AFT president Edward J. McElroy joined other education leaders and representatives of relief organizations on Sept. 6 for a meeting with leaders of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to discuss how the committee can provide fast-track help in the recovery effort in the Gulf Coast region.

Committee chair Sen. Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) and ranking Democrat Sen. Edward Kennedy invited McElroy, NEA president Reg Weaver and others to submit ideas for possible legislation to provide support to Hurricane Katrina victims. The group agreed that the considerable challenges posed by the healthcare, education, economic and structural devastation have prompted an urgent need for bipartisan cooperation to address these problems quickly.

The AFT represents nearly 15,000 teachers, school support staff and others in the areas affected by Katrina. The New Orleans district schools, in particular, have been almost completely destroyed, said McElroy, and will need sizable and sustained aid to recover, he told the group. He also emphasized the importance of keeping evacuated families together.

AFT secretary-treasurer Nat LaCour on Sept. 7 met with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to discuss the department's efforts to help students and schools in the wake of the disaster. He urged Spellings to provide relief quickly and to be as flexible as possible in finding solutions for schools in the affected areas. He asked that she work with Congress and the White House to establish a funding stream for school-related relief that would be under her authority and independent of FEMA.

Spellings also announced that student loan borrowers living in affected areas may delay payments on their loans without penalty and that deadlines for applying to a number of higher education programs have been extended until at least Dec. 1, 2005. Also, on a case-specific basis, the Department of Education will relax certain reporting provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act for affected states.

Meanwhile, the Education Department has established a special Web site that allows schools to post information on supplies they need and provides other hurricane-related links.

LaCour also participated in a Sept. 8 meeting of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation to discuss Gulf Coast disaster relief. That meeting, hosted at AFT headquarters, included coalition member organizations as well as representatives from the White House, FEMA and other federal agencies.