{"id":2111,"date":"2005-09-22T01:27:15","date_gmt":"2005-09-22T01:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/senseless.html"},"modified":"2005-09-22T01:27:15","modified_gmt":"2005-09-22T01:27:15","slug":"senseless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/senseless.html","title":{"rendered":"Senseless"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story about Senator Ted Kennedy blocking aid to private (read CATHOLIC) schools in a Katrina aid bill:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Culture & Cosmos<\/em> also reports that a prominent Church prelate said he was furious that aid to private schools had been kept out of the package and he was especially angry that it is being blocked by "four Irish Catholic Senators." <\/strong><\/p>\n

The proposal for financial aid came from the Bush administration and the Department of Education and noted that, "Communities in Louisiana significantly impacted by the hurricane had an above average number of children enrolled in private schools– 61,000 students in private schools compared to 187,000 in public schools in four severely impacted parishes. These significantly impacted Louisiana communities averaged 25 percent of students attending private K-12 schools– much higher than the 11% national average of private school students." <\/strong><\/p>\n

Out of the 61,000 students in private schools, 81 percent, or 50,000 attend Catholic schools. In fact, New Orleans public schools have long had a reputation for poor quality and the Catholic school system there is seen as an affordable refuge. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Senator Kennedy publicly criticized aid for private schools yesterday in a statement, saying: "This is not the time for a partisan political debate on vouchers." Despite the high percentage of New Orleans students who attend private school, Kennedy said that "we need to focus on rebuilding the public school systems which are the cornerstones of the Gulf Coast communities and economies." <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

…..is sort of madness, not only for the reasons provided, but because you know, the public schools absorbing these students…don’t have enough room for them. They are scrambling. They need<\/em> private schools to take up the slack.<\/p>\n

I’m not a huge voucher fan – I’m too leary of the potential strings that always seem to get attached to such things – but I’ve never completely<\/em> understood the visceral reaction from public school entities to them. My experience in education was mostly in places like Florida, where public schools are busting at the seams and there is simply no more money<\/em> to make more schools, and not much will, in a state where retirees have so much political power. It also seemed to me that even public school advocates could see the value of taking some of the pressure off their own schools. But they never seem to. Hmm. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story about Senator Ted Kennedy blocking aid to private (read CATHOLIC) schools in a Katrina aid bill: Culture & Cosmos also reports that a prominent Church prelate said he was furious that aid to private schools had been kept out of the package and he was especially angry that it is being blocked by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSenseless - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/senseless.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Senseless - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This story about Senator Ted Kennedy blocking aid to private (read CATHOLIC) schools in a Katrina aid bill: Culture & Cosmos also reports that a prominent Church prelate said he was furious that aid to private schools had been kept out of the package and he was especially angry that it is being blocked by…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/senseless.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-09-22T01:27:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Senseless - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/senseless.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Senseless - Via Media","og_description":"This story about Senator Ted Kennedy blocking aid to private (read CATHOLIC) schools in a Katrina aid bill: Culture & Cosmos also reports that a prominent Church prelate said he was furious that aid to private schools had been kept out of the package and he was especially angry that it is being blocked by…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/senseless.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-09-22T01:27:15+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/senseless.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/senseless.html","name":"Senseless - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-09-22T01:27:15+00:00","dateModified":"2005-09-22T01:27:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/senseless.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/senseless.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/senseless.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Senseless"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}