It's never as bad as you think it is...

Quite often, it's worse:

A number of states, including Utah and Texas, want to teach some of the dispersed Gulf Coast students in shelters instead of in local public schools, a stance supported by the Bush administration and some private education providers. But advocates for homeless families and civil rights oppose that approach.

At the center of the dispute is whether the McKinney-Vento Act, a landmark federal law banning educational segregation of homeless children, should apply to the evacuees. In addition, because many of the stranded students are black, holding classes for them at military bases, convention centers or other emergency housing sites could run afoul of racial desegregation plans still operating in some school districts.

Via Huffington Post.

Texas has crowded classrooms and shrinking funds to pay for them, already. The Legislature, in two special sessions, refused to consider a new school finance law, because the issue of the constitutionality of the old school finance law is pending before the Texas Supreme Court. Schools are, essentially, in limbo, and now face the prospect of taking on more students with a promise of reimbursement sometime "further on."

So this strikes me as Perry's attempt to eat his cake and have it, too. He made generous noises about Texas school's accepting Louisiana's students, when he had no authority to deny them entry, or to admit them. He can't raise or authorize any extra funds to pay for them, so he does the next best thing: he segregate the kids.

Is this a great country, or what?