Mrs. Bush made the announcement in New Orleans’s devastated Ninth Ward at the private Holy Cross School for Boys, which will receive $50,000 to rebuild its library. “Rebuilt school libraries will help bring back children to their schools,” she said. “And rebuilt schools will bring families back to a revitalized Gulf Coast.”
“This money is essential to the school in rebuilding its libraries,” Holy Cross teacher Mark Lasserre said in the April 19 New Orleans Times-Picayune. “We’re starting essentially from ground zero.”
The trip is Laura Bush’s ninth to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. Tulane University History Professor Douglas Brinkley told the Times-Picayune that many in the city have grown weary of symbolic trips that are short on substance. “Half of us want to say, ‘Come back to New Orleans, Laura Bush is here and she feels safe, so everyone should feel safe,’” Brinkley said. “The other side of New Orleans is struggling with the realization that things aren’t being fixed and nothing’s getting done.”
But for Louisiana Department of Education spokesperson Meg Casper, the First Lady’s visit keeps the city’s challenges in the public eye. “For us, it’s great,” she said. “It’s a national voice.”
Posted April 20, 2007.