By Daniel Pryzbyla

While hurricane Katrina and Rita victims in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas are still languishing in agony and grief, Republicans and the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation sharks have already been busy scouring the New Orleans carcass.

"Congressional Republicans, backed by the White House, say they are using relief measures for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf coast to achieve a broad range of conservative economic and social policies, both in the storm zone and beyond," reported the September 15, 2005 Wall Street Journal. "The desire to bring conservative, free-market ideas to the Gulf coast is white hot," said Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN). Pence leads the Republican Study Group, "an influential caucus of conservative House members."

No doubt these democratically elected representatives being paid with tax dollars had an open forum for constituents' input too, right? Well, not quite. "Members of the group met in a closed session Tuesday night (Sept. 13) at the conservative Heritage Foundation headquarters here (Washington, D.C.) to map strategy," according to WSJ reporters John R. Wilke and Brody Mullins. In addition, Edwin Meese, former attorney general with the President Reagan administration, has been "actively involved." Many of the ideas being considered by the 40-member group included "proposals to eliminate regulatory barriers to awarding federal funds to religious groups housing hurricane victims, waiving the estate tax for deaths in the storm-affected states, and making the entire region a 'flat-tax free-enterprise zone.'" In the past week, the Bush administration had already suspended some "union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices." Bush also "waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region," reported Wilke and Mullins.

Some of the proposals, noted the WSJ reporters, were not getting the green light from Democrats. "They're going back to the playbook on issues like tort reform, school vouchers and freeing business from environmental rules to achieve ideological objectives they haven't been able to get in the normal legislative process," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL). Even the recent Supreme Court 5-4 decision in June in Kelo vs. New London, Conn., which held that governments can condemn private property if the project serves a "public purpose," surfaced in the debate. Maxine Waters, a Los Angeles Democrat, warned against using government's power of "eminent domain" to redevelop New Orleans. In the September 21, 2005 San Francisco Chronicle, reporter Carolyn Lochhead quoted Waters; "We have to watch the redevelopment in New Orleans for a lot of reasons, and one of them is to make sure that the shadow government of the rich and the powerful does not end up abusing eminent domain to take property that belongs to poor people in order to get them out of the city."

Maybe and maybe not. "Eminent domain" might come after the real estate sharks have already had their feast. "In some ways, Hurricane Katrina seems to have taken a vibrant real estate market and made it hotter," wrote Los Angeles Times reporter David Streitfeld in its September 15, 2005 edition. "Large sections of the city are under water, but that's only increasing the demand for dry houses. And in flooded areas, speculators are trying to buy properties on the cheap, hoping that the redevelopment of New Orleans will start a boom." People are thinking ahead, influenced by a single factor - the belief that hundreds of billions of dollars in government aid is going to create a boomtown. "The people administering that aid will need somewhere to live, as will those doing the rebuilding. So will employees of companies lured back to the area, and the service people that attend to them," he stated. A real estate agent commented, "I've had calls from investors in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New York looking to buy property. This is going to be hard for the poor, the elderly, and those that didn't have insurance. But it's going to be great for some people."

Similar to real estate investors - private, religious and charter school voucher advocates are jumping into the laissez-faire shark waters to not only receive tax dollars from damages, but to "recreate public education in New Orleans." In a full-page commentary in Education Week, September 21, 2005, pro-voucher advocate Paul T. Hill, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington in Seattle, recommended, "The feds also could replace lost local taxes, which paid about $1,200 per pupil with what might be called special 'Spellings Plan' aid of about $75 million a year. To cover the students previously in parochial schools, the federal government would have to come up with another $60 million a year.

" Last year, there were about 60,000 students in district schools and about 50,000 students in parochial schools, about 100 being Roman Catholic. "Money from all sources should be pooled to provide scholarships for all New Orleans students, no matter where they previously went to schools." In addition, he suggested the governor of Louisiana should appoint a "special master" to oversee the New Orleans schools, having sole authority to permit a group to run any type of school with public funds, emphasizing reading and math. "Create schools one by one," he recommended, "by assigning their operation, under charters or contracts, to such diverse groups as teacher co-operatives, non-profits, higher education institutions, national school providers, and others." U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings dutifully obliged, announcing in a September 30, 2005 press release a $20.9 million No Child Left Behind (NCLB) charter education grant to Louisiana. "It will help reopen damaged charter schools, create 10 new charter schools, and expand existing charter schools to accommodate students displaced by hurricane damage."

Hill's generous suggestions for tax dollars to all takers in his "reinventing public education" schemes for New Orleans fall far short of reciprocation. Private, charter and religious schools are under no legal obligation to educate all students or be subjected to federal education laws like the Title 1, NCLB education act, nor its high-stakes testing, "adequate yearly progress" mandates or sanctioning measures that include closing public schools. A more characteristic scenario in place was described in Education Week, September 14, 2005 by reporter Mary Ann Zehr. "Sister Mary Michaeline, the superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Baton Rouge, worked with the Rev. William Maestri, the superintendent of schools for the New Orleans Archdiocese, to help find places for displaced students who had been attending - Catholic schools." Neither Catholic nor any other religious or private schools are required to enroll students not of their approval. Obviously, Hill's "special master" plan wouldn't be reciprocal for leading private schools either. The Isidore Newman School is one of New Orleans's most prominent private schools. Although it received minor damage, its headmaster Thomas W. Price doesn't expect it to reopen until January, reported Zehr. Instead, "One student started school soon after Labor Day at the 664-student Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Md., with its $25,000 tuition waived for the year." Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., held interviews in Houston and enrolled 19 students affected by the hurricanes, she noted. "The $33,000 annual tuition, which includes room and board, won't be waived, but 70 percent of those students will be getting some financial aid."

With 350,000 students in Louisiana and Mississippi, and thousands in Alabama displaced by the hurricanes, there's bound to be some monumental discords within the recovery cycles, notwithstanding laissez-faire sharks and Secretary Spellings's obsessions meeting NCLB data demands. However, children are not bricks and mortar, nor are they composites of computerized testing data. They're not miniature adults either.

"While the U.S. Department of Education has said it will deal with requests for waivers of federal rules on a case-by-case basis, it seems clear to us that certain provisions of the No Child Left Behind act should be relaxed. Intensive academic learning will need to take a back seat to recovery for some students for some time, " said William Pfohl and Howard Adelman in their full-page commentary in the recent October 5, 2005 Education Week. Pfohl is president of the National Association of School Psychologists and Adelman is co-director of the School Mental Health Project at the Center for Mental Health in Schools of University of California-Los Angeles. "Like children after 9/11, survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are likely to experience feelings of fear, anger, grief, anxiety, loss, and hopelessness," they said. "School personnel will be supporting students who may have trouble eating, sleeping, concentrating, or interacting with others, and who may exhibit symptoms such as crying, regression, misbehaving, withdrawal, or aggression."

"Schools' rapid response and warm welcome to students in recent weeks represent the first essential steps in starting children on the road to recovery," they affirmed. "School personnel take on the weight of our children's world in a variety of ways every day. Those helping Katrina and Rita survivors are undertaking a Herculean task, and they deserve our support and gratitude. More important, they need our understanding that the return to 'education as normal' will be a process, not a pronouncement. With this understanding must come the commitment to provide the resources necessary to make genuine recovery and learning possible," the authors concluded.