McHenry Times

Veteran Illinois lawmaker Sen. Dan McConchie (R-Hawthorn Woods) is pushing the passage of House Bill 3359, a bill that would ease the transition of disabled students from high school to college, as simply the right thing to do.

“A couple years ago, I had a mother of a disabled child in my district come to me because he had been discriminated against by two local community colleges,” McConchie said in a video posted to YouTube. “Through high school, the only way he could go to school was to have a personal support worker come with him to class. He needed that same support worker to come with him to be able to study photography. Two of the three area community colleges said no, they would not allow the personal support worker to come in with him unless they also paid tuition. I thought there was something terribly wrong with this and I decided to introduce legislation that would prevent this kind of discrimination on our community college campuses.”

HB 3359 seeks to establish that if a student has a personal support worker through the Home-Based Support Services Program for Adults with Mental Disabilities under "the Developmental Disability and Mental Disability Services Act, the governing board of the public university or community college district must permit the personal support worker to attend class with the student.”

While the university would not be responsible for paying for the personal support worker, the governing board would also be prohibited from charging the personal support worker tuition and fees for accompanying the student in need.

“We’ve just been able to pass this bill out of committee, House Bill 3359,” McConchie added.  “I’m looking forward to being able to champion this bill on the Senate floor. This is a really important bill to help push disability rights forward in our state.”

McConchie has also been busy fighting for what he sees as a fair map redistricting process.

Republicans have blasted Democratic leaders' handling of the once-every-decade task as being blatantly designed to keep them in power.  

“Instead of politicians using this process to protect their own political power, people should be able to choose their elected officials, not the other way around,” McConchie said at a recent redistricting hearing.  “The current process keeps politicians in complete control of the process and that I believe needs to change.”