From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The Georgia State Department of Education has announced it will stop funding a nationally lauded interscholastic sports program for kids with disabilities. The future of the program is now in doubt, as the state’s $705,000 contribution had amounted to about 85 percent of the program’s budget.

“I would like for them to appear, to speak to the kids in person and tell them why … why the kids aren’t worth the money,” said the mother of a student who played wheelchair basketball.

A DOE official said the cut was prompted by the state’s dire economic problems  and did not reflect poorly on the performance of the nonprofit American Association of Adapted Sports Programs, which serves 4,700 public school students in Georgia.

Tommie Storms, AAASP’s co-founder and director of operations … said she expects anger about DOE’s cut to spark discrimination lawsuits and energize a push for federal legislation guaranteeing the rights of disabled school athletes, similar to Title IX for girls.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 6th, 2009 at 11:08 am and is filed under budget, discrimination, education, exercise/sports. 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.