WELCOME: Ted Kelly welcomed everyone and talked about the hassle of the holiday season. He urged everyone to be prepared and to check their calendars.

UPDATES:

ULRC: Bruce Schroeder introduced the annual consortium holiday activity. Food items were collected for the Utah food bank statewide. He went through the folder items. The publication "Bottom Line" was included, since the Utah Special Educator is not published in December. He excused Jerry Christensen who is attending the National DEC Conference in Chicago, IL.

Tracy Stewart discussed the Precision Teaching conference plans. A committee has been formed and has already met. They changed the date to November 4-6, 1999 at Provo Marriott. The March dates (Mar 4-6) will be for training.

Karen Marberger said that the 10^th Annual Mentor Conference is coming up on January 14-15, 1999 The keynote speaker is Dr. Robert Bowman from Chapin, SC. The major breakout session speakers are Susan Bowman, Chapin, SC, Dr. Ed Kame’enui, Eugene, OR, Dr. Reba Keele, Salt Lake City, UT, and the closing keynote will be Ms. Eloise Bell, writer for the Salt Lake Tribune. Registration forms were distributed and consortium members were encouraged to fill them out and leave them with Karen today. Karen also expressed appreciation for the consortium’s support for mentors to attend the Mentor Conference.

UTAH PARENT CENTER: Jennie Gibson reported that the new volunteer training went very well and that 10 parents were trained. Part of this training included a panel to talk about collaboration with school districts. The Parent Conference will be March 19-20, 1999 at the Provo Marriott. Their planned keynotes include Richard Young and Don Meyer. The "Basic Information Sheets" that districts ordered last month were distributed. More can be ordered from UPC by calling 801-272-1051 or 800-468-1160.

USOE: Ken Reavis facilitated the following updates:

Mae Taylor-Sweeten said that the federal regulation saga is continuing. They were supposed to be out by December 1^st, but they were not. Now they will need to be out in December. They have set up training sessions for Jan. & Feb. in Washington, DC with regional trainings scheduled after that. The regulations will not be totally ready until late spring. State improvement grant is before a federal committee for review. There were 42 applications and there will be 19 grants awarded. The results will be announced in January with funding available in February. Mae talked about the annual data reports and the need to complete those. Federal monitoring starts Dec 7. A team of three people will visit schools: Monday in Park City; Tues and Wed in Logan;

Thurs. at the USOE; Thurs. and Fri. in Jordan. There will be debriefing on Friday at Jones Center. From these meetings OSEP will make recommendations for improvement for our state.

Tim McConnell thanked everyone who participated in the Inclusion Conference and thanked the mentors for participating. They got good evaluations and feedback. Next year the conference will be a regional format with the next state-wide conference in two years. There will be two more trainings for inclusion support and districts will be receiving information on this.

Ginger Rhode passed out the summary of the OSEP/USOE survey that was distributed throughout the state. Randy Schelbe compiled the results of over 400 surveys which will be shared with OSEP. There were some surprising results.

Brenda Broadbent talked about the autism issue in preschool. She has ordered a book, Behavioral Interventions for Young Children with Autism for each school district. It has a chapter on how parents can sue the school districts. She thought this information would be helpful for the school districts to have. Region 1 will be having their conference in January at U of U. She is planning to pull all planning committees together to create the direction for next year.

INSTITUTES OF HIGHER LEARNING:

BYU: Gordon Gibb said that they are heavy into recruitment for certification program for special education and masters degree program. BYU is pursuing research in schools with grants in several areas of special education. The program "What’s Best for Matthew" has been completed and will be reviewed in January (IEP process).

U of U: Jack Mayhew announced that Richard O’Donnell is getting "UPLIFT classes" off the ground. They also have a project between USU and several other universities to use high tech means to get information out to rural sites. First sites will be in Vernal and San Juan. This may change the way we do distance learning. Project ACT grant awarded to U of U to help with special education issues and will work with some districts to develop plans for improvement. Nadine Thorson and Connie Mathot-Buckner are over in Bosnia helping with special education issues there.

CEC Announcement: Pat Beckman, President of the Utah Chapter of CEC, invited people to join CEC —and to apply for professionally recognized special educator award. Peggy Milligan announced the CEC spring conference "Winds of Change", following the SARS meetings in St. George on March 27, 1999 at Dixie High School.

Marilyn Likins reported that they had a good para conference. She announced that there would be a behavior management class for para educators starting January 16, 1999. Those interested should contact her at 801-272-1843 or milikins@utah.uswest.net

FEATURE PRESENTATION:

Choral group from Farrer Middle school, Provo District provided musical selections directed by Janet Jensen. Mr. Bean Video with a "walk about" activity following the video got the consortium group into the holiday spirit. As a service project, consortium members contributed canned goods to the Utah Food Bank. They were asked to guess, from donations gathered, the total number of items and the most contributed item. Prizes were given.

Ted Kelly "mugged" the group by giving everyone a Christmas mug.

He ended the meeting with a thought: If you don’t experience the holidays, you can’t share them with anyone else. He also gave everyone "100 Ways to Say Merry Christmas."

The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.