[PAA-Discuss] Segregation of Katrina Schoolchildren In the Works! (No Joke)

[S Gonzales]

Okay folks, I found the bill introduced by Hutchinson
with Cornyn as a sponsor. aaahhhhh!!!!!!

Unfortunately, I cannot link directly to this, but if
you want to view it for your own eyes, please visit
the 

Library of Congress
http://thomas.loc.gov/

and search for => s1683
be sure to click the button to search the bill
numbers! 

Basically, this bill waives the requirements
established under the  McKinney-Vento act to provide
school integration for HOMELESS children who are
victims of hurricane Katrina. 

Get this quote from the Wallstreet Journal article
referenced below about teaching homeless children in
the ASTRODOME! 

<snip> 
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...'
</end snip> 


Bill text is here
<snip> 
S.1683
Title: A bill to provide relief for students affected
by Hurricane Katrina.
Sponsor: Sen Hutchison, Kay Bailey [TX] (introduced
9/12/2005)      Cosponsors (1)
Related Bills: H.R.3748
Latest Major Action: 9/13/2005 Read the second time.
Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General
Orders. Calendar No. 208. SUMMARY AS OF:
9/12/2005--Introduced.

Authorizes the use of any funds made available to the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for
Hurricane Katrina relief to pay any education expense
related to students affected by Hurricane Katrina, if
the Secretary of Education determines such expense
appropriate.

Authorizes the Secretary to waive any requirement of
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 for
a state, local educational agency (LEA), school,
teacher, or student affected by an influx of such
students.

Makes school placement requirements of the
McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act inapplicable to
such students. Authorizes LEAs or elementary or
secondary schools to issue and require the use of
identification cards or other identifying insignia for
such students. 



An article I found discussin the issue is here,
complete with references. 
<snip> 


Segregation of Katrina Schoolchildren In the Works!
(No Joke)
by MrLiberal

http://media-in-trouble.mydd.com/story/2005/9/21/20133/0443

>From the annals of "Just When You Thought It Couldn't
Get Any Worse..."

One of the greatest costs of Hurricane Katrina has
been in human terms. We've all seen the footage, the
photos, the horror of it all. Now some 372,000
school-age kids from New Orleans and elsewhere have
been displaced, and many of them are settling in Texas
(assuming that the state survives Rita, too-God help
them all). The question: where will they go to school?
The answer, as supplied by US Senator Kay Bailey
Hutchison (R-TX), IS TO SEGREGATE THEM. I kid you not.
Read on if you want to know how Brown vs. Board of
Education is being circumvented in the Lone Star
State...

Diaries :: MrLiberal's diary :: Wed Sep 21st, 2005 at
08:13:03 PM EDT

You see, Brown vs. Board of Education (the landmark
1954 ban on segregation by the Warren Court) did not
clearly state that schoolchildren could be integrated
with the possibility of their being homeless. The
McKinney-Vento Act of 1987 (fully enacted by 2001)
fixed that problem by allowing homeless students (such
as those affected by natural disasters such as
Katrina) to be integrated into the various schools of
their new settlements. The idea is simple; it may be a
slight incovenience at first for the school, but soon
enough the new students will settle in to their
community, and the school will be better for it in the
long run. In a state of over 20 million citizens,
adding some 150,000 children to the school systems
(assuming many move past Texas to settle elsewhere)
would consist of spreading families out and making
their children welcomed in different schools
throughout the Lone Star State.

What, then, is the plan to deal with Katrina's student
victims? The answer: segregate them! The Wall Street
Journal on September 14th ran the following article:
-------------------------------------------------
'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."

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...'
-------------------------------------------------
THE ASTRODOME?! HELLO!!!! THESE ARE AMERICAN STUDENTS
IN THE 21ST CENTURY,
NOT IN THE JIM CROW ERA!
-------------------------------------------------
The article continues:

'Texas Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley, noting
that 25,000 evacuees are housed at a closed Air Force
base in San Antonio, asked the federal Education
Department last week for "flexibility" to serve
students "at facilities where they are housed, or
otherwise separate from Texas residents during the
2005-2006 school year." U.S. Senator Kay Bailey
Hutchison, a Texas Republican, introduced legislation
Monday that would grant Secretary Spellings authority
to waive McKinney-Vento.

Such proposals are arousing consternation among
advocates for the homeless, who fear that nearly two
decades of gains in public-school enrollment for
homeless children will be wiped out. They note that
the act, which also requires school systems to enroll
homeless children even without documentation such as
health and residency records and to employ liaisons to
the homeless, was vital to the swift, open-armed
response of school districts to the student influx in
the hurricane's aftermath.

Also, they say, thousands of storm-battered children
have already enrolled in public schools across the
country without ill effects. Gary Orfield, director of
a Harvard University project that monitors school
integration, said that segregating a predominantly
black group of evacuees could raise "constitutional
questions of racial discrimination." He also said that
because many of them may be traumatized, have learning
deficits, or come from failing schools, it would be
"terrifically difficult" to teach a separate class of
the displaced students, and that placing them in
middle-class schools and communities would benefit
them educationally.

William L. Taylor, chairman of the Citizen's
Commission on Civil Rights, said the administration's
plans to ease McKinney-Vento and No Child Left Behind
could leave the displaced students warehoused and
forgotten.
"We need some focus on the needs of the children, and
not go around waiving a lot of regulations without
deciding whether there's a need," Mr. Taylor said.

Not all states are seeking waivers. Mississippi
officials turned down a proposal from a Navy base to
hold classes there. Nikisha Ware, a Mississippi
Department of Education official, said the law had
helped evacuees to enroll in
schools without red tape. "If there were no
McKinney-Vento," she said, the hurricane "would have
created it." '
-------------------------------------------------
I'm speechless, really. To think that in modern
America that such actions could even be thought of,
let alone take place is absolutely reprehensible. Let
me repeat a quote from the article: "Gary Orfield,
director of a Harvard University project that monitors
school integration, said that SEGREGATING A
PREDOMINATELY BLACK GROUP OF EVACUEES COULD RAISE
"CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS OF RACIAL DESCRIMINATION."

This is 2005, folks. People fought and even died in
the Civil Rights Movement to end this sort of
practice. And why now? I am hesistant to call anyone
racist, but this plan smacks of racism, and it MUST BE
STOPPED. Call your US Senators and Representatives,
and ask them where they stand on the McKinney-Vento
Bill. There is too much at stake to stand idly by.

Oh, and if you want to get rid of Kay Bailey Hutchison
for this kind of shenanigan, Barbara Radnofsky's doing
just that. Check her out-she'd be a welcome change, to
say the least. It's at http://www.radnofsky.com 


		
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