2023 John Fogarty Award - House Minority Leader Michael W Chippendale (102623)

we have one more word to give and that is to representative chiale and I would like to say that this was for the island promise branch which um was as it was written uh one had to be a full-time student in order to be and thanks to U sen chale we actually um have a amendment was BR to the bill to allow students with disabilities to aend part-time and still be eligible for the promise Grant which is very important because it's an obstacle for many individuals disability to trying to get higher education um myself um some people know that um during my first uh year of law school um I actually had a rupture well intested due to Chon's disease and in order to catch up um I went not lose all the credits I earned um I was able to switch parttime thanks to the te students being very understanding so I know that you know there are times you know people with disabilities they can get there they can do the work they can earn the degree they can get the job but there just tempt needs to be an accommodation in order to help the person to cross that l so thank you very [Applause] much thank you Elizabeth and of course Bob and the commission for everything that you all do you know um while it was the progression of my own physical disability in 2010 that sort of nudged me towards running for politics I never really imagined that I would be working on disability related issues but it was after the promise program had been passed the promise scholarship that some constituents of mine reached out to me and said well hey seems to be a little bit of a shortcoming here and so with a lot of help from Bob and all the folks in in the community who who deal with disabilities whether they're physical disabilities developmental disabilities hidden disabilities or otherwise helped me to come up with the right language and by working through uh amendments when the promised scholarship was um put into law permanently I ensured that that language was inserted in there so that all students regardless of their disabilities would be able to take advantage of that and then furthermore when the Hope Scholarship came along in this past year I was equally as um dogged in ensuring that that language was in there as well we still have a lot of work to do um we still have some handicap spk uh parking spots around the building that we need to get boosted up cuz it's hard for folks with disabilities to get into the state house for great events like this um I'm very honored to be receiving this I'm happy that the commission does the work that they do and I'm happy that so many people are here to recognize it I thank you all from the bottom of my heart