Board of Directors
- Junious Williams, Esq., Board President; Senior Advisor, Collective Impact Forum; Principal, Junious Williams Consulting (Oakland, CA)
- Amanda Broun, Nonprofit/Foundation Executive Leader and Consultant (Washington, DC)
- Norma Cantú, Professor, University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX)
- Jenny Chou, Deputy Director, South Coastal Counties Legal Services (Fall River, MA)
- Gabrielle Lamarre, Attorney, Office of the General Counsel at District of Columbia Public Schools (Washington, DC)
- Jimmy Merino, Youth Advocate, La Colaborativa (Chelsea, MA)
- Stephanie Shanen, Parent Advocacy (Boston, MA)
- Rajan Sonik, Associate Research Professor, Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University (Waltham, MA and Los Angeles, CA)
- Chan Rampersad, Jr., Youth Advocacy (Boston, MA)
Co-Directors:
Kathleen Boundy – Co-Director (Boston)
Kathleen Boundy, co-director of CLE since 1990, has worked as an attorney for CLE for more than 35 years. She has an extensive background in federal education policy, analysis and advocacy, and has participated in the reauthorization of both the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Title I/No Child Left Behind Act. She has testified on multiple occasions before the U.S. Senate, HELP Committee, Subcommittee on Disability Policy, and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission on exclusion of students with disabilities, poor, and racial minority students from educational opportunities. She was a member of the Validation Panel of the Joint Committee for Standards for Educational Evaluation, Kalamazoo, MI, 2000-2002. For 5 years, she directed CLE’s participation through the PACER Center in US Dept. ED’s FAPE Project with its focus on including students with disabilities in education reform promoting high academic standards and achievement for all students. Ms. Boundy has provided hundreds of presentations and workshops to parents of students with disabilities and their advocates, and authored numerous articles and publications analyzing the rights of these students, including to participate fully in state accountability systems, standards, and assessments under Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. As counsel/co-counsel she has also represented students in challenging high-stakes testing, the denial of special education and related services, including transition services, for incarcerated and detained youth, the disproportionate identification of racial minorities by disability category and placement, disciplinary exclusions of students with disabilities, failure to provide a student with a significant learning disability an education consistent with state standards; and she has served as counsel for amici curiae, members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, in multiple cases raising issues critical to the rights of low-income students with disabilities. Boundy is a graduate of Manhattanville College; Boston College Graduate School of Education (MAT); and Northeastern University School of Law.
Paul Weckstein – Co-Director (D.C.)
Paul Weckstein is co-director of the Center for Law and Education and works in its Washington office. CLE, which was originally established at Harvard University in 1969 as the national support center on education issues for legal services programs, works to advance the right of all students and families, and particularly those in low-income communities, to high-quality education. He has played a role in shaping past and current reforms of Title I, the Perkins and School-to-Work Opportunities Acts, and other federal education programs in order to boost program quality, equity, and family engagement. He has developed national projects to assist communities, advocates and attorneys, and schools with implementation of both Title I/academic reform and high-school/school-to-career reform. He has trained, published, and advocated extensively on a wide variety of issues, including high-school reform, standards-based reform, career and technical education, student testing and assessment, civil rights, student tracking and classification, student and parent engagement, special education, and students rights and school discipline. He began his education career at the Massachusetts Department of Education, where he worked with high school students on state and local student involvement and student rights projects. He graduated from Haverford College and holds both education and law degrees from Harvard University. He has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and at both the Washington College of Law and School of Education at American University. He has also served the American Bar Association’s Commission on Youth at Risk and was the primary author of the resolutions and reports on the right to quality education adopted by the ABA.
