[Update] Romano: Why would lawmakers kill program that helps adults with disabilities?

Tampa Bay Times reports this week that state funding has officially stopped for a program teaching everyday life skills to adults with disabilities. The Pinellas County School Board was unable to continue and maintain the cost of operations or find alternative funding for the twenty year-old program.

This is ill-fated news for the many students that found solace and purpose within the walls of the school. The article outlines how the program helped student Kayley Simonsen with her “socialization and self-confidence,” and helped her open up, according to her father, John Becker. While state funding had been on a continual decline for the past few years, this year the $10 million dollars was “whacked from the new budget.”

The senators involved in the legislative session said too much money was “allocated to teacher salaries and benefits,” and “other programs would be available to pick up the slack.”

Whether this is true or not remains to be seen. According to the article, programs such as AFIRE have helped previously with funding discrepancies, but “it doesn’t have the resources to run the program by itself.”

That said, this reiterates the issue about families being on the Medicaid waiting list, unable to afford adult programs without additional help and funding from state and federal programs. One such example in the article has left one man, John, waiting over 5 years since his move from Pennsylvania.

As Mark Hunt, executive director of Career, Technical and Adult Education for Pinellas County Schools was quoted on, this program stoppage “can have a dramatic impact on the students’ feelings of self-worth,” and “there is a significantly higher rate of suicide for this population when they’re put in situations where they feel their lives have no value, and they slip into depression.”

This reflects a mindset that seeks to attack the most vulnerable members of our society, such as those disabled and receiving or seeking Social Security disability benefits. 

For more resources and to learn more about federal disability programs in Florida, check out Disability Rights Florida.