WPR

After 40 years of federal support, a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse program training teachers to provide physical education for students with disabilities will no longer receive a critical grant. Future educators in the Adapted Physical Education program learn to work with students with physical and developmental disabilities by providing on-campus instruction for La Crosse-area families and through partnerships with local schools. For decades, the program has competed for a personnel development grant through the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education programs, according to associate professor Brock McMullen, the program’s director. He said UW-La Crosse supports around 30 graduate students over the course of the five-year grant. The program was last awarded $1.25 million in 2020. McMullen said the university had sent in its application for the next round of funding last December. But in April, he was notified that the U.S. Department of Education was canceling the grant program for good because it did not “fit with the administration’s priorities.”