll go ahead and give opportunity
for public input at that time. Okay, with that, we\'re recessed for 20
minutes.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I understand that they checked with the legal counsel
and we\'re going to be able to accept public input. We\'re going to
provide equal time. I think we had 12 people indicate they wanted to
make a presentation. We\'ll limit it to three minutes a piece. When we
reconvene in about five minutes, we\'ll begin that process.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, may we have your attention again. We\'re going
to reconvene. Earlier when we asked for interest in making a
presentation, we had 12 people that indicated an interest to sort of
give that input and also to give the task forces an opportunity to get
together. We\'re going to try to limit it to three minutes a piece.

Also there\'s a reception this evening. Some questions have come up
about invitations or opportunity to go to that reception, and I want to
recognize Cherie Takemoto, whose organization is sponsoring the
reception, to respond to that.

MS. TAKEMOTO: We\'ve been asked to co-host a reception that will be held
at the Anderson House. It\'s 2118 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. I hear
it\'s one block off of Dupont Circle, following this meeting from 6:30
to 8:00, that all the commissioners are invited to. We also have the
opportunity to invite 100 parents to come, so you\'ll be hearing from
parents and some students from disabilities tonight, as well as I wanted
to extend an invitation to anybody in the room who\'s interested in
attending. You\'re welcome to come.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay.

MS. ACOSTA: What was that address?

MS. TAKEMOTO: It\'s 2118 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: It\'s my understanding the members of the commission
are going to be given an opportunity to ride a bus to the event.

MR. JONES: Yes, we have a bus that will be outside. Troy, what time is
the bus coming?

DR. JUSTESON: 6:00.

MR. JONES: Six o\'clock out in front of the hotel.

DR. CHAMBERS: Is this kind of like a field trip then?

MR. JONES: It\'s a field trip.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Oh, that\'s good.

MR. JONES: I can\'t guarantee that the bus is yellow.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: It\'s a beautiful day to go on a field trip here in
the nation\'s capitol. So we hope you all.

DR. CHAMBERS: I\'m looking forward to it, I\'ll guarantee you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: And we invite those that had concerns about this to
join us as well. And Terry, thank you very much.

MS. TAKEMOTO: I borrowed this from Donna Fluke who worked for the
Department of Education. Donna, can you stand up? She has the
information for members of the public who need to know where it is.
Thanks, Donna. Sorry for embarrassing you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So, if you have any questions on directions how to
get there, contact Donna. I just recently returned from taking my wife
and children to Europe over the holidays and we had an interesting
experience.

Of course, not speaking the language and trying to navigate around
Europe without a state trooper or someone like that to guide you around
as I\'ve been used to, and we got lost, and my oldest son came up with a
great idea. He stopped a cab and he got a cab to the hotel we were
trying to find and then we just followed in the van. That was not a bad
idea. A 26-year-old kid, so.

I guess at this point, we would open it. I don\'t have a list of the
people that volunteered to make presentations. Todd, we\'re going to
limit it to three minutes a piece is that right?

MR. JONES: That\'s right, and I don\'t want to appear to be harsh, but I
will stand after two minutes and 45 seconds and then I won\'t use
physical force. But I will greatly encourage people to stop at three
minutes, in part because if we don\'t, if we don\'t offer everyone
exactly the same amount of time to speak, then we can not allow anyone
to speak.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Right. But if we offer people three minutes and
somebody uses two minutes and somebody else uses their full three
minutes, that\'s okay.

MR. JONES: That\'s quite all right.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, I just wanted to check that out.

DR. WRIGHT: Mr. Chairman, I yield my time. Is that what they holler?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, my feeling is, you know, we have some basic
guidelines here and we\'ll try to do it.

DR. WRIGHT: I\'m teasing. But Mr. Chairman, I yield a minute to her and
I yield a minute to him.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I know. This is not the House of Representatives. But
we\'ll try to do it in a fair and democratic way. So who would like to
be first? Please come up and identify yourself.

MR. MARCHAND: Thank you. Welcome all. My name is Paul Marchand. Excuse
me for my voice. I\'m fighting a cold. The reason most of those people
sent me here first is twofold, one I have to leave for a conference call
in a minute, but second, I\'m the sole surviving member of the
Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities who was here in 1974 an \`75,
who helped craft Public Law 94-142.

We come here today to watch you work and wish you well, and also to work
with you and share our expertise. We thank Todd very much for having
sent to you our principles that are hot off the press that took months
of work by over 50 national organizations that care a lot about special
education.

We represent national organizations of parents groups, of advocacy
groups, of service providers, of professionals in the field of special
education and others. And, collectively we will be working very hard
with this Congress, with this administration, and with you to see to it
that no child is left behind.

Please pay attention to these principles. We hope you read them. We hope
that you will come armed at each of your task force meeting, at each of
your full meetings having these in the back of your minds as you move
ahead, because we are challenged to do the same thing as we do our work.

We are going to plan after hearing your plans today, to be at every
single one of your task force meetings, at every single one of your full
committee meetings, and again we offer or myriad expertise. We look
forward to it. We know you have a tremendous challenge. We know you do
not have enough time to do your work, but we do know that you need to
move with some haste, because depending on the Congress\' schedule, even
this summer may be a bit late. We\'ll see.

Nonetheless, again we greet you. We wish you well, and we hope to work
with you now until you\'re done. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much Paul, representing the Consortium
for Citizens with Disabilities. Thank you for your presentation. In each
case, I would like to ask people to, and that was Paul Marchand from the
Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities. And, we would like each of
the presenters to do as Paul did, identify themselves, also identify
your organization when you come up to present.

MR. MARCHAND: I get paid by the ARC of the United States.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay. Come on, you\'re next.

MS. WEST: I\'m Jane West, and I\'m also with the Consortium for Citizens
with Disabilities. I\'m a consultant here in Washington and I work for a
number of different organizations that are vitally interested in the
education of students with disabilities and technology and other areas
that promote the independence and participation of people with
disabilities.

I co-chair the Consortium of Citizens with Disabilities with Paul and
Katie and Wesley who you will probably hear from shortly, and as Paul
noted, our consortium is made up of over 100 national organizations. Our
task force in education has about 50, and we want to underscore his
comment about the principles and hope that you will take a look at
those. We will be disseminating them on the Hill and in Congress and
very broadly and urging people to use those principles.

Just kind of a note. We collectively have spent 25 years, and many of us
have dedicated our careers to working here in Washington, and Steve
Bartlett knows we bothered him when he was on the Hill and others, and
if special ed comes up, we\'re there. One of the things that I urge you
to keep in your consciousness as you move forward looking at this area
is the uniqueness of the civil right integration with education.

IDEA is a really unusual bill in that way, and that it is both a civil
rights law and an education law, and it causes for some really
interesting things to happen.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that I\'m also on the board of an
organization called the Committee for Education Funding. That\'s another
coalition here in Washington made up of over 100 national organizations
that are concerned about funding issues related to education.

Many of you belong to organizations that belong to that organization.
There are superintendents on that organization. There are principals on
that organization, administrators, special ed, general ed. That\'s
another resource to you in town, and the area of concern there really is
funding. I know that many of your mandates are related to funding.

I\'d like to really thank you for opening up this process, particularly
you Governor Branstad. As you know, it\'s vitally important for us to be
able to communicate with you, and we\'re delighted to hear that your
task force meetings are going to be open to the public, as well as your
general meetings and we really appreciate the opportunity to make
contributions to your work, and look forward to being a resource to you
in any way that we can. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay. Jane West, thank you. Come forward.

MS. GOODMAN: I never dreamed I\'d get the opportunity to talk here
today, so I was a little disjointed even though I\'ve been very anxious
to come up here and get a chance to address all of you.

My name is Susan Goodman. I am Government Relations Director of National
Down Syndrome Congress. The National Down Syndrome Congress is a
grassroots organization with affiliated parent groups throughout the
country, and most likely there is at least one in your state and
probably several more. I also work with the members of the National Down
Syndrome Society, with Stephanie Lee who is here today, who is also a
government relations representative there.

I just have three things I want to say. First of all, this is my
bugaboo. Nobody ever listens to me, but I might as well tell it to you.
Special education is not a place. Special education is services. We said
earlier, the comment was made that IDEA is not special education. I
really hope you will remember throughout these deliberations that
special education is a group of services that students should not be
receiving, should not be a place to which they go.

I forgot to tell you about myself. I have been just about everything as
the gray hair underneath here would show. I\'m a parent of an adult son
with severe disability who is a full-time government employee who
actually works hard. He is employed due to the excellent special
education services he received throughout his life, the last of which
were delivered in the state of Maryland.

I also have run a school, as well as been a nagging parent who nagged
the people who ran schools, and I\'ve worked for government and
non-government agencies. I\'m a lawyer who has also represented parents
of kids with disabilities to get appropriate services. There are just a
few things taken from the CCD principles that I would like to emphasize
here today, and that is the civil rights of children and families must
be maintained.

We\'ve heard a lot of discussion about diminishing rights because there
were too many levels of due process, or lawyers were too involved, or
lawyers were making too much money. Let me state here and now that most
lawyers who represent families are not getting rich doing that. Most
lawyers representing families are making an average of about \$28,000 a
year. So in spite of the law firms that we all know about who have been
able to take advantage of the law, that does not happen in most cases.

The other principle I\'d like to talk about is cessation of services
should be prohibited. We aren\'t going to help anyone in our population
by throwing kids out on the streets and letting them do the things they
were doing in school out on the streets. Cessation of services should be
off the table.

And three, we all agree that paperwork in bureaucracy should be
decreased, accountability should be increased though for teachers as
well as students, and I know that\'s the goal of this commission, and I
thank you very much for your opportunity to speak here today.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Susan. Thank you very much.

MS. JACKSON: Can you guys see me over the top?

PARTICIPANTS: Yes.

MS. JACKSON: I\'m Leslie Jackson. I\'m with the American Occupational
Therapy Association. I\'m the third prong of the education task force
for CCD. I\'d like to also extend my appreciation for the opportunity to
speak to you today, even though I didn\'t have prepared comments. We can
always do this off the top of our heads.

But I want to speak to you about just an observation, and that is the
lack of representation for related services on this commission. As you
know, the law talks about special education and related services, and I
just feel a strong need to ask you to remember that, in addition to the
work of the teacher, there\'s also the support staff that\'s available
to the teachers.

Related services are very often an afterthought. They\'re often provided
because the team feels they have no other choice, and I\'d like to see
consideration given to the fact that related services actually are
valuable. They\'re important to the work of the teachers, of the
administrators, of the other staff, and they\'re also important to the
success of children. Many kids can not do well in school without related
services. Obviously, I\'m going to toot OT\'s horn. But I just would
like to put that out there before you.

The other thing I\'d also like to comment on, that someone said earlier
in terms of data driving the process. AOTA would strongly support that,
but we also know that there is a lack of data in many areas, and one of
those areas is on related services. So as you are looking at the charges
that are before you and you\'re looking for the data, know that many
strong scientific studies, investigations have not been conducted on
related services.

And so, I don\'t want recommendations made on the lack of data, the
absence of data. Finance, this is going to come up a lot because when
you\'re billing third-party payors, they\'re going to be billing
Medicaid for OT services and some of the other therapeutic services.

But there\'s not good data out there, so we really need to think about,
in addition to the areas where there is data, what areas do not have
data and how can we go about and get that data. AOTA would be very happy
to work with the commission on going about doing that. Thank you again
for this opportunity. We look forward to working with you all.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Leslie, thank you for your presentation.

MS. NEAS: Good afternoon, everyone. I\'m

Katie Rae Neas. I\'m with Easter Seals, and I\'m the fourth of the CCD
Education Task force chairs, and the last. So I wanted to again thank
you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I\'m going to talk just
very briefly about early childhood. IDEA has two early childhood
programs, one that\'s dedicated to infants and toddlers with
disabilities in their families, and the other that\'s dedicated to
pre-schoolers.

All the issues in your task forces apply to little kids and it will be
one of the things that Congress will be looking at this year. So I would
ask you in your consideration that you remember that these issues,
especially finance and professional development, systems administration,
really are a major concern for families with young children before they
reach school.

One of our primary concerns is, are we finding kids, are we identifying
the right kids soon enough? So when Secretary Paige said we want to find
the right kids at the right time, that set off bells and whistles for
me, that if they\'re under the age of five, it\'s essential that we find
them and that they get the services they need when they need them. It
will cost less. They will need less special education. Their parents
will be better equipped to be effective partners when they come to the
school system.

And so, we just ask you to be mindful of the full gambit of the programs
that you\'re looking at. So, thank you again today and we really
appreciate the opportunity to be here.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Very good, Katie, and people are being really
succinct, so go ahead.

MS. MALONEY: Good afternoon. My name is Justine Maloney and I am not a
co-chair of the education task force. However, I am a worker bee. I\'ve
worked with them for years, and we are really the epitome of a good
coalition that works together to come up with something that reflects
the whole constituency that we serve.

My particular constituency is children and adults with learning
disabilities. We are a consumer organization, all volunteer, and I have
to say  I hate to be negative, because this is a marvelous opportunity,
but we are sort of disappointed that there aren\'t more parents of kids
with disabilities on this commission.

And so, we hope that when you go down and have your hearings, you make a
special effort to reach out to parent organization so that you can get a
sense of what they feel is important in the reauthorization of IDEA. And
the one big issue that LDA is concerned about, and it probably would
come under accountability, is how many kids with disabilities are
graduating from high school? How many are dropping out? How many are
moving on to high quality jobs, to post secondary education?

And we hope when you look at accountability, you look at what can be
done in the transition issue to make sure that these good things happen,
and of course, we\'ll be giving our comments. Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Justine.

MS. MANDLAWITZ: Oh, dear this is one of these podiums you can\'t see
over. I\'m Myrna Mandlawitz and I\'m a consultant here in Washington. I
represent the School Social Work Association of American and the
American Counseling Association.

My groups are also members of the Consortium for Citizens with
Disabilities, but I\'d like to take a moment to tell you about another
coalition that\'s a good resource for you here in Washington. It\'s
called the National Alliance of Pupil Services Organizations or NAPSO.
There are a few people around this table who belong to organizations
that are members of that coalition as well.

We represent related services personnel, known as pupil services
personnel also, school social workers, school counselors, school
psychologists, OTs, PTs, speech language pathologists, and creative arts
therapists. These professionals are really critical in helping students
address barriers to learning, and they often act as mentors and
advocates for students.

These professionals also provide a very important link between the
school, the community, and families, and they help insure that there\'s
a safe, secure learning environment for students.

A number of our members are deeply involved with addressing students\'
behavioral and mental health needs, which I think are going to be
critical in your discussions. We hope that the commission will consider
the important role of related services personnel in all the task force
areas that you address, and that you include representatives of related
services when you decide about on your witness lists for your individual
task force. We really look forward to working with you, and thanks for
this opportunity.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much, Myrna.

MS. MUCHENO: Hi, I\'m Kim Mucheno, and I represent the Association of
University Centers on Disabilities, formerly the American Association of
University Affiliated Programs. AUCD is a network of 61 centers of
excellence in developmental disabilities, education, research and
services, and they are located in major universities throughout the
United States.

These programs are dedicated to supporting people with developmental
disabilities through inner-disciplinary pre-service preparation and
continuing education, provision of community services, research and
information dissemination. AUCD is also a member of CCD, the Consortium
for Citizens with Disabilities, and we participated in developing the
principles put forth by CCD and have also developed our own principles.

AUCD just wants to make sure, or we hope that the commission will  make
sure you look at the data that is being developed by all the good
research that the UCDs are doing, and make sure that the changes that
are made are changes that really need to be made to the statute or are
they changes that need to be in the area of implementation.

We also do service, early intervention services, and we really think
it\'s important, just as Easter Seals pointed out, Katie pointed out,
that more money needs to be put into early intervention services, so
that kids are getting the early intervention services they need, so that
they are ready to learn. And, we hope that you use the university
centers as resources as you work on the reauthorization. Thank you for
this opportunity.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you.

MS. GARNER: I just want to take a minute here and thank all of you for
having this meeting today, putting this commission together. My name is
Connie Garner, and I am Senator Kennedy\'s Director of Disability
Policy. I also do his mental health work. And, as you know, the Senator
has worked very closely with the Bush Administration in a bipartisan way
to help get ESEA passed a couple weeks ago.

We have every intention of trying to work again in a very bipartisan,
bicameral with the inclusion of the administration. I think Bob
Pasternack, we\'ve had enough meetings to know we can all work together
to really strengthen this law, so that the outcomes for children with
disabilities really make a difference to those children and to their
families. I think that\'s what we\'re interested in working toward.

From a committee point of view, all of our committee members in the
Senate, both the Republicans and the Democrats have committed to work
together to try to get a good piece of legislation out as soon as we
can, given that we need to look at the issues in the correct way but not
to delay this longer than it needs to be delayed.

So, thank you for having us, and we hope that we\'ll all be able to work
together well. I think we will. From a personal point of view though,
let me just kind of put a face on this for a minute. My background is,
I\'m actually a pediatric and neonatal nurse practitioner by trade. My
doctorate is in health and education both.

My husband\'s a pediatrician. We have seven children. One is in third
grade and the oldest one is 26 years old. Two of them are teachers and
we do have a 14-year-old in that mix, who does have a disability.

So, I was saying to someone earlier, our dinner table is its own
hearing, I will tell you. I can put an issue out there and the guys that
are teachers don\'t have any agreement with what I say about their
sister\'s needs, and everybody else brings the sibling perspective. And
then the third grader has a lot to say about reading. So, we really do
have an inherent hearing in our family.

But one of the things that I would just, as a nurse, not as Senator
Kennedy\'s person, not in a partisan way at all, but as a neonatal nurse
practitioner, and I do still practice at Georgetown, I would tell you
that whatever we can do to work together to make this system right for
families that have children with special needs, it is so important.

It\'s a very different law than ESEA to reauthorize, and I can tell you
for every Friday night that I go into that labor and delivery area, and
for every night that the Gerber doesn\'t turn out to be a Gerber baby,
and many more children need the doors of those neonatal intensive care
units, we need to care. It\'s not just about, in my instance, keeping
everyone alive and using the best technology that we can, but it\'s also
about having some quality of life for those children and some rights
over time.

I think the person who had spoken earlier, Jane, and talked about the
very careful balance that needs to be between the civil right
underpinning of this law, which will never go away, because it\'s a
Fourteenth Amendment civil rights underpinning. Balancing that with a
good educational program is the challenge that\'s really set forth to
all of us, and particularly you all today.

So we look forward to working together with you, and I want to see a
great bill that we can go back to every family in the nursery and say
\"you know what, your kids are going to be the very best they can be and
this country\'s made it that way.\" So hopefully we can all work
together to do that. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Connie, thank you very much.

MR. YUDEN: Hi, I just want to say a few quick words. My name is Michael
Yuden. I\'m with Senator Jim Jeffords. I know Senator Jeffords would
like to extend his appreciation to all of you for your commitment and
dedication to children with disabilities.

Twenty-six years ago, as a freshman member of Congress, Senator Jeffords
had the opportunity and the privilege to work on the original version of
the IDEA law. Since then, he has been a committed advocate and dedicated
his career to make sure that children with disabilities get the
educational services that they need, and that the Constitution requires.

As we move forward, I know one of Senator Jeffords major concerns and
problems with IDEA is the government\'s failure to adequately fund IDEA.
Twenty-six years ago, they made a commitment to do so and while recent
years have seen increases in dollars toward special ed, the costs
associated with special ed has skyrocketed recently, economic downturn,
the state education budgets are being slashed. We need this funding more
than ever.

I just want to echo a little bit as well the importance of early
education, intervention, prevention, you know. As we move forward, we
really need to focus on our youngest kids, our neediest kids. Thank you.
I think this is a great opportunity for all of us to work together. I
know Senator Jeffords looks forward to working with you as well. Thanks,

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Michael, thank you.

MS. RALABATE: Thank you. I\'m probably the shortest person who is going
to be getting up here, so hopefully you can see me. My name is Patty
Ralabate. Three weeks ago, I was a speech pathologist in Connecticut.
Today, I have assumed a new position with the National Education
Association as its professional associate responsible for special needs.
I had no intention of speaking with you today, especially being brand
new with the NEA.

But I did want to take the opportunity to offer some help to you from
the NEA. You may not be aware of the fact that NEA has some particular
expertise available for you, in areas such as assessment and reading,
teacher preparation and certainly personnel issues, and we\'d like to
offer that to you as you do your work. We\'re intensely interested in
what you\'re going to do and we want to work with you cooperatively.

NEA represents all educational employees. We have related service
personnel as members, special educators, special ed directors,
administrators, principals, higher education people. We have custodians,
bus drivers, and paraeducators, all as our members. And in particular,
we have a very vital voice that I think needs to be heard here, and
that\'s the voice of the general education teacher. So we offer that to
you.

We offer to you our expertise, and our opinions and we hope that you\'ll
take the opportunity to hear them and to use them. Thank you for your
work and thank you for the opportunity to talk with you today.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Patty, thank you.

MS. REDER: Oh, it\'s two microphones. Hi, I\'m Nancy Reder and I\'m here
representing the National Association of State Directors of Special
Education, and I want to thank you for this opportunity to say just a
few words.

We do work very closely with CCD. We also work very closely with a
number of education groups through an informal coalition, called the
Elementary-Secondary Coalition and we expect to be working closely with
both of those groups through the reauthorization process.

NASDSE\'s already taken full advantage of this commission by having
several of you come and speak at our annual meeting this past November,
and likewise, I would have liked to encourage you to take advantage of
our members.

I would say probably that every single one of our state directors of
special education has worked their way up through the education system,
as a teacher, as a special educator, and probably was a local
administrator before they got to the state level. If you don\'t know
your state director of special education, I would urge you to make a
call upon them.

I\'ll make available to Todd contact information for each of our state
directors so that you\'ll have that, and they would certainly welcome
sitting down and talking to you, as people who are in charge of
implementing the Federal law at the state level.

I just wanted to say two other comments; one, I really appreciated the
comments of Secretary Paige this morning, talking about accountability,
and Bob Pasternack echoed those comments. Accountability is one of the
key issues of our members. We are strong supporters of that. We feel
that no child should be left behind. We were saying it even before the
President said it, that children in special education programs need to
be included in accountability systems, and we\'re glad that the ESEA
bill that passed also acknowledged that as well.

NASDSE has prepared a legislative agenda, and if you haven\'t already
received a copy of that, you will  good. Then I would urge you to look
at that. We\'re in the process of sort of flushing that out even
further, and we\'ll be sharing those comments with you.

Finally, I just want to mention that NASDSE has one of four
partnerships. We\'re one of four partnerships funded by OSER. Ours is
the policy maker partnership, and we\'ve been working very closely with
policymakers, the governors, the state legislators, people involved in
higher education, to look at systemic change for special education.

We\'ve been working with each one of those organizations, helping to
move special education issues to the forefront of those organizations,
and we made just a tremendous partnership with a number of groups. We\'d
like to share the fruits of those efforts with you as well. So, thank
you very much and we look forward to working with you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Nancy.

MS. RUPPMANN: My name is Jamie Ruppmann, and I\'m currently the Director
of Governmental Relations for TASH. Our organization is an advocacy
organization that bridges a membership that includes university and
college professors and researchers, self advocates, families, and
practitioners. So we see ourselves as very unique and very much a bridge
organization.

But the most important thing that you need to know, that I want to tell
you about, is that both of my sons were diagnosed very early in their
lives as having disabilities, prior to the passage of 94-142. So I\'m a
very old mom, probably even older than Justine. We were going to let her
go last, because she was the oldest, or first.

My sons are now 30 and 36 years old, and we as a family came a very,
very long way. But I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt, and it is
as true now because I\'ve spent the last seven years in the field
working with families and teachers and helping them to solve problems
and work together and bring a partnership to bear of their planning for
individual children and families. I can tell you that it is as true
today as it was back when 94-142 was passed, that this law changes the
lives of children and families.

To say that we, as a family, were unprepared for the diagnosis of our
two children is an understatement beyond belief, but nothing but good
has come for us over the years as a society, and as a community of
schools and educators and people who care about children, nothing but
good has come from the idea that families and children should be part of
community and should be part of their school communities and have a
right to do so.

The second thing I would like to say is that I was so encouraged to hear
the Governor talk about excellence in achievement. I do believe that it
has been missing, and someone out there has said that they don\'t think
that the current lobbyists on disability issues, and the current
families are very good out-of-the-box thinkers.

Well, I\'m here to tell you that most of us have had to do an awful lot
of out-of-the-box thinking for an awful long time, and I think that you
will find that if you reach out to self-advocates, we do have a
generation of students you know who have been through the school system.
My son who is 30 is part of that first generation.

So I would very much encourage you not to tack them onto the end for a
minute, but to really reach out to your communities before you get there
and find out if your self-advocates and some of your families who have
expertise can become part of your panels, and flesh out and put a face
on that data that Wade and I are so anxious for you to review. Thank you
so much for the opportunity to be here today, and God bless you all.
You\'re going to have a very busy spring.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Jamie.

MS. ZIEGLER: Good afternoon. It\'s a pleasure to be here and I
appreciate the opportunity, Governor, for the flexibility in allowing
the audience to participate in this discussion. It\'s very important for
us to be here and to hear your point of view, and congratulations to
each one of you for your appointment. You certainly have a challenge to
face in front of you and we wish you well from the Council for
Exceptional Children.

My name is Deb Ziegler, and I\'m the Assistant Executive Director for
public policy for the Council for Exceptional Children. We\'re the
largest professional organization, dedicated to the outcomes of
achievement for all children, birth through 21.

We are an umbrella organization. As I look around the room, many of you
are members of CEC. We represent those individuals who work on behalf of
children with disabilities and with gifts and talents. And those
professionals that we represent, include higher ed individuals,
practitioners, teachers, related service personnel, parents. When you
start the list, you always leave out someone, policymakers.

And so our charge is a very difficult charge when it comes to public
policy, and with an umbrella organization, it\'s often difficult for us
to come up with very specific recommendations, when we represent such a
large group of individuals who have very diverse ideas about how IDEA
should be implemented and reauthorized.

We started the process very early at CEC. We\'ve been meeting since our
annual meeting in Kansas City. We have provided a number of
opportunities for our members to provide input. As you all know, 1997
was not that long ago, when IDEA was just reauthorized. It seems that\'s
just a short time ago. We\'re ready for the new reauthorization.

However, CEC\'s recommendation is a cautious approach. Certainly we
recognize that there are some issues that, in fact, may need to be
reformed. But we need to be convinced that those reform efforts will
actually result in good outcomes for children and their families.

We encourage this commission to take a very strong look at the law and
its implementation, and determine the level of government or the level
of intervention necessary, in order to insure that implementation is
moving forward in a positive direction.

Many of the changes may not be statutory, and many of our members have
indicated to us, issues that we feel are those issues that may be best
addressed through state and local policy, through training and technical
assistance. We have a very well-developed Part D system that supports
the Part B and Part C system within IDEA, which includes training,
technical assistance, research, personnel, et cetera, and we urge you to
take a look at all parts of the law, and look at the issues and
carefully examine the issues that relate to the implementation.

CEC has put together a paper on the implementation and reauthorization
of IDEA. We\'ve identified five issues. I would like to take the liberty
of, if I have permission, to circulate the paper?

MR. JONES: Actually, we will circulate that for you.

MS. ZIEGLER: Yes, and I have copies. We always come prepared, as Leslie
indicated. I do. We never miss a moment and would be anxious for your
input and it\'s up on our web as well. So, I\'ll give these to you,
Todd. Thank you very much. Good luck in your work, and we look forward
to working with you, and acting as a resource if you need any
information from our association.

DR. WRIGHT: And your website is excellently done.

MS. ZIEGLER: Thank you, Katie.

MS. WALSH: Thank you. Good afternoon. I\'m very happy to be here. My
name is Sharon Walsh, and I\'m here representing two groups that focus
on early childhood issues, and I\'m here to offer our assistance, as you
proceed with your very significant task, that I know  I\'m very
encouraged after sitting here today and listening. I\'m very optimistic
and, as Patty said, we\'re intensely interested in the deliberations
that you are about to undertake.

The two organizations I represent are the Division for Early Childhood
of CEC, the Council for Exceptional Children, and the other one is a
recently formed organization called the Infant and Toddler Coordinators
Association. And we represent the state agencies that administer the
Part C birth-to-three program.

So between those two organizations, I believe we\'re in a good position,
and we\'re offering our assistance today in any way that we can be of
help in programs particularly related to the birth-to-three Part C
section of IDEA, the preschool program under Part B of the law, and as
Deb said, the very important Part D initiatives, the national activities
under IDEA.

And as you proceed, I know many folks around the table, you\'ve already
mentioned that, will agree with us, one of the keys to successful and
effective and excellence in special education will be the cornerstone of
early intervention.

So if we strive toward better early intervention and then the early
availability of quality services that are evidence-based, and quality
providers available to provide those services to children and families,
I think we can truly achieve excellence in special ed.

So again, you have a large task ahead of you, and if there\'s anything
the two organizations I represent can do to assist you, we\'d be happy
to do so and we will most definitely be providing written
recommendations to you. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Sharon.

MS. RAIMANDO: Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to be here
today. Thank you, Governor, members of the commission. My name is
Barbara Raimando and I\'m with two organizations, the American Society
for Deaf Children, which is a parent organization, and the Conference of
Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs for the deaf, which
is an organization of superintendents of public and private schools for
the deaf around the country.

I\'m also the mother of two children who are deaf. They\'re seven years
old and twelve years old. They attend the Maryland School for the Deaf
in Frederick, which is about 50 miles northwest of here. They\'re day
students, so they come home every day. I hope I have all my complicated
childcare arrangements worked out today. My daughter was identified when
she was a year old, so I guess I\'ve been really preparing to talk to
people about this for the past eleven years.

About 90 percent of children who are deaf are born to hearing parents,
most of whom know nothing about hearing loss and have never met a deaf
or hard of hearing person in their whole lives. And so, they really need
a lot of information and support, particularly early on.

As some of my colleagues have mentioned, the early intervention systems,
and they\'re absolutely critical for children who are deaf or hard of
hearing, perhaps now more than ever, because about 45 states have
newborn hearing screening programs. Many of them are really in a state
of movement from theory to reality and they\'re really working to link
with their Part C programs.

They\'re also finding out that their Part C programs are not always
adequate to the task, so I would ask that you keep that in mind as you
go through your deliberations on this topic.

The other point that I wanted to make is that IDEA really needs to do a
little bit better job of addressing the language and communication needs
of deaf and hard of hearing children. As you can imagine, those needs
are the most important ones affected by hearing loss, and my
organizations, and several others that we work in, have put together a
document that has some ideas on ways that IDEA can change to better meet
the needs of these children.

We promote a language  a communication driven program that\'s formerly
articulated in the law, and that would include communication assessment,
communication development, and communication access. That\'s really a
piece that sometimes is really misunderstood or missing from a lot of
programs.

Hearing loss is considered a low incidence disability, so sometimes we
get lost in the shuffle, as well as I think some of the blind groups. So
I hope that you\'ll keep us in mind as you discuss, over the next coming
months, and think about your report. I did bring copies of this document
for all of you, and I\'d be happy to serve as a resource as you move on
over the next few months. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Barbara. Are there any other presenters?
Yes, come on up. Come forward. Everybody has done really well. I\'m
really pleased the way it\'s moved along. Go ahead.

MS. VANKEUREN: Good afternoon. I\'m Linda Vankeuren and I\'m with the
Council for Exceptional Children. Like many of you here, I used to be a
special education teacher, and like many of you here, I have not been in
the classroom for a while. This is a personal request.

I would like each of you to take a vow that before your work is done 
I\'m very nervous if you can\'t tell by the way my voice is trembling 
that you go into at least five schools and talk to the special education
teachers, find out about the conditions that they are working in that
prevent them from providing a quality education to their kids, find out
what they\'re doing, what they hope to achieve and what their goals are.

Our teachers are very dedicated, but they are working in very
challenging conditions right now, and I think it\'s imperative that you
go into the schools, talk to them, their general education colleagues,
and find out what\'s going on. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Any other presenters? I want to thank Paul, Jane,
Susan, Leslie, Katie, Justine, Myra, Kim, Connie, Michael, Patty, Nancy,
Jamie, Deb, Sharon, Barbara and Linda for each making a presentation.
And we had 17 people and I think they presented some very good
information in a very short period of time. I compliment all of you for
doing that.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think one of the things that I found is there is a
real passion and a real concern and there\'s people with a wealth of
experience and knowledge that want to share it with us. I think the idea
of visiting with parents in your own communities and visiting the
schools and especially the special ed teachers and also the general ed
teachers that are involved in working with kids.

And also dealing with the other issues we talked about, the deaf and
hearing loss and others, those are all good suggestions and ideas, and I
think having this input really early at this beginning stage will be
really helpful to us.

So I thank all of you for coming, for participating in this. I hope we
can continue to structure this in such a way that people get that input,
and yet that we can move along. We know we have a limited time frame,
but I just want to say thank you and I appreciate, you know, with short
notice you all came up and stepped up to the plate and did a really good
job. I\'m sorry we couldn\'t give you better conditions, but hopefully
as we move forward, we\'ll try to do that. I think we\'re going to have
another task force that\'s going to 

MR. JONES: After a brief discussion, as a practical matter, the only
task force that really should talk today, as opposed to waiting for a
conference call over the next week, is the professional development
group that will be meeting in Denver. And so, if that group could get
together.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: All right, is there any other business that we need
to discuss? Any other members of the commission have anything they want
to bring up? Yes, Mr. Fletcher.

DR. FLETCHER: I would like to meet briefly with the assessment
committee, if I could.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay.

DR. FLETCHER: I have a couple of questions I need to ask.

MR. JONES: Would that be possible if we do it after the professional
development?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'ll do the professional development first and then
the assessment group, ask them to wait about ten minutes and meet after
that. And then, for those of us who will be going on the bus, the
members of the commission that are here, it\'s 6:00 in the lobby.

MR. JONES: Yes.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We meet, we convene at 6:00 in the lobby. Is there
anything else? Otherwise, we\'re going to have some time for you. Yes,
Nancy.

DR. GRASMICK: I just want to be sure that for our research group, there
will be an opportunity to arrange that conference call because we
haven\'t met today.

MR. JONES: Right. We\'re going to, as quickly as we can in fact,
starting tomorrow we\'re going to be e-mailing everyone to see what
their schedules are for the next week and a half so we can arrange that
conference call quickly. Part of the difficulty is if we stack them up
the way the last ones went, they tend to take more than 10 minutes. It
will be 5:30, you\'re hanging out here too long, and you all do have the
good fortune of having about two and a half months, as opposed to the
five weeks.

DR. GRASMICK: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, yes. Mr. Sontag.

DR. SONTAG: Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you for opening up the
meeting today to some of the major stakeholders. I think it\'s going to
help the work of this commission down the road.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, thank you. And I want to thank the stakeholders
for your patience and for your understanding and for being here, and for
making adjustments on short notice. I think, you know, we all share a
common commitment and interest in doing what we can to assess where we
are, the progress that\'s been made, try to build on that to make it an
even brighter and better future, and to achieve the President\'s goal of
leaving no child behind and really achieving excellence in special
education.

We know that\'s a huge task and we know we\'re only, you know, bit
players in this whole thing, but hopefully we can make a difference, and
I appreciate very much the sharing of the members of the commission this
morning, and the stakeholders\' presentations and their sharing of their
information and their commitment this afternoon. Together, we\'ll go
forward.

I\'ve got a thick skin. I\'ve been in public life a long time and if you
have criticisms or suggestions or ways that we can improve this process,
I\'m a believer in openness, and yet I also recognize the responsibility
that we have and the limits we have in terms of our time.

So we\'re going to try to balance that in a way that\'s fair and treats
everybody in an equitable way. So thank you for that. Yes.

DR. CHAMBERS: Just in light of the comments that were made by Linda, and
I\'m sorry I forgot your last name already, but from CEC, I really
thought the idea of visiting some schools.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Absolutely.

DR. CHAMBERS: Obviously we can do that in our own communities easily
enough, but for me, that\'s one state, one location. I guess I would
just like to at least put out there, is there any way that we can think
about the logistics of having the commission be able to visit some
schools in different parts of the country that we\'re going to be in.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We have some cost constraints on that, although maybe
in conjunction with our hearings or something, something like that could
be considered. I have already met with the Iowa State Education
Association, some of the special ed teachers in my own state, and while
I was Governor, I visited probably an average of 20 or 30 schools a
year.

I think it\'s really important to get to the schools, because then you
get a chance to see the situation that the students and the teachers are
dealing with. Also what\'s the right term?

MS. JACKSON: Related services workers.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: The other related services workers, thank you very
much. I appreciate you helping me complete that sentence. The related
services, I think we do need to know, and hear from and see what
they\'re dealing with.

So I think that\'s a good idea. We all, at least on our own, and I think
we ought to look if there might be some school visits could be worked in
an economical way with our meetings or hearings. But I think on our own,
we can also visit schools and meet with parents in our communities as
part of our effort to learn as much as we can so we can do the best job
possible in making our recommendations. Yes.

MS. ACOSTA: Governor, I would just like to reiterate the invitation as
well, as a school principal, and I have my state superintendent here
with me. I\'m sure she would agree with me that we would open and
you\'re welcome to come to any of our Maryland schools. You can come to
my school anytime.

One of the former attorneys for the Department of Educations, ethics
lawyer, is now a teacher in my school. So I owe her and I just wanted to
again thank the public for their input. It\'s very enriching for me and
very supportive that we have such support in this work of the
commission.

And finally, President Bush told me once in a brief conversation I had
with him that he considers letting a child in our country go unattended
to be the underbelly of bigotry, and every time someone got up there and
spoke, that kept going through me, and certainly that\'s a charge that
we, as Americans, need not ever have on our shoulders. So I thank you so
very much. That was wonderful and very refreshing.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you Adela. Beth Ann.

DR. BUTTERFIELD: Paula.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I\'m sorry, Paula. I\'m sorry. I\'m one name tag off.

DR. BUTTERFIELD: It\'s okay. It\'s a learning disability.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: You\'ll find I make plenty of mistakes, so go ahead
Paula.

DR. BUTTERFIELD: I was thinking as a school person myself, it might be
interesting for instance, I could see where in professional development
that perhaps when we\'re in Denver, we hold our hearing in a school. You
know, I know that there are schools that would have that capability.
Some wouldn\'t.

But I do have a number of colleagues I know in the Denver area in the
schools, that perhaps I could contact and ask if we could hold a hearing
there. And then that way, we could actually have a kid or two to be
there to keep us focused on what we\'re there for.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think that\'s a great idea.

MR. JONES: As far as the choice of whether to go forward with that,
that\'s really up to the task forces who choose how they want to
structure their time. The only constraints are time and money.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I guess my feeling is, I want to give you, within the
constraints we\'ve got in terms of time and money, as much flexibility
as possible. So the task force chairs I think are in a position to have
that flexibility, and as chair of the commission, I\'ll try to do what I
can to provide that openness and flexibility as well, so people in fact
get the opportunity to have the input. Other comments or? Yes, Nancy.

DR. GRASMICK: I just think we would be remiss, I know earlier we said
something about the staff, but I just want to particularly thank Todd
Jones. I think he\'s been incredible and his customer service skills are
wonderful.

MR. JONES: Thank you.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think that\'s a very good point. Not only Todd, but
the rest of the staff as well. They all have, you know, and we\'re going
to need them to be there at the meetings and the hearings to make sure
that the information gets taken down and that we stay on task to do what
we need to do. So I want to also reiterate what Nancy said and express
our appreciation.

MR. JONES: I would feel ashamed if I were to take a compliment like that
without thanking the staff who work much harder and much better than I
do at the work that they do.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes, Mr. Huntt.

DR. HUNTT: Mr. Chairman, I\'d also  I think we\'d also be remiss not to
express our appreciation for you being willing to take the chair. It\'s
been a very professionally run meeting and you bring a great deal of
credibility to it and I appreciate it.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, when the President of the United States gives
you an assignment like this, it\'s a honor and I consider it an honor
and a privilege to be able to associate with all of you, everyone, not
only the members of the commission, but all the stakeholders and the
parents and the people that have been here and that we\'ve had a chance
to hear from today.

So, I think this is a good start. I know we\'ve got a lot of work to do,
and I guess I challenge all of you to do your very best, and hopefully
together, we\'ll have an impact and we\'ll make a difference in
achieving what the President has given us the charge to do.

So with that, we\'re going to give you a little time off, and we do have
the reception. Cherie Takemoto, thank you and your organization and the
others that are sponsoring that. We look forward to seeing you tonight.
And those of you that are riding the bus, 6:00 down in the lobby. With
that, we\'re adjourned.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter was concluded at 4:22 p.m.)