SCOTUSblog is sponsoring an auction of a Justice Rehnquist bobblehead for charity, the winner to donate proceeds to charity. I’m currently the lead bidder, and my donation will be split between two good causes I invite you to support also: the Benjamin Franklin High School Katrina Reconstruction Fund and the Institute for Justice. IJ’s merry band of litigators needs no introduction because of their work on Kelo, so let me talk about Franklin.
I graduated Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans in 1987. Franklin is not only one of the leading academic public schools in the country, averaging 23 National Merit Semi-Finalists a year and sending 99.5% of its graduates to college, but it is one of the few racially integrated schools in the city of New Orleans, maintaining its academic standards in the face of pressure ranging from a legislature that outlawed the teaching of evolution in the 1980s to modern-day school-board racial politics seeking to abolish magnet schools. The school was one of the few pieces of New Orleans that worked.
Unfortunately, Franklin was located on the New Orleans Lakefront, one of the lowest-lying areas of the city, and suffered $3 million in physical damage from the storm and flooding. Dedicated parents, faculty, and alumni are undertaking heroic efforts to re-open the school as a federal charter school with many of its pre-hurricane teaching staff on January 17, 2006—the tricentennial of Benjamin Franklin’s birth. Federal and state funds are expected eventually, but there is an immediate need for money to pay for faculty salaries, startup costs, and instructional materials.
The Benjamin Franklin Alumni Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has set up three funds: the Katrina Recovery Fund provides money to twenty needy families of Franklin students; the Franklin Reconstruction Fund goes to reopen the school; or one can sponsor a specific distressed family.
100% of your tax-deductible donations go directly to help families or the school, with no administrative fees. (Paypal may be charging a transfer fee, but one can mail a check directly.)
I know that I make many of my charitable donations at this time of year, and hope you consider the Franklin Alumni Association’s efforts among your other choices. Click here to donate and let them know I sent you.
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