Public Bailout. Private Agenda?

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

Houston Independent School District superintendent Abelardo Saavedra's week started poorly, got worse and then, thanks to the healing powers of federal dollars, took a turn toward the jubilant. Saavedra's 305 schools are educating more of the Gulf Coast's evacuee students than any other district in Texas, which in turn is housing more evacuees than any other state. On Tuesday, all that generosity seemed to backfire when a group of Katrina kids billeted in the Astrodome rumbled with local Texans at one of Saavedra's schools, sending five students to jail and three to a hospital. The scene did not recur, but by Thursday, Saavedra had an even greater problem: math. The long-term cost of serving 4,700 evacuee students, times an average estimated annual student cost of $7,500, equals a total of $35.2 million-- and the pre-hurricane Bush Administration commitment was only 9% of pupil cost.

On Friday, however, Saavedra was ecstatic. At a press conference in one of the Houston district's middle schools, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced that the Federal Government would request $2.6 billion from Congress to pay 90% of the average cost of educating each Katrina student, whether publicly or privately, up to a ceiling of $7,500 apiece. "From 9% to 90%," Saavedra said afterward, with the dazed elation of a lottery winner.

Spellings' announcement had a lot of school administrators smiling--although a key component angered some of the legislators who will eventually have to vote on it. A proposed set-aside of $488 million for private schools (which, if private-leaning evacuees seek out the kind of education they left behind, would be mostly Catholic) represents a historic federal bankrolling of those institutions and their overtly religious subset, and it drew quick fire from Democrats like Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy. He pronounced himself "disappointed that "[Bush] has proposed ... relief using such a politically charged approach," while California Representative George Miller complained that "to launch a new private-school voucher program in the midst of a disaster response creates a quagmire that could hinder rather than expedite the return to school for tens of thousands of students."

The ramifications of Spellings' bombshell will take months, if not years, to sort out, but most agree that a major federal foray into emergency school funding was desperately needed. The fate of 372,000 displaced children is at least as important to the nation as the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, and unlike the payment of rebuilding costs, education isn't a choice--it's a government guarantee. Yet for days it appeared the feds might foist much of the obligation on state school systems, 47 of which are hosting Katrina students. Most evaluated the problem and decided to teach first and ask questions later. "If that 6-year-old kid coming off that transport plane was yours, how would you want him taken care of?" Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee asked TIME. Huckabee hopes for federal reimbursement, "but if not, we will have done the right thing, and I believe we will have no regrets about how we handled matters."

But Huckabee was tutoring only 1,755 Katrina kids. Texas has 41,000, with 19,000 more expected to arrive. Those numbers left some state officials skeptical that the feds would really come through. Comptroller Carole Strayhorn, who will run against incumbent Rick Perry in the state's Republican gubernatorial primary, challenged him to ask the legislature for $1.2 billion in hurricane-related funds. (He de- clined.) Texas educators are worried that they will be punished in the form of even less federal cash if Katrina's influx keeps them from meeting the conditions of Bush's No Child Left Behind Act and an earlier law that benefits the children of the homeless.

Spellings' proposal eased those tensions while creating others, most sharply over the possible erosion of the church-and-state barrier. Her department noted that in Louisiana's flood-impacted communities, 25% of the students had been enrolled in private schools--should government simply ignore them? "We are not provoking a voucher debate," Spellings contended, "as much as trying to provide aid for these displaced families, whether they have been in private schools or public schools." Her proposal seems carefully crafted to avoid substantive constitutional objections. Although it calls for the distribution of the public-school funds primarily through districts, the private-school money is directed not to schools but to families, in keeping with the concerns of the 2002 Supreme Court decision allowing private-school vouchers so long as the parents retain a "true private choice" as to where their children learn.

Nonetheless, the proposal represents a major, if legal, shift toward government activism. According to Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which promotes school reforms, the number of children receiving government money for private school is roughly 30,000, with a "handful" involving federal funds. The Spellings plan assumes roughly 60,000 federally funded private-school placements. Finn, an Assistant Education Secretary under Ronald Reagan, approves of it as "compassionate and constitutional." Andrew Rotherham, a co-director of a think tank called the Education Sector and a former Clinton education adviser, says the proposal's eventual legitimacy may depend on details Spellings has not yet made available. "As a temporary initiative to help families in exceptional circumstances, it's reasonable," he says. "But if they use this disaster as a beachhead to establish a longstanding voucher program in the Gulf [Coast] region, it would be wildly inappropriate."

For evacuees, the constitutionality of assistance matters far less than the assistance itself. The day before Katrina hit, Albert and Anne Betz moved with Jane Todd, 10, and Owen, 7, out of soon-to-be drowned Pass Christian, Miss., and into a condo in Sandestin, Fla. Back home, Anne had taught at the children's private Episcopal school, but the couple heard that the best schools near Sandestin were public and were happy with the one to which their kids were assigned. Within days, however, Anne received a letter from the Walton County School District stating that the onslaught of evacuees had caused overcrowding, and her children would have to study elsewhere. Now they are bused daily to one school, only to be placed on a second bus to another. At this point, all Anne is asking for is normalcy. "It does not matter if it's private or public school," she says. "The most important thing is my children's happiness." --With reporting by Melissa August/ Washington, Steve Barnes/Little Rock, Deborah Fowler and Sonja Steptoe/Houston and Kathie Klarreich/Sandestin

With reporting by Melissa August / Washington, Steve Barnes / Little Rock, Deborah Fowler, Sonja Steptoe / Houston, Kathie Klarreich / Sandestin