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I’m Barbara Klein with the VOA Special English Education Report.
Students from areas hit by Hurricane Katrina have received offers of
help from education officials across the United States. The storm caused
severe damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama when it smashed into
the Gulf Coast last week.
Displaced families are spread around the South and
around the country at the start of a new school year. Some are in
temporary shelters such as hotels. Some are with family members. Others
remain in the affected
areas
but local schools may not even exist anymore.
In the city of New Orleans, two major universities are closed
for the fall semester. Tulane University says it expects to re-open in
the spring of 2006. Until then, the Tulane sports teams will play at five
universities in Texas and Louisiana. Loyola University New Orleans says it
will reopen in January. Its twenty-seven Jesuit sister schools have agreed
to accept its students for the fall semester.
Many colleges and universities across the country have offered to
accept students from areas hit by Katrina. Some including Harvard and Duke
have offered free classes and places to live. Harvard, in Massachusetts,
says it will admit twenty-five college students. Up to twenty-five law
students from Tulane and Loyola-New Orleans could also attend Harvard Law
School.
Duke University in North Carolina has offered to accept up to
seventy-five students into its continuing education division. They must be
from North or South Carolina, or related to someone at the university. And
Duke said they must begin classes by September twelfth.
Some schools say they will collect payments, but will hold the money
for the schools that the students normally attend. The United States
Department of Education announced rules to make it easier for displaced
students to get financial aid.
There is a cooperative effort among universities to develop online
classes for students to take for free over the Internet. The project
involves the Southern Regional Education Board and the Sloan Consortium.
Katrina also displaced a great number of schoolchildren. Schools around
the country quickly began to accept young refugees from the storm. At the
same time, other children around the country have launched their own
efforts to help. To learn more, listen Friday for a report on AMERICAN
MOSAIC.
This VOA Special English Education Report was written by Nancy
Steinbach. Our reports are online at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Barbara
Klein. | 
