Says Obama would raise taxes on special needs trusts

From CBS News ‘From the Road’ blog, MSNBC ‘Firstread’, the Associated Press, and Fox News ‘Embed’ blog:

In her first policy speech as a vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin said parents should be able to use federal funding to send their children with disabilities to the public or private school of their choice.

She also committed to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, phasing in an additional $15 billion in funding over five years, and promised to reform and refocus services for people with disabilities. She said funds for her plan could be found by realigning federal budget priorities and clamping down on “earmarks for political pet projects.”

“Too often, even in our own day, children with special needs have been set apart and excluded. Too often, state and federal laws add to their challenges, instead of removing barriers and opening new paths of opportunity,” she said. “Too often, they are made to feel that there is no place for them in the life of our country, that they don’t count or have nothing to contribute. This attitude is a grave disservice to these beautiful children, to their families, and to our country — and I will work to change it.”

Palin said Barack Obama would raise taxes on special needs trusts designed to pay for medical and education costs for people with disabilities. “The burden that his plan would impose upon these families is just one more example of how many plans can be disrupted, how many futures can be placed at risk, and how many people can suffer when the power to tax is misused,” she said.

An excerpt from the MSNBC story:

Campaign officials suggested Friday that the project was a priority for her, and would therefore be exempted from a government freeze on domestic discretionary spending, which she and McCain have advocated for on the campaign trail. “We think this is important enough for the next vice president to stand up and talk about,” [McCain senior policy adviser Douglas] Holtz-Eakin said. “If we think it’s important enough to stand up and talk about, we ought to fund it.”

The McCain-Palin plan proposes to allow federal funding to follow children with disabilities from one school to another, but only if state funding does the same. Holtz-Eakin also said the plan would not require private or parochial schools to accommodate children with disabilities.

Palin wrapped her speech in a personal appeal, speaking of her six-month-old son Trig, who has Down syndrome, and her 13-year-old nephew Karcher, who has autism. She spoke in a Pittsburgh airport ballroom filled with families of children with disabilities, and told the crowd not to worry when her remarks were interrupted by a crying baby. “That’s the sound of life. I love it,” she said.

See also, on the McCain-Palin campaign website:

• The full text of Palin’s speech, with video
• The McCain-Palin commitment to children with special needs (press release)
  

(AP photo from Fox News)

Writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, David Casas says a growing number of Georgia parents are using vouchers to get their children with disabilities into private schools. Almost 1,600 students used the “Georgia Special Needs Scholarships” this year, and an increasing number of private schools are participating.

Republican state representative Casas was a sponsor of the bill creating the vouchers, which grant students with disabilities partial tuition to private schools. Parents had sought the vouchers as a way to get their children out of low-performing schools or inadequate programs. It is estimated that some 200,000 students are eligible for the vouchers statewide.

An excerpt:

It is enormously challenging to be the parent of a child with special needs.

Hopefully the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship is bringing some sense of normalcy to children and their parents who are finding hope in smaller classrooms, different schools and happier educational environments.

See earlier posts here and here.

Jennifer Fitzgerald called so many private schools this summer in search of a better education for her daughter, who has Down syndrome, that she lost count

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Georgia’s new Special Needs Scholarship program — built on the promise that public school families of disabled children would get more schooling options — was a disappointment for most first-year applicants. According to state Department of Education figures, of 5,750 families who applied for a tuition voucher, 85 percent either couldn’t find a campus to accept their child, couldn’t afford the additional private school costs or didn’t meet all of the scholarship’s eligibility criteria.

Editor’s note: There are lots of heated reader comments attached to this article.

See earlier post here.

High hopes turn to disappointment as families find program is too little, too late.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Georgia’s much ballyhooed new program to provide vouchers for students with disabilities to attend private schools may not benefit a lot of students this year. The problems:

• Voucher payments are often meager in comparison with private school tuition costs; and
• The program didn’t get started until three months after private schools had filled their class rosters.

Parents had hoped that the vouchers would provide students with disabilities with a ticket out of low-performing schools. Of 199,509 eligible students statewide, officials report that only 5,760 applied for the vouchers. It is not clear how many will actually receive them.

“I’m not finding a lot of parents accepting it,” said Chris E. Vance, an Atlanta lawyer who has represented hundreds of children in special education disputes across the state, “unless they were already planning to place their children [in private school] themselves.”