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For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
August 29, 2006
President and Mrs. Bush Discuss Gulf Coast School Library Recovery Initiative
Warren Easton Senior High School
New Orleans, Louisiana
Fact Sheet: Keeping the Promise of Jackson Square: A More Hopeful Louisiana
In Focus: Hurricane Katrina
11:04 A.M. CDT
THE PRESIDENT: Laura and I want to thank the educators and
students who have taken time to come over and help us make the point
that renewal requires good education, and that there are a lot of good
folks up and down the Gulf Coast who understand that, and that part of
good education means having good books and strong libraries.
And so I'm going to turn it over to the person who's the
strong, good library person in our family.
MRS. BUSH: Well, I'm so excited today to get to see each
one of you. I had a foundation already for school libraries, and we were
just getting ready to disband the fundraising arm of that, the advisory
committee, last year, last October. And when we met for our last
meeting, they said, let's keep going, let's raise money now specifically
for the Gulf Coast and try to raise enough money so that if every school
comes up and is functional again and is staffed, that they can apply for
a grant for -- to stock their library.
And it's been a thrill to be associated with school
people. I know how school people work. Your first responders, just like
firemen and policemen, you know you've got to get your schools up and
going immediately. And I want to thank you for your determination and
your very hard work, because I know that many of the people on every
school staff who rebuilt their schools, are also having to rebuild their
own lives. They lost their own houses, or they are living in FEMA
trailers. And so they're doing double work, and I want to thank you
very, very much for that.
This is the second round of grants that we're announcing
today. We gave 10 schools, seven in Louisiana and three in Mississippi,
earlier this summer. And this is our second round of grants to 10 more
schools, once again seven in Louisiana and three in Mississippi.
These grants, for the press, might want to know, that
these are for materials to restock a school library. They come in the
form of a check because we know that school librarians want to build
their library the way that it will support their curriculum and be most
appropriate and perfect for their school children. So this is not --
this is not a book distribution, this is a check to these schools so
they can do what all professional librarians want to do, and that is
restock their libraries with the best books possible, including the
course books that are especially bound for libraries so they can get a
lot of use.
So I'm so excited to be here with all of you. I especially
want to thank four foundations which have been very, very generous with
the second round of grants: the AT&T Foundation, Conoco/Philips, Target,
and Enterprise Corporation* have been very generous so that we can
continue to give grants across the Gulf Coast. And I want to thank them,
their representatives of their corporations here. Thank you all, very
much, for that.
And I also want to thank Marshall Payne out of Dallas
who's the Chairman of the Gulf Coast Recovery Initiative. He's back
here. And Pam Willeford, who's our Director.
So Pam, I believe we'll take it over to you next.
END 11:08 A.M. CDT
* Enterprise Rent-A-Car Foundation
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