AFT: Title 1 can get help quickly to Katrina victims
Union urges quick congressional action on its initiative

Gulf Coast families need relief, not partisan wrangling, and the AFT is urging Congress to harness the Title I education program—a proven and accountable administrative vehicle that can be ramped up almost overnight to get help to all displaced students.

Local, state and national officials have decades of experience with Title I, which has provided additional support for millions of low-income students enrolled in both public and nonpublic schools. The program could be amended immediately to include a one-time supplemental payment for each displaced student, regardless of family income. The federal government would pay the full cost of educating these students, up to the average per-pupil cost in the state where they now reside. The agencies that currently administer Title I, called local education agencies (LEAs), would also administer this supplement for displaced students, and states would oversee their work.

Under the AFT plan, each LEA would conduct a certified count of displaced students enrolled in local public and nonpublic schools, just as they do with students under the traditional Title I program. The LEA would pay each receiving school for the costs of educating displaced students. The special supplement would cover everything permissible under Title I’s parent law, the No Child Left Behind Act. That includes books, supplies, equipment, support services, and additional teachers and paraprofessionals.

Recognizing the tragic and far-reaching effects of the Gulf Coast disaster, the AFT also asked Congress to make an additional one-time allocation of $1,500 per displaced student. This extra money could cover such things as individual and family counseling, after-school or weekend programs for students and parents, and related social services.

This approach draws from the strengths of the existing Title I program—which is on the ground now and ready to go—and avoids the potential for abuse associated with other proposed remedies, such as pouring billions into a reckless and untested voucher scheme.

“Rather than allowing the needs of these students and schools to get bogged down in an ideological debate over vouchers, we want to work as a constructive partner with Congress to pass a package that brings immediate aid to meet the needs of all students and the schools that serve them,” AFT president Edward J. McElroy wrote in a Sept. 29 letter to AFT leaders. “We are encouraged that Sens. Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) are working on a possible proposal that achieves the nation’s desire to help these displaced students and the schools that have welcomed them into their classrooms. While the details of their possible compromise are still a work in progress, we are pleased they are exploring an alternative solution to President Bush’s voucher proposal.”

The AFT also is calling on Congress to recognize the special help that devastated areas such as New Orleans and Biloxi, Miss., will need in the weeks and months ahead. To restore operations and reopen their schools as quickly as possible, these districts need help with everything from recovering student data and replacing books to providing temporary facilities, maintaining payrolls and hiring additional teachers, counselors and other school staff.

Opportunists seek to exploit disaster
Political agendas float on human suffering in hurricane-
ravaged areas

Sure, more than 700,000 Americans were washed from their homes, hundreds of lives were lost and the nation is struggling with the most widespread natural disaster in its history. That hasn’t stopped fringe conservatives in Washington, D.C., from using the Katrina disaster in their bid to parlay human misery into rank political opportunism.

Pressure is growing inside the Beltway to turn the wrecked Gulf Coast region into an ultraconservative petri dish for free-market “solutions.” Plans already are being drawn up behind closed doors, without any input from those who suffered in the states affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The Wall Street Journal reports that 40 members of a conservative congressional caucus met to map out their strategy in a closed session at the Heritage Foundation on Sept. 13—before the levies of New Orleans were secure—and were almost giddy with the prospects. “The desire to bring conservative, free-market ideas to the Gulf Coast is white hot,” Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) told the paper.

The choir book they’ll most likely be singing from is what the Heritage Foundation calls “From Tragedy to Triumph: Principled Solutions for Rebuilding Lives and Communities.” In its search for “principled” measures and common ground to help bind the nation’s wounds, the group is promoting such things as school vouchers, tax breaks, cuts in federal domestic spending, limits on victims’ rights to sue, and gutted or weakened wage, anti-discrimination and environmental laws. The report also scolds Congress for “its habits of funding every conceivable spending initiative” and encourages lawmakers to set budget priorities and make trade-offs. Where to start? “Eliminate any entitlement expectations for disaster relief,” the group suggests.

Sounds like a plan. A fringe one at that—and not one the other side of the aisle will warm up to any time soon.

 “Current Republican proposals to turn the Gulf Coast into a conservative ideological laboratory with private-school vouchers, wholesale deregulation and suspension of wage standards on federally financed construction projects must be rejected,” says Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. “A second ideologically driven abandonment of public responsibility in this region would be intolerable.”