Negotiations under way over giving hurricane aid to religious schools

Published: 2005-09-29

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Difficult negotiations were under way over efforts to include Catholic and other nonpublic schools in emergency funding for taking in students displaced by recent hurricanes, according to the education secretary for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Dominican Sister Glenn Anne McPhee told Catholic News Service Sept. 29 that she, representatives of the Council for American Private Education and staffers from various congressional offices and the U.S. Education Department were meeting to try to work out a way for nonpublic schools to be included in proposals to subsidize the costs of taking in students who had to leave their schools in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas because of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Congressional representatives in those meetings included employees of Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who was the target of Sister McPhee's frustration earlier in September over his comment that he was "extremely disappointed" that federal aid to schools in the program proposed by President George W. Bush would include students in all types of schools. She issued a statement Sept. 22 complaining that Kennedy and the Republican sponsor of a Senate bill on hurricane aid for schools seemed to ignore "the Catholic and other nonpublic schools that have opened their doors to evacuees."

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