Catholic leaders assured of help on schools

A Department of Education official yesterday said the Bush administration is working to help Catholic schools by pushing for renewal of the D.C. voucher program and holding a summit to discuss ways to retain religiously affiliated schools in inner cities.

"We in the administration are proud of a lot of initiatives we've been working on ... but we know there's a lot of more work to do," Holly Kuzmich, deputy chief of staff at the Department of Education, told members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

The White House Summit on Inner-City Children and Faith-Based Schools, announced by President Bush in his State of the Union address and scheduled for later this spring, will bring together private-school leaders, educators and researchers to "discuss creative solutions to this problem" of losing faith-based inner-city schools, she said.