Bette Empol
Bette Empol began her involvement with CATESOL in 1999 when she became an ESL teacher at Conejo Valley Adult Education in Thousand Oaks, CA, where she is now the ESL Coordinator as well as the CBET Coordinator for Conejo Valley Unified School District. She has been involved in critical legislation for adult ESL programs and will continue to do so as there is a continuing need to advocate, fund, develop, and implement quality programs that provide adult ESL students with the necessary education needed for them to improve their lives. This is her first CATESOL Board position and she is excited to be part of the socio-political advocacy team focusing on adult, community college and university issues, and looks forward to promoting effective legislation. You may contact her at BetteE@conejo.tec.ca.us.
Lisa Ireland
Lisa Ireland is currently teaching English Language Development (ELD) and Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) in the Escondido Union High School District. She has served in a variety of positions, including ELD Department Chair, Site AVID Coordinator, Campus Outreach Coordinator for Cal-SOAP, and Site Liaison for GEAR UP. In addition to being a member of CATESOL, she is a member of the ASCD, Phi Delta Kappa, and TESOL professional organizations.
Her primary focus of professional interest is preparing high school ELLs for college because she sees education as a means to empower students. She is a strong advocate for equity in education, especially in regards to post-secondary education access opportunities for ELLs.
Lonnie Shields
Nevada Advocate
Lonnie Shields began his career as a teacher and coach in Montana in 1963, but then moved to Reno, Nevada in 1967. He taught elementary and middles school for 17 years before becoming a principal in 1981 of what would be considered an inner city school in Reno which served a diverse population of non-English speaking students. Many of the students were the children of parents who worked in the downtown clubs and few children had any proficiency in English at all. He feels he was blessed with extremely talented ELD teachers and he continually learned from them. He retired in 1998. During these years, he served as the Governmental Relations Chairman for the Nevada State Education Association for almost 10 years and lobbied on their behalf at both the state and national level. He also served as the President of this association for two years and as President of the Washoe county Teachers Association for two terms.
From retirement until October 2004, he served as the advocate for the Washoe County Education Administrator’s Association, and then began lobbying efforts for the Nevada State Administrator’s Association and then for Clark County Administrator’s Association. He also assisted the CATESOL advocate in Nevada whenever she needed support or information. He has a strong passion for providing Nevadans with a strong educational system and seeing that second language students have a system that truly meets their needs. You may contact him at lshields414@charter.net.
Jeff and Melinda Frost
CATESOL's legislative advocates
Jeff Frost has an MA and a Ph.D. in political science and taught American
Government courses in college for several years. He has been an adjunct
faculty member at California State University, Sacramento. Jeff has
represented public education clients since 1987 when he worked at the
California School Boards Association. In 1990 he started the firm Frost
Davis & Donnelly, specifically to represent school districts and
educational associations. Jeff has worked extensively on adult education,
ESL and litereacy issues over the last decade and is considered one of the
state's experts on adult education policy.
Melinda Frost graduated from United States International University in San Diego with a Liberal Arts degree. She taught grades 5-7 for Oceanview School District in Huntington Beach. Upon relocating to Sacramento, she taught for San Juan Unified School District as a Chapter 1 teacher for grades 1 - 6. She eventually accepted a job at Will Rogers Middle School, a district designated bilingual center, where she taught both English and Social Science to 7th and 8th graders. In 1994 she received her Language Development Certificate (LDS), which was the precursor to CLAD. Melinda also worked as a Mentor Teacher and BTSA Support Provider before joining Frost, Davis & Donnelly as a full time legislative advocate.
Excerpts from interview with Jeff Frost, CATESOL News, February 2001
CN: How do you monitor bills in Sacramento?
JF: There is no really easy way to do it given that there are probably 600 education related bills introduced every year. We actually read every bill that is introduced or amended during the course of the legislative year. We will analyze them based on the interests of our clients and what we know about their priorities. Once we have made a list of possible bills in which a client may have an interest, we send them, along with our own analysis of the bill, to each client for their review.
For CATESOL, these bills will go to the Sociopolitical Concerns Committee for review and action. This process will generally lead to positions of "support" or "opposition" to the bills that have the most impact on the association. Many times, the client's review of the bill will lead a position of support or “oppose if amended." Then it is our job to work with the authors and sponsors of these bills to seek amendments that either allow us to support the bill or without which we must oppose the bill.
The most important element of this process is for the lobbyist to be aware of the key issues and priorities of the association and then to understand how each bill will effect those priorities.
CN: What meetings and hearings do you attend?
JF: There are an array of formal hearings that we attend. Both the Assembly and State Senate have bimonthly hearings. Additionally, we attend the hearings of the Appropriations Committees in both houses as well as the Education Budget Subcommittees. Occasionally, education bills will be referred to committees such as Judiciary or Labor and Employment. We will also attend the monthly meetings of the State Board of Education and the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
These are the formal hearings. We usually spend the bulk of our time in informal meetings with legislators, staff and other lobbyists negotiating over specific bills. When the language of bills is being negotiated, an entire series of meetings are often required to finalize these negotiations.
CN: How Does CATESOL decide to take a position on a bill or present testimony at a Committee hearing?
JF: As the lobbyists for CATESOL, our firm will meet with the Sociopolitical Committee and the officers of the association to determine the legislative priorities and positions on bills. Based on these positions, our firm will represent CATESOL's interests before the Legislature. Generally, we will provide the testimony on a bill.
At times where very specific testimony is needed or where it is more valuable to have a CATESOL member provide testimony we will ask the President or the Sociopolitical Chair to attend the hearing and provide expert testimony on the impacts of a particular bill.
CN: What is the political situation in Sacramento?
JF: The focus of both the Governor and the Legislature remains on K-12 education. In a term-limit environment where legislators turn over at least every six years (we now have 31 new Assembly members) the Governor will always control the agenda.
What will happen now that the Governor's reform agenda has been laid out over the last two years is not totally clear. In general, I think that the direction has been set by the Governor and we will not see a great deal of change. We will, however, continue to see modifications of the statutes that have put the Governor's agenda in place - with an emphasis on the STAR testing program to establish measurements of success, the ranking of schools through the Academic Performance Index (API), an effort to provide more remediation options to students that are not performing at grade level, and the continued development and implementation of the high school exit exam.
The challenge for CATESOL will be to assist law makers and the Governor in fine tuning the remediation options so they provide the best possible opportunities for teachers of English Learners to teach and students to learn.
CN: How will your firm help CATESOL develop a clear legislative strategy?
JF: For CATESOL to have a positive impact on programs for English language learners and on the resources for ESL teachers, you must be both focused and organized. CATESOL does not have the financial or manpower resources of the California Teachers Association. To have an impact, CATESOL must be better prepared than it has been in the past, and better focused to specific legislative and budget actions that can be shown to be of value in helping school districts meet the challenges of improving student performance.
What our firm has suggested is to have CATESOL board members work to determine its three or four highest priorities - things that will have the most impact on their students and their teaching conditions. We should then find ways to insert these priority issues into the debate on how to improve the Governor's reform agenda.
Additionally, we need to find legislative champions that are most interested in improving the opportunities for English language learners to improve their skills. In part, this will only happen when CATESOL members begin to become more aggressive in the legislative process.
CN: What can members do to help with CATESOL's advocacy efforts?
JF: As I indicated already, there are 31 legislators who are just beginning their jobs. Almost none of these new members has an education background. They do not understand the Governor's reforms or their impacts on ESL students. CATESOL members need to take this opportunity to meet these members - as well as the other 89 members of the legislature.
Invite them to your school on a Friday, when they are in their home districts. Let them visualize what you do and ask questions. Develop a level of communication with them that will enable you to provide them critical information in the future. Believe it or not, legislators are generally nice people who are inquisitive about how schools work and how they can help make your job easier. Give it a try, you might like it.