Houston Democrats

The bill below, just introduced by Senator Hutchinson waives the requirements established under the McKinney-Vento act to provide school integration for HOMELESS children who are victims of hurricane Katrina.

I QUOTE from the bill.... (full text below).

" Makes school placement requirements of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act inapplicable to such students." and
"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."

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.