The Senate Nov. 3 approved the nominations of a pair of Education Department officials, leaving only two top-level vacancies in the agency.
Betsy Brand, the new assistant secretary for vocational and adult education, was Vice President Dan Quayle’s education aide when he was a senator. She had been serving as acting director of adult-education programs.
Joan Seamon, literacy director in the Illinois secretary of state’s office, will succeed Ms. Brand as director of adult education and literacy, the department announced last week.
Thomas Anfinson, the new deputy undersecretary for management, served until recently as chairman of the Office of Personnel Management’s rate-advisory committee.
The two remaining posts in the department that must be filled by Presidential appointment are the assistant secretaries for civil rights and elementary and secondary education.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is not doing enough to improve school-bus safety, House members said earlier this month.
The statements came at a hearing of the House Transportation and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee on a bill that would require school buses to be equipped with both a stop-signal arm and a system of mirrors designed to elimi4nate the driver’s “blind spots.”
The mirrors would cost about $100 a bus.
An average of 26 students are killed and 470 are injured each year in accidents in school-bus loading zones.
Jeffrey Miller, the acting administrator of the nhtsa, said the proposed legislation was unnecessary because the agency has proposed new construction and safety rules for school buses, which could be in place in about 14 months.
The Education Department’s office of Indian education should be more vigilant toward the needs of Native Americans, witnesses have told the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs.
Jo Jo Hunt, executive director of the National Advisory Council on Indian Education, joined other witnesses in calling on the department to appoint a permanent director for the office.
Neal Shedd has been oia’s acting director since John Sam, its most recent permanent director, died last November.
Officials said that 17 mid-level vacancies in the office cited by Ms. Hunt should be filled this month, but that the process had been slowed by a legal requirement that Indians be given preference in hiring.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service has established a toll-free hot line linking amnesty applicants with 1,500 educational services.
The ins-certified educational services provide instruction in basic citizenship skills needed to obtain permanent residency under the 1986 immigration-reform law. The hot-line number is (800) 842-2924.
