June 5, 2003

Sacramento, CA – The California State Teachers’ Retirement System today called on its members and other shareholders to join it in supporting the Securities and Exchange Commission’s upcoming study of proxy rules. The SEC is soliciting public views through June 13. To assist interested parties in e-mailing comments to the SEC, CalSTRS posted a suggested message and submission instructions on its Web site, www.calstrs.ca.gov.

Yesterday CalSTRS sent a letter of support citing the SEC review as leading to a process to permit shareholder-nominated director candidates to appear in the corporate proxy statement and as a ballot choice on the corporate proxy card.

“Our goal is to level the playing field for shareholders by SEC rules that gives them increased access to the proxy statement and ballot, ” said Jack Ehnes, CalSTRS Chief Executive Officer and signer of the CalSTRS letter. “It’s important to get as many messages to the SEC as we can on this vital corporate democracy issue.

“Passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was an important milestone for investors, but shareholders still lack an effective tool to determine who will serve on the boards of the corporations in which they invest,” said Ehnes. “The current board nomination and election process doesn’t bear much relation to a true election. We need more than the opportunity to rubber stamp management’s nominees.”

CalSTRS, with a $100 billion portfolio, is the nation’s third largest public pension fund. It administers retirement, disability and survivor benefits for California’s public school educators in grades kindergarten through community college, serving more than 715,000 members and benefit recipients.

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Click here for the CalSTRS letter of support to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Click here for the CalSTRS suggested message text and submission instructions for interested parties.