Anne Sutton, writing for the Associated Press from Juneau, says programs and spending for children with disabilities “haven’t been a highlight” during Sarah Palin’s 21 months in office as Alaska’s governor.

The Department of Health and Social Services did not see its budget go up during her first year, although her second year brought a 6 percent increase.

The governor also pushed through an increase in education funds for severely disabled students, which rose from $26,900 to $49,300 per student this year. (The term “severely disabled student” was not defined.)

She approved the expenditure of $500,000 for diagnosing autism, and also $250,000 to train early intervention workers. But she cut in half a request for $550,000 for an indoor training facility for Special Olympics Alaska.

In an email interview with her hometown newspaper published September 30, Palin touted her record supporting children with disabilities.

“It is our hope that by providing the necessary funding support, we can touch more children with special needs who did not have opportunities before due to the prohibitive costs of providing the appropriate care,” Palin wrote to the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman.

Earlier post here: Factcheckers say many claims about Palin are false, misleading

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Campaign 2008, Down syndrome, autism, budget, education, funding, special education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post