RE: Special Education

Those of us involved in drafting versions of this Master Plan are senstive to your concerns; it has been brought up in several ways by several special interest groups.  The Joint Committee has been clear that means ALL when the Master Plan talks about an educational program that works for all students.  We have deliberately avoided the temptation to single out any one group (lest we miss one and fuel a stormy reaction)and have sought to be clear that public education institutions serve a variety of student, including students with special needs and disabilities.  To ensure that such students receive the quality of education the Master Plan seeks to guarantee for all requires that additional resources be made available to schools serving greater proportions of such students than the funding methodology assumes.  We have deliberately avoided specifying how the additional needed services should be provided, that being a responsibility of the professionals who directly provide services to students.  We would be interested in your thoughts about how much specificity should be contained in a Master Plan and subsequent implementation legislation in this regard.  Should such services be specified in law or left to the professional judgement of those trained to serve special education students?