How Low Can You Go: Bush to Suspend Separate But Un-Equal Ban for Students Made Homeless By Katrina

Last week we told you about how the Bush Administration had waived the Davis Bacon Act, to deny prevailing wage rates for workers rebuilding in the wake of Katrina. (This awesome Hartford Courant piece on that issue, "Quoting Bible, Cutting Worker Pay" by Dan Haar was sent to me by a national union leader.) Now comes word that the Administration is also seeking to waive the McKinney-Vento Act, the federal law that bans educational segregation of homeless children. I don't want to hear any more fake protests from Laura Bush, for me this seals the deal. President Bush doesn't think that the poor victims of Katrina or their children deserve to be in public schools when trailers and shacks will do. He doesn't think their parents deserve 9 bucks an hour for rebuilding New Orleans and Mississippi. Then Bush wonders why most African Americans don't like him--pretty obvious-no?

Separate but Equal? Schooling
Of Evacuees Provokes Debate

By DANIEL GOLDEN

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

September 14, 2005; Page B1
The 372,000 schoolchildren displaced by Hurricane Katrina are stirring an old debate about whether separate education can really be equal.

A number of states, including Utah and Texas, want to teach some of the dispersed Gulf Coast students in shelters instead of in local public schools, a stance supported by the Bush administration and some private education providers. But advocates for homeless families and civil rights oppose that approach.

At the center of the dispute is whether the McKinney-Vento Act, a landmark federal law banning educational segregation of homeless children, should apply to the evacuees. In addition, because many of the stranded students are black, holding classes for them at military bases, convention centers or other emergency housing sites could run afoul of racial desegregation plans still operating in some school districts.

Separate education for the evacuees is "unconscionable," says Barbara Duffield, policy director for the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth. "Many states have worked extremely hard to comply with the law and give these kids a regular school experience. The federal Department of Education is seeking to undermine the law at a time when it is most needed."

But officials of some states contend that separate classes would be less disruptive to both school districts and displaced families. U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is expected to ask Congress soon for authority to waive McKinney-Vento and other key education legislation, such as the 2001 No Child Left Behind law, which holds districts and schools accountable for test scores of students in each racial group. Without a waiver, the penalty for violating McKinney-Vento is to deny states the funding they receive under the act for homeless education. Although the act was enacted in 1987, the desegregation requirement was adopted in 1994 and strengthened in 2001.

Susan Aspey, an Education Department spokeswoman, said that "we still don't know" how broad a waiver the secretary will seek and that the secretary plans to be "prudent" in exercising the waiver authority. She also said the department doesn't know how many children have re-enrolled in public schools, how many are being educated separately and how many are awaiting placement. Since it's unclear how long the children will be displaced, she added, the secretary won't be granting waivers "in perpetuity."

Businesses from charter schools to distance-education providers are already pressing for permission to teach the homeless in shelters and other makeshift housing, hoping to gain broader acceptance for their approaches to education. Mark Thimmig, chief executive of White Hat Ventures LLC, which educates nearly 5,000 students in Pennsylvania and Ohio via the Internet, said last week that his company would be eager to educate displaced students in the Astrodome.

After nearly 600 evacuees landed at Camp Williams, a National Guard training center in Utah, officials at the neighboring Jordan school district were ready to bus the children to school. The district, which is 1% black, has more than 75,000 students, including 1,800 homeless pupils.

But Pamela Atkinson, a special consultant to Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., had other ideas. The displaced families had experienced "so much trauma, anxiety and separation" that the parents "wanted their children close by," said Ms. Atkinson. "Since we had classrooms at Camp Williams, it made more sense to keep them there."

She contacted Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, who then asked Secretary Spellings to seek to waive McKinney-Vento. "These displaced and homeless children are not the typical homeless children," Sen. Hatch wrote. "Nearly all of them are with their families. It is important to keep families together as the Katrina victims receive aid and support." The secretary had already made a verbal commitment to Sen. Hatch that she would not enforce McKinney-Vento, according to the letter.