COPAA's Annual Report to the Membership
2005-06

Board of Directors
At its December 2005 meeting the COPAA Board elected Alice Nelson, Christine Little, Naomi Grossman, Tim Sindelar, and Rose Marie Archibald. The current Board and terms are as follows:

Expiring in 2007: Jessica Butler, Frank Hickman, Leslie Seid Margolis, Brice Palmer, Tim Sindelar, Wayne Steedman, and Meredith Warshaw.

Expiring in 2008: Robert Berlow, Judith Gran, Teresa Holt, Mark Kamleiter, Michael O'Connor, Jodi Siegel.

Expiring in 2009: Selene Almazan, Rose Marie Archibald, Barbara Ebenstein, Naomi Grossman, Christine Little, Alice Nelson, Jamie Ruppmann.

Officers 2006-07: Selene Almazan (Chair), Jessica Butler-Arkow (Vice Chair), Brice Palmer (Secretary), Jamie Ruppman (Treasurer).

Executive Director
One of the most gratifying events this year for COPAA and its membership is the selection of Denise Stile Marshall as COPAA's Executive Director. Denise has been instrumental in ensuring that COPAA functions better as an organization. In the coming year, Denise plans, among other activities, to help the Board develop a strategic plan to determine priorities for growth, outreach, member and public relations, and other identified goals in support of COPAA's mission. COPAA has experienced rapid growth in membership (over 25% increase) in the past year. This is a very positive indicator for the organization. Denise has worked side-by-side with the Conference volunteers from the first day she began her tenure with COPAA.

Advocates
Jamie Ruppmann chaired the advocate committee. This year, the advocates committee recommended that the Board change the COPAA bylaw requiring a two-thirds attorney membership of the Board. The Board unanimously accepted the bylaw change at the December 2005 Board meeting. The committee is working with Meredith Warshaw to set up a discussion forum and bulletin board on the COPAA website. This would allow COPAA to “pilot” additional services to special education and disabilities rights advocates and, over time, gauge the interest in setting up and maintaining activities separate from the COPAA listserv. The new co-chairs for the coming year are Theresa Holt and Christine Little.

Amicus
The Amicus Committee was busy this year. We worked on 3 Supreme Court cases in one year. The cases Schaffer v. Weast, (burden of proof issue), Murphy v. Arlington Central School District (expert witness fees as a reimbursable cost under the IDEA) and Winkelman v. Parma City School District ( a petition for certiorari on the issue of the ability of parents to proceed pro se in federal court). It is certainly an indication of COPAA's growth this year—our views are being solicited and firms are offering to provide pro bono services to COPAA. Selene Almazan chaired the Amicus Committee this year. The new Amicus Chair will be Alice Nelson.

Awards Committee
Jess Butler chairs the Awards Committee. COPAA will award the Diane Lipton Award for Outstanding Educational Advocacy to parent advocate Wendy Byrnes of DREDF. The award was created to honor the memory of disabilities civil rights leader Diane Lipton. COPAA will also give a special distinguished service award to Ankur Goel for his outstanding pro bono service for COPAA and children with disabilities. Mr. Goel wrote COPAA's amicus brief in the Schaffer v. Weast Supreme Court case and has donated many hours of pro bono service to COPAA over the last two years. COPAA is giving 5 Beth Goodman scholarships to help defray conference expenses for five members with financial need who have made outstanding advocacy contributions. The scholarships are given in honor of the memory of Beth Goodman, an attorney who fought for the rights of children with disabilities in the Washington, D.C. area until her death in 2002. They are funded by member donations.

Conference
The 2006 COPAA Conference is our largest to date, with over 350 attendees currently registered (and more expected by the time registration). The majority of our Conference attendees are coming to Phoenix for the pre-conference skills training as well as the Conference, which indicates a high level of interest in and expectation that the COPAA Conference will address training needs in our field. This year we had an excellent response to our call for proposals and the Proposal Review Committee was impressed with the range and the depth of the presentations available to us. Sincere thanks goes to Dawn Smith, Jodi Siegel, Candace Cortiella, the Conference Proposal Review Team, our Pre-Conference skills trainers and our Conference Workshop Presenters for their commitment to COPAA and their willingness to work on behalf of the COPAA Conference. We have already begun working with the 2007 COPAA Conference Committee to plan for next year.

Finance & Development Committee
Michael O'Connor has served COPAA as its Treasurer and Chair of the Finance and Development from 2002-2006 and ably maintained COPAA's books and guided us in budget decisions. This year we also planned for transition of financial functions to new Treasurer, Jamie Ruppman and to Denise Marshall, Executive Director. For FY 2005, COPAA ended the year in a healthy financial state. We will have approximately slightly over $200,000 in cash after paying expenses. For FY 2006, we are anticipating increased revenue from the USC grant and an increase in dues receipts. COPAA is seeking members with financial affairs backgrounds and expertise to participate in this committee. Please let Selene Almazan or Jamie Ruppmann if you are interested.

Government Relations
Chaired by Bob Berlow, this Committee has been actively involved in Congressional, federal regulatory, and state legislative matters, working to protect the educational rights of children with disabilities. COPAA submitted extensive comments on the Department of Education's proposed regulations implementing IDEA 2004; the proposed 2% assessment option (allowing approximately 20% of children with disabilities to be assessed against modified achievement standards rather than grade-level standards); and the proposed Paperwork Reduction and Multi-Year IEP regulations. COPAA also wrote letters to several states regarding legislative and regulatory burden of proof proposals. Thank you to the many committee members who participated in these efforts.

Membership
Membership is chaired by Meredith Warshaw who has taken over the chair position after Sue Heath. As of March 15, 2006, we have 891 Members, covering 46 states, Ontario and the Virgin Islands. We do not have any members in Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, or Wyoming. Forty-two percent have attorney membership, 33% identify themselves as advocates, 14% as parents and 11% as "other" - however, there is a great deal of overlap between groups, as many attorney, advocate, and “other” members are also parents of children with disabilities. Two very helpful changes this year have been the addition of online membership applications and having our new Executive Director to help process memberships.

Publications Committee
The publications committee is being re-energized and re-organized under the leadership of Brice Palmer. COPAA currently has a number of sample advocacy materials, as well as briefs, pleadings, hearing decisions, and other legal documents on its website in the Members Only section. Members are encouraged to upload sample materials. COPAA anticipates future publications on its website and will keep its membership informed.

Training Committee
COPAA's Training Committee, chaired by Judith Gran and Brice Palmer, has been developing Special Education Advocate Training (SEAT) program in conjunction with the University of Southern California. The goal of the program is to develop and field-test a standard 110-hour advocacy-training curriculum at four sites around the country. Members of COPAA's Training Committee and volunteers have participated in drafting the SEAT curriculum, and members of the committee are also teaching the first cohort of trainees. The SEAT curriculum and training will have long lasting training benefits for COPAA members and for the community of practice made up of special education advocates.

Website
The COPAA website continues to grow in usefulness. Although we still have a lot of work ahead of us, we have a firm basis to build on. Among other accomplishments, we are able to process membership applications and conference registration online, and we have a "Find an Attorney/Advocate" public database to help people find COPAA members practicing in their states. In the Members Area, our members can manage their contact information online, and we also have a collection of sample documents for advocates and legal resource materials. Both of our listservs are very active, allowing our members to ask questions and share useful information. We look forward to continuing to increase the usefulness of the COPAA site over the coming year. Meredith Warshaw and Christine Little are the Co-Chairs this coming year.