SAC executive committee readies full council agenda, asks State Department of Education for data and plans legislative briefing

The Connecticut State Advisory Council for Special Education Executive Committee met Wednesday, Feb. 19, and planned the agenda for the next full SAC meeting at the Legislative Office Building, placing round-table discussion and the council’s priorities and recommendations at the center of the in-person session.

The committee said it would ask the State Department of Education (SDE) to provide more timely data on priority areas that drive the council’s work — specifically naming restraint and seclusion and dispute-resolution information — so the SAC can use recent figures when identifying unmet needs and prioritizing recommendations. Chair Susan Yankee told members she would send a formal request and share the correspondence with the executive committee.

Nut graf: The executive committee emphasized using SDE data and recent listening-session findings to shape the council’s annual priorities and recommendations. Members said having up-to-date data and targeted reports from SDE will help the SAC distinguish which priorities to carry forward and which have been addressed.

In planning the full meeting, the committee decided round-table discussions should precede the priorities-and-recommendations agenda item so member reports can inform priority-setting. The group also agreed to give extra time to the legislative update during the full meeting and to invite a representative from the special education select committee or a designee to brief the SAC on recent developments and listening-session results. Chair Yankee assigned outreach to Representative Comey as an action item to secure a speaker or referral to a committee staffer.

Committee members said several SAC members attended select-committee listening sessions and that recordings are available on the select committee’s YouTube channel; the executive committee intends to use those reports as background. Members also agreed the executive committee should request that SDE provide periodic updates — including data not yet released publicly on Edsight — related to SAC priority areas.

The meeting included procedural votes to approve past meeting minutes. The executive committee approved the Nov. 6, 2024 meeting minutes with corrections and the Jan. 8, 2025 meeting minutes with corrections; no abstentions were reported. The meeting adjourned by motion at 9:51 a.m.

Ending: The executive committee set several near-term work items: a formal SDE data request, outreach to Representative Comey to secure a select-committee briefing, and distribution of a draft full-meeting agenda by the end of the week so staff can finalize logistics for the in-person session at the LOB.