Steve Hirase

Helen Post

Dixie Huefner

Jack Rudio

Ken Hennefer

Jerry Christensen

Emily Johnson

Approval of the minutes will be addressed at the next meeting.

Steve reported that the Planning Committee and Mae Taylor have directed that we use the existing Utah rules as a starting point for our edits. Steve volunteered to produce a draft of the existing rules with our IDEA '97 changes edited in, providing he can get the rules on disk. Once he has the draft complete, Emily will distribute it to the rest of the task force.

615(i)(3)(D)(ii), 300.513 - Dixie raised a question regarding the awarding of attorney's fees charged for participation in a meeting of an IEP team. The law states that such fees may, at the state's discretion, be awarded only when the meeting is convened for mediation conducted prior to the filing of a complaint under 615(b)(6) or 615(k). This is not explicitly addressed in the draft federal regulations. The issues raised were the following: (1) what does it mean when an item in the law is not addressed in the regulations?, and (2) should Utah allow the above-described award, considering that it will have the effect of making it more lucrative for an attorney to have the client file for due process than to resolve an issue through mediation?

With regard to the discussion item described above, the task force agreed to recommend to the planning committee that attorney's fees for participation in an IEP team meeting not be awarded under any circumstances. Steve will insert wording to that effect in the draft document he is preparing

Three more meetings were scheduled, as follows:

Wednesday, Feb. 4, 1:30-4:00 p.m., ULRC

Wednesday, Feb. 18, 1:30-4:00 p.m., ULRC

Wednesday, Mar. 4, 1:30-4:00 p.m., ULRC.

Before the February 4 meeting, task force members should have done the following:

- reviewed minutes from both the 12-15-97 and the 1-20-98 meetings, so these may be revised, if necessary, and accepted;

- reviewed the draft rules document prepared by Steve;

- reviewed, specifically, the existing procedures for filing a state complaint, so that we may draft revised procedures.

During the February 4 meeting, we will review the draft Utah rules (procedural safeguards sections), and assign the sections to individual task force members so that each of us may begin drafting items for the user's manual. We anticipate that the electronic discussion group may be a useful tool as we write these items. Emily will provide copies of the following resources, which should provide additional guidance and examples: (1) the "old" Utah monitoring checklist; (2) examples of user's manual items drafted by the IEP task force; and (3) Margaret Lubke's master chart of regulation sections, which lists, among other things, the task force responsible for the section and the data source (e.g., LEA application, monitoring checklist data, parent interviews) to be used in determining compliance with the section.