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ESD board chairman helps state discern agencies' role By VICKI GUARINO The head of the Jackson Education Service District will be part of a state committee examining the role of ESDs. Jackson ESD board chairman Ralph Breitenstein is one of 13 school officials appointed by state schools Superintendent Stan Bunn. Breitenstein is a Klamath Falls doctor. The Jackson ESD is headquartered in Medford, and runs specialized education programs in five Southern Oregon counties. The state ESD committee was authorized by the 1999 Legislature to consider what services ESDs should perform and how they should be funded. Members include superintendents and board members from ESD and school district boards around the state. Four legislators also are to be appointed to the committee. Aside from providing services to students with handicaps and other special educational needs, programs offered by ESDs around the state vary widely. The Jackson ESD, for instance, pioneered a distance learning program that permits classrooms to link up by way of television screens. The ESD committee is to file a report a year from now, detailing whether and how the system of ESDs should change. The committee also is to include recommendations for providing special education and other services. Jackson ESD Superintendent Joe Crowder says one goal of the committee is to produce plans for ways to bring greater consistency and similarity to the system of service districts. "The Legislature has decided there needs to be some consistency," Crowder says. "Right now, it's kind of a free-for-all." The ESDs provide services that individual districts couldn't afford to provide on their own. Small districts couldn't afford to hire their own translators for deaf students, and specialized medical help to the developmentally disabled. ESDs provide those services by pooling needs and resources over a larger area. Beyond special educational programs, ESDs also provide services to meet needs of local districts. The flexibility to meet those needs, Crowder says, needs to preserved. Breitenstein's appointment to the committee, Crowder says, "will provide a voice for Southern Oregon." The Jackson ESD is one of just nine regional districts that provide highly specialized programs across Southern Oregon for student with severe handicaps. The Legislature's committee is organizing at a time when services demands are rapidly growing. The Jackson ESD is experiencing a 30-percent increase in enrollment is its program for severely handicapped youngsters. The increased cost of the program forced the district to abandon its speech therapy program this year. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA