Katrina school aid: Will it provide needed help or promote an agenda?

Published: 2005-09-23

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Government and educational leaders agree on one thing: The 372,000 students from the Gulf Coast who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina need help. But just how this help is divvied up remains in question. When the U.S. Department of Education announced plans Sept. 16 to pay 90 percent of the educational costs of students and schools affected by Hurricane Katrina for one year, some Democrats and officials from teachers' unions immediately saw red flags. They said the plan for spending $7,500 per displaced student in public or private schools amounted to nothing short of a way to sneak in a national voucher program. But cooler heads seemed to prevail during a Sept. 22 hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Education and Child Development on how to legislate aid for Katrina's displaced schoolchildren. Even those opposed to vouchers said the emergency educational aid package could work for all students, as long as it was carefully worded and explicitly specified as a temporary emergency provision for one year. The department's plan seeks $2.6 million in new hurricane relief spending. It would distribute public-school funds through school districts and private-school funds directly to parents -- in line with the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing vouchers only if parents, not schools, receive the funds.

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