Aid for Religious Schools Hit by Hurricanes

If the government is going to give away buckets of money to everyone else, then religious schools and organizations should also received aid after the hurricanes.

AP: White House: Religious Schools Can Get Aid---

WASHINGTON - Religious schools and other private, nonprofit organizations that provide government-type services are eligible for federal grants and loans to rebuild facilities damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Bush administration said Tuesday.

"President Bush believes that hurricanes, floods and earthquakes don't discriminate on the basis of religion and that government's response to them should not either," said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Towey said the policy permitting such federal disaster aid has been in effect since 2002, when Bush changed Federal Emergency Management Agency rules to allow a $550,000 grant to rebuild a Hebrew school in Seattle that was destroyed in an earthquake.

Bush ordered the policy change after a Justice Department review determined that providing federal disaster assistance to rebuild the Hebrew school would not violate the constitutional requirement for separation of church and state.

The people who attend these schools and are members of these organizations pay taxes, so why shouldn't they receive some of their money back so they can rebuild?

According to the article, in New Orleans "roughly half the students attend parochial schools." If those schools are not rebuilt, then the public schools will have to accomodate them. Catholic schools teach students with a lot less money than it costs public schools. Perhaps naysayers should think of that.