RESOLUTION ON PL 94-142

WHEREAS, the AFT supports the objective of providing effective educational services to handicapped children contained in PL 94-1 42; and

WHEREAS, PL 94-142 (The Handicapped Children's Act) and the federal regulations created by H.E.W. to enforce it have created federal mandates on state and local school districts which have required the expansion of expensive services to handicapped children without supplying adequate funding thereby frequently necessitating serious cut-backs in services to non-handicapped children; and

WHEREAS, the complicated and time-consuming processes required by PL 94-142 have increased paper-work time for teachers, counselors and paraprofessionals and have resulted in the reduction of child-contact time; and

WHEREAS, the "least restrictive environment" mandate has resulted in the wholesale mainstreaming of handicapped children . . . without insuring that teachers into whose classes the students are placed are adequately informed regarding the placement or adequately trained prior to the placement; and

WHEREAS, the wholesale mainstreaming of handicapped children created by PL 94-142 has been beneficial to some children it has been educationally and emotionally harmful to other handicapped and non-handicapped children; and

WHEREAS, such serious harm is being done at this time by the improper implementation of PL 94-142 and its regulations:

RESOLVED, that the AFT, while continuing to support the objective of providing effective educational services to handicapped children, works to modify the provisions of PL 94-142 and its regulations in order to end the serious problems stated above; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT notify the above agencies of government that immediate investigation of these conditions and action to correct them should be taken within a short period of time; and

RESOLVED, that, in the event that corrective action is not taken within a short period of time, the American Federation of Teachers shall seek fed­eral legislation to suspend immediately further implementation of the mandates of PL 94-142, in respect to the matter stated above, while lo­cal school programs for handicapped children and the federal monies adhering to there programs continue, until:

The federal government provides every dollar of new monies needed to implement the federal mandates.

All teacher and paraprofessionals who are or will be teaching main- streamed students have the opportunity to complete the necessary professional in-service training.

A study on the full effects of PL 94-142 on handicapped students and non-handicapped students and its impact on the structures of state and local school district financing be conducted and made available to Congress before it acts to restore the PL 94-142 mandates.