citizens must be our primary concern. i support finding ways to reduce the costs of prescription drugs, but never at the expense of safety. so i urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. it is a well-intendinged amendment, i'm sure. i care a great deal for my colleague, but i think we should oppose it and vote it down. with that, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. mr. vitter: mr. president, i'd like to briefly address some of the issues brought up by my distinguished colleague from utah. first, mr. president, this amendment is only about individuals, and you can look at the clear language of the amendment and it is about individuals, not corporations, not mega businesses, not anything else, individuals. secondly, it's only about personal use. it's only about businesses not in the business of importing prescription drugs. so these individuals cannot be in that business, cannot be in that activity as a business.

and we specifically refer to the relevant portion of the federal food, drug and cosmetic section 801-g. third, it is for personal use because of that limitation. fourth, we're only limiting funds that go to border security for this purng not any other law enforcement agency, and there are many that are involved in the fight against counterfeits and other things, including the department of justice. and fifth and finally, mr. president, this language was passed by this body in 2006 by a strong bipartisan vote of 68-32 and, as senator hatch has said, a modified version of it was actually passed into law and has operated in law for three years with no apparent safety problems that we're aware of. with that, mr. president, i

yield back my time and certainly look forward to the vote. mr. hatch: mr. president, i yield back my time too. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a study of the program to see how well it's working but in july of 2006, the homeland security department conducted a evaluation of the program and it was not a good report. essentially, the situation is that a -- a religious group

would be entitled to ask for and petition for someone to be brought into the country to work in their religious entity. it's called a religious worker program. it's usually not a minister but some sort of lay worker. the assessment was done by the -- the homeland security group. it was an assessment of -- of 200-plus cases without any indication that any of those were fraudulent. they just took them at random and checked the 220 cases. field inquiries were conducted where necessary and fraud was determined to be the willful misrepresentation or falsification of a material fa fact. that means something that would probably have meant they were not entitled to the benefit of the program. under the work -- under this

evaluation, it was found out of 220 cases evaluated, 72 were fraudulent. that's a 33%, one out of three of the religious workers entering the country under this program entered fraudulently. that's not a good record. in fact, it appears to be the highest fraudulent record of any immigrant program that we have in the country. and they cited some of the examples that -- of abuses. for example, one beneficiary who was invited into the country by a petitioner, was invited to work at a religious institution and they checked and the institution didn't exist and the petitioner filed a number of other petitions bringing in other people. another one dealt with a paper church, a church that didn't

exist, and the addresses and all that were given were not legitimate. another one, age 33, the petition, the person who filed the petition to bring in this foreign worker couldn't be located and there could be no connection between the person who petitioned and the group they claimed to be petitioning for. so it appears that this individual petitioned for another individual to come and work at a school or a church and the school and church they said they were going to work at didn't even know this was happening and, of course, when the person came in they were, therefore, able to enter the country illegal and they never work at a church. and several more like that. another one, the signer of the petition was no longer at the school and the school board members interviewed said they didn't know who was invited to

come through the petition and not even aware that a petition had been filed. in another case, a petition are had filed at least 82 petitions with many fraud indicators including the misrepresentation of qualifications and duties of the beneficiary. and another one dealt with a situation where the beneficiary area couldn't be located and the petitioner, whose name was on the petition, when found and interviewed, said he didn't know anything about the filing, he didn't file it. so someone filed it, used his name and brought in supposedly to work at a religious institution and it was all bogus. this is a program that's got some real difficulties. i hope the study will help us figure out how to make it a more honest system that can meet the goals of our program without

allowing for so much fraud and abuse. mr. president, i thank the chair and i would yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: i ask unanimous consent the call of the quorum be dispensed. .the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered.

mrs. murray: i ask unanimous consent the following amendments be the only amendments remaining to byrd substitute 1373 and h.r. 28912 and at 8:25 the senate proceed to vote in relation to the amendments in the order listed and prior to each vote there be two minutes of debate equally divided and controlled in the usual form; that no other amendments be in order circumstances anin order and dot be grade to, and after the first vote the time be limited to ten minutes each, the amendments in order are vitter amendment 1467, dodd amendment 1458, coburn amendment 1433, murray amendment 1468, coburn amendment 1434, grassley amendment number 1415, and sanders amendment 1430. upon disposition of the listed amendment the substitute amendment, as amended, be agreed

to, the bill as amend be read a third time and the senate proceed to vote on passage of the bill and upon passage the senate insist on its amendment, request a conference with the house on the disagreeing votes of the two houses and the chair be authorized to appointment conferees and the member of the subcommittee be appointed as conferees and if a budget point of order is raised or sustained against the substitute it be in order for the majority manager to offer another substitute amendment minus any offending provision but including amendments greed and in further amendments be in order of the substitute amendment, if amended, be agreed to and the remaining provisions be on adoption of the substitute remaining in effect and further that the cloture motions be withdrawn. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. mrs. murray: thank you, mr. president. with that we are ready to vote on the vitter amendment. mr. vitter: i ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be.

there are two minutes of debate equally divided prior to the vote. if all time is yielded back, the question is on amendment numbered 1467. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: is there anyone wishing to vote or change their vote? if not, the ayes are 55, the

nays are 37. the amendment is agreed to. mrs. murray: move to reconsider. a senator: move to table. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. under the previous order, amendment number 1458, offered by the senator from connecticut, mr. dodd, as amended, is agreed to and the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table. under the previous order, there will now be two minutes of debate equally divided prior to a vote in relation to amendment number 1433, offered by the senator from oklahoma, mr. coburn. mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. the senate will be in order. mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington is recognized. mr.s murray: mr. president, the coburn amendment number 1433, i had a chance to discuss with him during the vote. i believe he's willing to take a voice vote on that.

mr. coburn: i ask unanimous consent that we call up that amendment. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the amendment. the clerk: the senator from oklahoma, mr. coburnings proposepropose -- mr. coburn, ps an amendment numbered 1433. mr. coburn: i ask unanimous consent that it be considered as read. and i agree with the senator from washington. this simply eliminates inappropriate bonuses at the department of human services. we did that at the department of defense. it saved $500 million. it's also an o.m.b. reg for the agency. the presiding officer: if there's no further debate on the amendment, all those in favor say aye. opposed say no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the amendment is agreed to. mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: mr. president, i call up amendment number 1468. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: the senator from oregon, mrs. murray, propose an amendment numbered 1468 to amendment numbered 1373. the presiding officer: under the previous order, there are two minutes of debate equally divided on the amendment.

mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: mr. president, for the information of all senators, the amendment following the vote on the murray amendment is a coburn amendment about ensuring that government contracts are competitively awarded. i agree with the premise of the senator's amendment that follows this. however, his amendment is drafted in a way that precludes certain types of contracts that are authorized by statute and have the strong support of congress. for example, his amendment doesn't acknowledge contracts that are authorized by the small business act, like minority-owned businesses, women-owned businesses, businesses owned by service disabled veterans. the coburn language also ignores the ability one program, known as the javits-wagner-o'day program which provides job opportunities for blind and disabled americans through federal contracts. the amendment that i am offering assures that we do award competitively -- award government contracts competitively but does it in a

way that we make sure we take care of small and veteran-owned businesses and women-owned businesses. so i encourage all of my colleagues to vote for the murray amendment. the presiding officer: who yields time in opposition? mr. coburn: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: if i understand this correctly, what this will do to the bill will actually eliminate competitive bidding on grants so that grants may be earmarked and won't have to be competitively bid. i believe it's important the american people know that we competitively bid for contracts and we competitively bid for grants on the basis of priority and merit, and so, therefore, i'm in opposition to this. i'm in support of my amendment.

the presiding officer: if there's no further debate on the murray amendment -- a senator: ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: any senator wishing to vote or change their vote? the ayes are 67 and the nays are 24 and the amendment is agreed to.

mrs. murray: i move to reconsider. a senator: i move to lay it on the table. the presiding officer: without objection. the senator from washington. mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. ththe senator from washington. i believe coburn amendment 1324 is in order. mr. coburn: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: simple amendment. commonsense. it says we should competitively bid contracts at the department of homeland security and we should competitively bid grants. if you vote against my amendment you say we shun. that's all there is to it. i yield back. the presiding officer: does the senator offer the amendment? mr. coburn: i actually have to offer the amendment and i call up amendment 1434 and i ask for its consideration. the presiding officer: the clerk will report.

the clerk: th the senator from oklahoma proposes amendment 1434 -- mr. coburn: i ask unanimous consent th the am be consideredd read. mrs. murray: the senate adopted an amendment that assures government contracts are competitively awared and this amendment undoes everything we should did to assure all businesses, minority owned businesses, businesses owned by service disabled veterans will be eligible to bid on the contracts. i urge the senate to vote "no." the presiding officer: is there -- there is a sufficient second. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

are there any senators in the chamber wishing to vote or change their vote? the yeas are 31, the nays are 60. the coburn amendment is not agreed to. mrs. murray: move to reconsider. the presiding officer: the senator from washington.

mrs. murray: move to reconsider. move to lay on the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator washington. mrs. murray: the next amendment in order is the grassley amendment, number 1415. i have teeld the senator we're willing to take it on a voice society, if he wants to offer t -- on a voice vote if he wants to offer it. you need to call up your amendment. mr. president, i call up amendment number 1415 and ask for its immediate consideration. the presiding officer: is there further debate? if not, the question is on the amendment. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the yeas appear to v.o.a. it. the yeas have it. amendment is agreed to. mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: the next amendment and feignal amendment in order is the sanders amendment. i believe the senator will speak to it.

mr. sanders: thank you, mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator vermont. mr. sanders: this amendment is cosponsored by senators casey, cearntion and kerry. it is also represented by the firefighters representing the interests of over 800,000 firefighters. at a time when due to the economic crisis a fire department -- fire departments all over this country are laying off firefighters and in rural america volunteer fire departments are finding it increasingly difficult to attract and retain those people -- the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. sanders: to attract and retain those firefighters who not only help us saving our property and our lives but are also involved in e.m.s. services, and we are putting some of that $100 million directly into recruitment and retention for volunteer firefighterring efforts. the offset is science and

technology fund of which i have nothing against, but i think the priorities now have got to be for fire fighting and for volunteer fire departments. thank you, mr. president. oh, mr. president, i wanted to yield 15 seconds to senator casey. the presiding officer: senator -- the clerk will report. the clerk: the senator from vermont, mr. san derks proposes amendment numbered 1430. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: mr. president, i rise in opposition to this amendment, although i also want fire grants. i want everyone to understand that the committee amendment also has $810 million in it for fire grants. that's an increase of $35 million. in fact, we just adopted another amendment to add $10 million to this. the offset that is in this bill will eliminate all the technology development and design to address capabilities. it decimates the counterimprovised explosive device, i.e.d., technology.

it specifically eliminates mass transit specific counter high. i.e.d. technologies. it decimates cyber security research and development. the senate computers are being attacked today. it eliminates the research to make sure we can stop that. it eliminates development and assessment of high through-put cargo screening technologies. mr. president, the list goes on. i, too, believe that we should be doing all we can for our firefighters, but even our firefighters do not -- the international association of firefighters does not support this amendment. so although i appreciate the senator's offering this amendment, i agree with what he would like to do, but the offset decimates much of the technology we need in order to protect our citizens in this country, and i urge a "no" vote. the presiding officer: the question is on the amendment. mr. sanders: yeah, i'd like the

yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote: eye

vote:

the presiding officer: order in the chamber. vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: any senator wishing to vote or change their vote? the yeas are 32, and the nays are 58. the amendment is not agreed to.

mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: mr. majority leader. mr. reid: if we could have order. it has been a long day, but i appreciate the cooperation. we set out this week to accomplish a few things and with the cooperation of the members we have been able to do it. we don't have to vote tomorrow. we don't have to vote over the weekend. our first vote next week will be at 5:30 on the nomination of the census director, mr. groves. that is on cloture with mr. groves. we are going to go, starting at 10:00 in the morning, defense -- 11:00 a.m. on -- tomorrow at 10:00 -- we're coming in tomorrow at 10:00. monday we are in at 11:00 and senators levin and mccain will

begin the managing of the defense authorization bill. we appreciateening abl appreciao start that. next week is the only disjointed week of this work period. as i indicated earlier, we will have no votes after 2:00 on tuesday. and friday has been long announced as a "no" vote day. which means the following three weeks are going to be very grueling and everyone should understand that. mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: we're now moving to final passage on the homeland security appropriations bill. i want to thank all of our senators, especially senator voinovich for his cooperation and all our staff members. i will submit their names for the record. i want to thank everyone for helping us move this bill failure. mr. voinovich: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. voinovich: mr. president, i just would be remiss if i didn't thank first of all,

chairman of our subcommittee, robert byrd, for the cooperation that he has shown me and his staff. and i want to particularly thank senator murray. i think it is my first opportunity to do one of these on the floor of the senate and it has been an interesting experience for me and i particularly want to thank chuck for his work and my great staff here because without them, we wouldn't have been able to get this job done. so and thank all of you for your cooperation in making this happen. mrs. murray: i ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: there is a sufficient second. under the previous order, the substitute amendment, as amended, is agreed to and the clerk will read the bill for the third time. the question is on -- the clerk: h.r. 2892, making appropriations for the department of homeland security and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: the question is on the passage of the bill, as amended. the clerk will call the roll.

vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: any senator wishing to vote or change their vote?

seeing or hearing none, the -- on this one, the yeas are 84, the nays are 6. the bill as amended is passed. under the previous order, the senate in this on its amendments, requests a conference with the house and the chair appoints the following conferees. the clerk: senators byrd, inouye, leahy, mikulski, murray, landrieu, lautenberg, tester, specter, voinovich, cochran, gregg, shelby, brownback, and murkowski. mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: move to reconsider and lay on the table the last. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. murray: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate move to morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. murray: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the tributes to senator in the "congressional record" be printed as a senate document and that senators be permitted to submit statements for inclusion until friday, august 7, 2009. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. murray: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its

business today, it adjourn until 10:00 a.m. tomorrow, friday, july 10. that following the prayer and pledge, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day and there then be a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. mor rapemrs. murray: mr. ps the majority leader announced earlier tonight, there will be no roll call votes tomorrow. the next vote is expected to occur around 5:30 p.m. on monday. if there's no further business to come before the senate i, ask that it adjourn under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until 10:00 a.m. friday, july 10.

[laughter] >> is napolitano there? >> secretary napolitano, secretary duncan and 500 eager state and local leaders, education leaders, health leaders are here and we are delighted you could join us. >> first of all just let me tell you that everybody-- including president napolitano. [laughter]

and, i am very appreciative that all of you are there, and my remarks are going to be very brief. i think it is clear that, although we were fortunate not to see a more serious situation in the spring, when we first that news of this outbreak, that the potential for a significant outbreak in the fall is looming, and kathleen, janet arnie duncan and our entire team have tried to engage in the most rigorous

planning exercise to make sure that anything that may occur in the fall, we are prepared for. so, i will go through the details of this and i am sure that kathleen and janet and others have laid out what the potential consequences are, a renewed outbreak of h1n1. we want to make sure that we are not promoting panic, but we are promoting vigilance and preparation, and the most important thing for us to do in this process is to make sure that state and local officials prepare now to implement a vaccination program in the fall but also that they are working on an overall public communications campaign with the

white house and the possibilities that we may need to be dealing with schools that are facing significant outbreaks of h1n1, and we looked at past cases of this being properly handled and situations like this being improperly handled, and one of the most important differences is where it is well handled, state and local officials have complete ownership over this issue. they are providing good ideas to the federal government. they are critical links to inform us what is working and what is not, and so i am just very grateful that all of you are taking this seriously. we may end up averting a crisis.

that is our hope, but i think that if we are all working together in a thoughtful, systematic way based on the best science possible, that even if this turns out to be a serious situation, we can mitigate the damage and protect our neighbors and their friends and co-workers. so, again, my main message to you is to say thank you. you are working with an outstanding team in kathleen, janet, arnie incheon and, if there are any issues at all that you think we have not raised, at any teas we have not cross dor i's we have not doubted that either general approach or your specific community please let us know. we don't want to find out after the fact that there things we could have done better. we want to find out now and make

sure that we are planning ahead. so, kathleen, good job as always and i want you to know that in conversations with world leaders about this issue, what is clear is that we are way ahead in terms of our plan and in fact, we may need to provide some guidance and direction to other public health officials in other countries, who may not have done such an excellent preparation that you have done. >> thank you mr. president. travel safely and we will see you back here soon and now i would like-- >> thank you very much everybody. [applause]

>> welcome back. we are now going to have to back to back panels that are very important for preparedness at the state and local levels and the first one has to do with school preparedness and we are very pleased to have as moderator the associate deputy secretary of the office safe and drug-free schools and the office of the department of education. bill has 25 years of education as well as in the criminal and juvenile justice system said he is telenational leader in the design and development of school safety health programs. then we have three wonderful panelists who have a lot to share with us about what school prepared this is like in the trenches. first today, who is the educational specialists for the wisconsin department of public instruction. she has been working on pandemic influenza plants with school teams in her state for quite a while and she has great expertise as a teacher, counselor, administrator and president of verse school board.

melinda as superintendent of the university independent school district in taxes, and she has tremendous experience as a classroom teacher, a building principle and now currently is the superintendent overseeing a fast-growing suburban and san antonio school district with close to 12,000 students, and then last but not least mary pappas, who is nurse that the st. francis preparatory school in new york city. she is had experience as a nurse for 27 years and is the school nurse for six years at st. francis which has a population of about 3,000 students and staff and a place that was very much in the news this past spring. this panel loans coal preparedness will go until 11: 11:15, so please welcome our panelist. [applause] >> good morning.

i wanted thank everybody for coming this morning and also thank you to the previous panelists. that was a tough act to follow, a lot of great questions there. i want to start where secretary duncan sort of laughed often thinking a lot of people and i know it is a little bit redundant but i think there is one lesson we have learned in the recent outbreak of h1n1 is it is all about partnerships. speaking from the education perspective as there is absolutely no way, no way in the world we can be successful if we don't form those partnerships so here is say thank you to the wonderful people, staff, leadership nctc, health and human services department, agriculture labor and the white house. all of the steps of done a phenomenal job. i also want to thank all those of the state local level both in the public health perspective as well asification perspective. this is all about working together in both the view that the state and local level for all 15,000 districts have done a

phenomenal job so thank you. there are two groups which we tend to ignore. i want to say thank you to them. first of all parents and thank you for putting up with us. we are opened, we are closed, were open, it will be for a day, it will be for two days, it will be for three days and one thing i can say to all those parents out there is the promise to do better next time around. we will do better next time around. lastly to a group we often overlooked during these closings is students. thank you for the students for not knowing whether we are going to come back to school, whether it's going to be safe for knots s.a. but there's a lot of thank you's for all the health and coordination you have given us an over the last since the end of april. this is a panel designed to share a lot of information and ideas and hopefully to address some key issues. more specifically over the

course of the next 50 minutes or so we hope to provide you with a brief overview of what, what transpired in three very diverts areas. as we thought to provide you with some lessons learned, what worked, what didn't work. for is to identify some obstacles to implementing a community mitigation policy which calls for the closing and i may say reopening of schools because we have issues with reopening as much as closing schools. and lastly, to examine the way forward. before turning to our panelist i want to say that finding a way to effectively mitigate the consequences of the flu while ensuring that learning continues is one of the most difficult tasks faced by communities both large and small. during the recent outbreak we found a community mitigation actions had a tremendous impact on schools and students.

school started to close in late april and continue to close until the end of the school year in june. at the height of the break, which we can this make it, over 700 schools were closed. these closures affected 400, approximately 460,000 students and because schools are also at work places approximately 30,000 teachers were also impacted by these closures. we also found that if you took the daily count of students who were not in school because of the flu, you'll find that cumulatively there were over 2 million students days that were missed so this comes together to show us that even closing schools for a short period of time has a tremendous impact on the ability to teach and the ability to learn. we are cognizant that if there is a recurrence of the flu in the fall we may have to take measures to again close schools. we are also fully aware of the difficulties in complexities and hardships of students, faculty

parents and employers of closing schools even if it is for a short period of time. here today to provide insight in their experiences during the break and helpless think through how we may be able to overcome some of the obstacles faced when schools are closed are three experts. they were already introduced but let me say that as susan today is here because one of the issues or i should say one of the things she brings to the table is a phenomenal state plan to deal with the flu. belinda is here from texas, and one of the wonderful things they have done and i hope you have a lot of questions for her about this is the communication strategy they have applied to get information out to parents and community groups about what they are doing. lastly mary pappas, she is here because of her standing in the community, one because it is a non-public school. we often don't talk about non-public schools but she is one of the school nurse's that

the leadership of identifying and dealing with the flu outbreak. i am going to start each of the panelists to begin by briefly telling everyone a little bit about their recent experience with the flu and to provide some uniqueness of their experiences. after that we have a few questions for each of them had thinned if we have time we will open up questions from the audience. sill let me start with suzanne today. >> thank you very much and thank you to all of you for being here today. well-being a panel member today i also and learning a great deal from the wonderful resources in this room. i would like to briefly talk about the wisconsin department public instruction role in the pandemic flu preparedness and our response. we were in a position to move forward with this situation because we had a long history of

collaboration with our state health agency on public health issues. we actually have a formal memo of understanding to collaborate on school health related issues, which dates back to 1993. our agency, the department of public instruction, also head in place crisis procedures for the continuity of our own operations as the department. we have been actively involved in our state pandemic flu cross agencies work group since 2006. we have assisted in the development and the updating of our state pandemic flu plan, which bill referred to, which has been reviewed and highly praised at a federal level. we have played an active role in

tabletop exercise simulations of school closures, and we have used the results of these to prepare our communications, regarding k-12 school closures. with financial support, from our state health agency, we have established and delivered technical assistance programs to our school community teams. we have this year been conducting a daylong workshops for teams who representing schools and communities to come together to prepare pandemic flu plans. win the situation hit in april, we had a great increase the interest in those plans. schools that have the plants down they worked very well. schools that didn't found they really needed to get moving and develop those plans.

we have done a number of webcast. we have publications. we have several web sites. we are updating the web site right now. we have sample crisis plans on the web site for schools to use. we have electronic tool kits. we have training, we have consultation, technical assistance, periodic communications from our state superintendent to all schools, collaboration with their state educational organizations, have and our area educational agencies. all of these situations were in place to help us deal with the h1n1 in april. we have also collaborated with the state public television network to identify educational programming that students and families can access during a school closure. we have also established communications with our private schools through a network that

we have established. during the april situation, starting in april, we were actively involved with their state agency through the incident command center, through briefings, teleconferences, with the field and with the agency. we monitored the outbreak in school closures daily. we used our state plan to assist us with all of the happenings in april and may with the flexibility needed to meet this particular situation. we collaborated with state health organizations and at the local level with local health organizations to communicate regarding school closures and school health services. we maintain regular communications with their k-12 the administrators and our school nurses via e-mail list serves. we also found we needed to

develop some new web-based resources to assist our schools as they were dealing with what do we do with field trips? what do we do with coe curricular activities when their school closures? we needed to provide constant updating, parent notification letters and we also developed a unit of instruction at the elementary, middle and high school levels regarding communicable diseases. we are now and the process of the action just as we are doing here, looking at the briefing with schools that were closed, looking at lessons learned and preparing for the next wave. we are presently responding to the current increased interest in school pandemic planning and preparation and provide technical assistance. >> thank you very much. one thing i should ask you before we go is, there's a lot of great information ham before we leave some were i would like

to get the web page where that information can be found so everybody can access all of that information. belinda. >> i am belinda sub-- pustka at the suburban san antonio school district. weiss serve not only universal city but we also serve converse in portions of those but they did not get their name in the title. i have been a superintendent there for eight years, and it's a great community. it is a growing community. we grow by eight to 12% per year so it is phenomenal growth. weiss serve a very large military population, about 30% of our students are military dependents and steel high-school which was the first school where h1n1 was identified, they serve about probably close to 40% military dependents. this has been an interesting time for us as the district.

we have a very good community, a very supportive community and this is what i found there our experiences. durao this time, the community chose to support in ways not only where the schools were closed, which placed an incredible hardship on parents, the city's cooperated, they closed parks, they limited some of their activities. the churches agreed to close. they were closed for eglise to sundays, which presented a financial hardship on their behalf. but, overall it has been a great community effort. i will tell you that i have met with parents, gatherings as large as this and they are usually angry over either tax increases or rezoning or something like that, but i had an outpouring of support from

parents i had never received on any issue during my eight years within the community. ..

so, but i will tell you it was a very positive experience. however, it was a very hard experience for the community. almost every e-mail i got from a parent said thank you for taking the health of my child into consideration. it was a difficult decision to make, but when it comes to the life of a child, no one wants to do anything that will put them in harm's way. >> thank you very much. quick question, what was the answer to the problem? [laughter] >> both high schools had their prom. >> mary? >> my name is mary pappas, the school nurse from san francis prep high school. i appreciate very much the invitation to be here by the government. i appreciate the invitation to

be here by the government and the nursing association. i am a private school nurse brought about 2700 students and 250 staff. i am the only nurse. i have to assistance. because i'm a private school, i work very closely with the department of health and new york city. for any questions that i have. sorry, is that better? okay. so, thursday in my office began like any other day. i never know what's going to happen and an unusual trend started it very quickly with many fevers and coughs. i alerted my principal and then in turn told him shortly after winep was painfully obvious it was getting worse the health department. i did have the health department's cell phone because i do, like i said, keep very close contact with them, and

they alerted the cdc. i had many, many children come in my office, which is a very small office, with fevers, coughs, and such looks of despair because that morning they left their homes feeling well. usually the children i didn't feel good in the morning but my mom made me come. [laughter] i had many children just looking like pick me, pick me, because they didn't feel that this morning and they were genuinely scared, and i also got that impression from some of the staff. so if i remained column even though i was dying inside they remained calm, and i had disaster plans up the walls do on my bulletin board, but we all know that when these things happen you have to tailor them and change them and i believe it is my nursing experience of all

the years i have my organization skills and my instincts from my medical profession helped me put in to work a plan, emergency plan at the drop of the act and it seemed to work. and the parents, the staff, the department of health, the principal, everyone seemed to be happy with the way it went. it could have been a much worse disaster. i sent home 102 children the first day and 80 the second day, and that doesn't mention all the other children that i've seen for just the regular accidents, bumps, bruises, so it was very stressful. >> let me start and come back this way. this is not a question but if you could provide a bit more information to the audience. mary, you talk about sending 102

students home the first day and 80 the second day, but you also closed the school. so can you talk about the impact, the community mitigation of closing the school, the impact, how many students, how many families and a little bit about the impact that had on the community? >> well, the first day the way i did it was because i only had one phone line, is a recent 102 kids home by having every child pullout their cell phone. [laughter] because what child doesn't know where their mother is and i also asked the security guard to help me and said can you go down the line, take the temperature and i gave them a posted and said through the temperature on their chest. so after i ascertained every parent was who they were i asked them to pick up the child, explain quickly what happened, give the temperature and low on. because of their cooperation and the parents were very appreciative i was able to send

everybody home in a timely and orderly manner. that was very greatly appreciated by the parents, and the teachers, the staff, the administration because in a school that large, you could have four assistant principals but every single one looks at you. you're in it in an medical emergency and that's your responsibility, you have to keep your cool. you almost have to represent the school to the parents come and it's my nursing and the fact that i was prepared for my experience, and also because you're an advocate i was very helpful to the parents, i tried to give them as much information as i could and the staff and i sent them home. we closed, that was thursday and friday, i sent another eda home

and by friday we were closed for the week. i got a lot of e-mails from parents and the community that were very thankful. they had questions. they felt that i handled it well. i also got e-mails from the nurses around the country who recognize me, and because they all understand that they might have 750 kids, they might have to 75, but i had 2700 which is a very large amount of kids, and on fortunately i think there is more in fact in some state's students don't have a nurse and i feel sorry for them because kids have to be ready to learn and there's no one else other than a nurse who can really prevent things, assess things and to the intervention to keep them there and that helps keep the teachers in the classroom teaching because they are not doing the medical things.

>> thank you very much. i think not only you at the level with the nurses through the country did a phenomenal job in identifying this as well as helping us work our way through and helping with parents. thank you. linda, how about in your school district? how did things unfold? >> this is what life out. we work very closely with our health department but we are very new to a pandemic. this is the first time for us. we worked with the health department, sometimes with staff infections or something like that, so we have had dealings before. i received a phone call from the health department saying that we have students that had been identified as having h1n1, and we were told that we would need to close. now what i have found in the state of texas is that within the health code there is the -- there is a method for closing

schools that the health department is very familiar with. on a more familiar with the education department. and so, finding a message for these overlying authorities -- i found out very quickly that the county government has some say in this. i found out there are many different entities that would have a say and whether a school is opened or closed. but what i discovered a few days in 28 is one of the things that would help school districts the most is determining right now what would be the method for closing the school. and something bill mentioned earlier is not only a method for closing the school, but once a school or school district is closed what are the signposts, what would be the protocol for opening the school back up? and i think that would be very

helpful. >> thank you very much. sue, how about in wisconsin? how did things start to unfold there? >> i think there was a great deal of concern in the beginning on the part of parents, and some of that had to do with communication. the communication was coming so fast and so furiously and changing so fast from the national to the state to the local level that it became confusing for parents. they might check one source and get one message and then check another source and get a little different message, and that of course was frustrating. what we have talked about now is the need to communicate to parents and families and to the community that this is probably going to be the case. there is probably going to be rapid communication and changing communication. and we need to be prepared for

that. the message isn't going to come down on monday that will necessarily be the same on friday. so we have to get the word out to the families now so that they can anticipate those kind of things. we also found it was helpful to have at the state level in nursing consultant who could provide invaluable technical assistance to our schools. the schools were interested in the question that one of the governors had this morning at about the state aid and we did get on to the web site in a very prominent place the situation in wisconsin is that the days that schools are closed under a health department order count toward our 180 day requirement, and this was very important with very tight budgets. we needed superintendents and

school boards to have that kind of information. if the clothes on their own without the health department order then they could apply to our state department of education for waiver consideration. these were all some of the issues that we thought were in need of being addressed at the state level. also resources. we needed to provide even more resources than what we had provided to our schools already. and we are making plans now to assure those up even further. and also to stress to our local school districts that they must work with their local health departments. this is a team approach, and we have to have everyone on board before we get into a crisis situation. we are also stressing to our superintendents and school boards they need to be part of the team. we can't simply delegate these

tasks to school nurses, because as mary has pointed out, not every school district has a school nurse, and even if they do, this has to be a team approach, not simply a school nurse shouldering all the burden. >> thank you very much. and mary raises a very interesting point. what i think a lot of us would call a conundrum, which i don't know whether she realizes one of not, but this gets into communication of the individuals and students pullout their cell phone and called home but the was a few educators in the audience know there's a lot of school systems that prohibit self phones from coming into school and this offers i think an opportunity to begin to think that issue through from a different perspective, entirely different perspective if we want to communicate with parents especially in large numbers in your case 2700 we have to look at these little issues because

the could have a significant impact when it comes time to mitigate these issues. thank you. again i'm going to start over to my right. one of the questions we have is we look back at this experience and we know that there are lessons to be learned from this, some good lessons and some not so good lessons. things that work and things that didn't work and if each of you could briefly talk about one thing you think it worked well and one thing which didn't work well and maybe the reason why they either work well or didn't work well. and mary, i'm going to start with you. >> okay, the thing that worked well for me was communication with the parents and the cellphone enabled -- the kids actually helped me with that finding their parents because to use one phone in a school office with that volume it wouldn't have worked so that worked well and the parents were appreciative.

the thing that didn't work well as i have a very small office and once autrey ghosh them the kind of just hung around and more came in. so, one of the things that we looked at, and we called it like a ready room if you will, to have these children who are definitely sick, definitely infectious but they all have the same thing but their parents are coming to move to another area and designate as a ready room and that is what we decided to do in my school that we are going to change. and also just want to stress universal precautions with the kids on every level, which is a fetus that and it's not yours, don't touch it. [laughter] the more teaching we do to the kids the better. [laughter]

>> you know, i guess going back to what we did well i think that we did a very good job of communicating. i think we used as many methods of communication as we had. we are -- we pride ourselves on being a technology rich school district. we invest in technology. however i don't think you have to be a technology rich district to communicate well with parents and the modes they are used to. they are very familiar with the use of technology. i also knew that we had both ap tests and ib test saloom and whenever the students returned as well as the state accountability measures and so, there was still instruction that needed to happen, and so once the schools were closed and the first day students were home i knew the first they would be a holiday and the day after that they would be bored and i started hearing from parents

singing please give activities we can have our students do at home and so we had small groups like two or three teachers meeting developing activities and we posted all of those things on line but i guess on the flip side it was on opening because we use technology in the school district to support the classroom instruction. we also look at online instruction and the value but for the first time i saw a truly what instruction needed to be is seem less so that you can have classroom instruction supported by technology and from those times students aren't in the classroom the need to have -- needs to be coordinated and it needs to be so that students can flow from a regular classroom instruction to online and back again and we are not there yet but if we are looking to the future that is one thing we have

to consider so that it's not a separate but it is all the work made. >> belinda, before i get to you, sue, before you post the district to get support closing the district from the superintendents in the surrounding area from the state? was their support from that? >> initially. [laughter] it's easy at first, but it is more difficult the more days that you are into it. the first day everybody is supportive. the second day is tougher, the third day -- and i think that also looking at it, because the symptoms were mild, people discounted it over a period of time, and so having a coordinated effort all the way through will be the most challenging part of the process. >> thank you. xu?

>> i think what worked well for us is having a solid state plan and using that plan over the past several years to assist school districts are around the state with their planning to provide them with the training and to provide all of the technical assistance they might need, encouraging the collaboration of the state level with various agencies involved and encouraging collaboration at the local level. as far as what didn't work so well we didn't have too much opportunity to get into continuing education because of the short closure time. but i would agree with belinda this is an area that definitely needs work. we have talked about it in all of our trainings. we have encouraged local school districts to get involved in

putting together a plan for continuing education but that isn't easy to do. yes, online works in some cases. i represent a state that has a lot of rural areas students do not because of poverty reasons or geography reasons have access to high-speed internet so we cannot jeopardize the learning of those students during a prolonged closure. we have to look at things other than online learning. we have to look at educational television which does hit every single corner of our state. we have to look at learning packets. yes, that may sound old-fashioned but in some cases that is the way students are going to learn. we have to look at getting the word out to parents and families, how they can be involved in learning of our students. some of our area educational

agencies and our state are looking at how they can help local districts to provide this continuing education during a prolonged closure but this is definitely a challenge that we need to address. >> thank you. one of the questions we were constantly asked as we were going through this epidemic is when do schools closed in this country? i think we were trying to figure out the quicker we could close the quicker we could get ourselves out of litigation and what we discovered as there are some schools that close and may and some clothes in june and some schools never close, they go year are now and then we have the question on the other and what are we going to do when school is open and went to schools open? the fact is as we begin to look at this some open in august, some open in september. and again, some go year round, but in your individual

districts, you're individual schools and sue, for your state, we look schools are going to be opening but changes are you going to bring about in your emergency management plans or crisis plants? what changes are you going to institute for the new school year? >> one of the things we are going to be doing is conducting several after action groups now and interviews with superintendents to gather that information and put that together very, very shortly to be able to communicate with districts throughout the state. we are looking at more training to stress to districts every one of them the need to have a plan. we are looking at enhancing our website and our electronic tool kit, which is very valuable to local districts. we are looking at a state letter

similar to the duncan sebelius letter that went out to schools. we are looking at helping parents to better prepare for this, to deal with child care issues ahead of time, nutrition issues ahead of time and looking at various local agencies that might assist in meeting the nutrition needs of the students would depend upon breakfast and lunch programs at our school. as i mentioned we need to address the continuing education plans that we at this point have not lost out to the point they should be. and we need to let our parents and families and communities know that this will be an evolving situation, and what we know now is not the same as what we may know in the very future. and things will change very rapidly. and we need to help our communities better prepare for

what may occur in the fall. >> i guess this is a bit of a true confession time for me. we have to have a pandemic plan and the school board had approved the memorandum of understanding with the county group, and i will tell you the county director did a great job of trying to put everything together. but i didn't really pay attention to it that much. it's one of those things i assigned someone else and went about educating students on to all this came about. but the good thing was the was a plan in place. it wasn't necessarily the parts we practiced, but there was a connection that had been established and so that's good. so going forward and i will pay closer attention to what that plan means and i rely very much on the people within the

guadalupe county association. it was and valuable as far as helping us communicate, getting information. it was a good association, very worthwhile. also going forward, and you might ask me how i'm going to address this and i don't have an answer i'm concerned about to student groups in my school. i'm concerned about the teenagers. they are a social group and i can understand why they would be the most at risk. i am also concerned about the campuses where we have the highest number of students offering reduced lunch. i know they don't have access to the same health care other students have. and so going forward watching those groups will be something we have to pay very close attention to. >> one of the things that

changed and is going to change is my position in the school i think is much more respected. [laughter] because of what i did and what i do. the administration almost bowel's to me as they pass me in the hallway, which is very nice. so that's a good change. like i said again, the plans we have had, plans in place, the ready room which is just a moratorium, and teachers, staff and parents know where it is, that is a good change. we always communicate to parents about important things, activities on the web which we will do. we keep in contact with the principle administration with the department of health and cdc. sue anything new they want to change or add or do for september it will be on the web. one of the things we want to do though is maybe reintroduce the

phone notification system if a crisis does happen. also now they would like to get cell phones of parents to register the number so maybe we can send a quick text which seems to be the state of the art thing to do. we have ordered the monitors that are non-invasive, they can just put up to the child's forehead so you don't have to worry about disposable covers. it's good infection control and because of the volume of kids i have that's a big help. and again, just to say like belinda said i have teenagers, it's education, education, education and all kind of talks or seminars, whatever they have they are going to talk about universal precautions like i said before hand washing, sneezing into your sleeve was mentioned before and if it is wet don't touch it. and just hope for a good year.

>> thank you. one final question for the panel and we will start with sue and that is you have an audience here filled with leaders of the federal and state level, persons from health and human services, homeland security, the cdc, agriculture, labor, all of the key agencies involved in mitigating the consequences of h1n1. if he had one thing you want to say to them what would it be? >> communicate, communicate, communicate. we need that communication at the state level so that we can get it out to our constituents out there in the local districts and the local teams. and we need the communication frequently. we needed to be accurate. we needed to be meaningful. and we need communication that we can get out to families and

parents of these young people. we also need to support our schools. we need to have the dollars to be able to provide the education, the nutrition and health services to them. thank you. >> we are in the education business and we are pretty -- we do a good job of educating students. what i need from all of you is an idea of when it is best to close and when it is necessary to close and when it's not. when is it the student's health isn't jeopardized by being in school and telling us what is most critical and we do a good job adapting to what