The
Wall Street Journal reports that Bush Education Secretary Margaret Spellings will ask Congress to authorize separate school facilities for the estimated 350,000 school-age Louisiana survivors.
Meanwhile, the same story reports that school voucher vultures are circling survivor centers in hopes of kidnapping children to their various private, charter, storefront, back-alley faux schools to show how important they are to education. This is a racist outrage, a return to pre-Brown v. Board of Education.
In Austin we have been helping survivor families get their children enrolled in local public schools. Local kids are taking these Louisianans under their wing. At one school, everyone began wearing wrist bands so no kids would be stigmatized by his or her survivor wrist bands.
Just yesterday, we were buying groceries with a survivor family. The young woman, a high school student, at the check out asked, "Are you from Louisiana?" When told yes, she said, "You'll be coming to my school! We're very excited. We've been putting together a lot of things to help."
Another young survivor has already enrolled in an Austin school. He was excited about getting into a drama class. "I'm gonna be in a play," he said.
The integration of these children into public schools may well be the best moral learning experience public school children ever receive.
U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison filed the segregation bill. Technically, it waives a federal law that requires the public school of homeless children. Practically, it gives school districts the authority to stick people of color into separate and unequal facilities.
Bush, Spellings, Hutchison, and Texas Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley (who advocates this segregation), Sen. Orin Hatch (another segretation advocate) should drop this hellish, insane, inhuman, racist scheme. Private education providers and their voucher-hungry vultures should be told to go to hell.
Haven't these kids suffered enough?