Campaigning for Special Needs Advocacy and a Change to McKay Scholarships

By Leah Postelnik

The State of Florida has many programs in place for special needs. That said, we could be doing more and more effectively by concentrating on results oriented solutions and by taking steps to better education across the board.

Yomin Postelnik is running for Florida House of Representatives. When he was 29, he was taken aback by the 4% graduation rate in some parts of the county. Although he was not running for anything, he wrote an entire financial literacy course, designed to show teens the real difference that education and staying clear of crime can make in their lives. The course was approved by the Broward County School Board and the United Way used it as a program for at-risk youth.

Having worked with many special needs schools, Yomin sees the need for advocacy. He was a strong supporter of Representative Dorothy Hukill’s bill to abolish restraining rooms in special needs schools. He also brings innovation and ideas to advocacy.

Key to achieving the best results for a child with educational obstacles, are early detection and immediate treatment. But in Florida, McKay Scholarships are only available once a student has attended a year of public school.

Yomin had the following to say on McKay Scholaships: “Getting children the help they need early on is key to turning their lives around and to helping each child reach his or her potential. Mandating that students need to wait an extra year before they receive help doesn’t make sense, ethically, fiscally or otherwise. By delaying necessary treatments for a year and starting therapy later on, the child usually needs several additional years of costly treatment. As with all other matters, doing what is morally right makes fiscal sense too. In fact, it’s the embodiment of fiscal prudence.”

Education means less crime, better and more productive youth and greater respect for society. Special needs advocacy means changing lives and giving those who need a fighting chance. Real, grounded, proactive solutions are the best vehicle to achieving both.

We need to reach out to officials in both parties to make sure that some of these measures get put in place. No one wants to waste dollars on needless expenditures when it’s just as easy to do things properly and make a real difference in the lives of people. No one wants to subject children to years of additional special needs education when early detection and treatment can have many students mainstreamed at a much faster rate.

And when a candidate’s proposing all of this, it’s worth getting involved in that campaign. Yomin’s website is www.ABetterFlorida.com. You can go there, read his platform and offer to host a meet and greet to introduce him and his platform to your friends and neighbors. Those meetings are the heart of campaigns and campaigns, for the right things, are the vehicles that are needed to effect real improvements in peoples’ lives.