As the Legislature is seemingly overrun by efforts to steady the county's fiscal standing, it was able to unanimously pass a piece of legislation last week that would facilitate bringing firsthand experiences into the classrooms of Nassau County's schools.

The legislation establishes an Educational Resource Center that would serve as a volunteer speaker's bureau, from which school districts could select guest speakers to supplement their curriculums and bring positive role models into the classrooms.

According to Legislator Judy Jacobs, the author of the legislation, the center will tap into a large underutilized educational resource, ordinary citizens who want to give back to their community. She stated that this will give citizens the opportunity to volunteer and the school districts the opportunity to find them.

"Individuals who step into the classroom and explain their occupations and skills are the missing link between school work and the real working world," said Legislator Jacobs. "I believe that this Educational Resource Center will be a wonderful legacy for the Nassau County Legislature to leave to future generations."

According to Chuck Cutolo, chief counsel, the program is budget friendly in that it will be completely funded from the private and corporate sector. "This is trying to tap into volunteerism, on a variety of levels. Volunteerism in terms of funding it, and volunteerism in terms of the speakers."

Cutolo, who drafted the legislation and worked closely with Jacobs in formulating its content, further stated that an interim coordinator will be named in the near future to raise enough funds to run the center for two years. After the funding has been established, a director and staff person will be named. It is hoped that the center will be up and running by the beginning of the 2000-2001 school year.

As outlined in legislation that was first proposed in 1996, the resource center's two-person staff will be responsible for developing and implementing an outreach program to make teachers and potential volunteers aware of the program, matching volunteers with school district requests, verifying the credentials of volunteer speakers, and assessing the performance of volunteer speakers.

To guard against the center ever becoming a financial burden on the county, a sunset clause was included in the legislation that would terminate the program if further legislation is not passed to reauthorize it. The director of the center will also have to report on the center's activities to the Legislature twice a year. The center will be responsible for completing background checks with the Nassau County Police Department

Additionally, to protect against teacher displacement, the legislation states that no speaker can participate in more than one presentation per month in a school for a given class.

At a hearing before the Legislature's Government Services Committee in 1998 the center was endorsed by representatives from Nassau BOCES, the New York Education Association, One-to-One Mentoring partnership, and the Nassau District PTA.

"The creation of a resource center in Nassau County has limitless potential," said Ginger Lieberman, past president Plainview-Old Bethpage School District. "Not only will it benefit our students, but it will also utilize a wealth of knowledge from one of our more important commodities, the citizens of Nassau County."