Education is Bush’s first priority

Bush aides declined to give details of the plan that would be offered on Tuesday. "It will be a comprehensive education agenda based on what he outlined during the campaign," an aide said. Bush has said education reform would be his first priority as President. But he opened the first work week of his presidency on Monday with an executive order on abortion — denying Federal funds to foreign family planning groups that perform or promote abortion — which obscured his first-day’s efforts to call attention to the education issue.

"This is a week where I’m going to, hopefully, focus the nation’s attention on public schools and how the Congress and the executive branch can work together to pass a law (to help) every single child be educated in America," Bush said at a White House meeting Monday with Education Secretary Roderick Paige and a group of educators and reading specialists.

Bush also met with Democratic elder statesmen, to discuss "how to get an education agenda moving forward." He is to meet with Democratic and Republican education leaders on Tuesday morning, and then unveil his plan at a White House event in the afternoon.

Political debate over the education plan focuses on Bush’s proposal to give $1,500 vouchers to the parents of students in public schools.

A strange case of missing Ws

WASHINGTON:President George W. Bush has lost his middle initial from many computer keyboards at the Old Executive Office Building in the White House complex.

In an apparent prank carried out by the departing Clinton administration staffers, Bush aides discovered that dozens of computer keyboards were missing the ‘‘W’’ key. Bush aides said on Tuesday that the W was marked out in some cases but often the key had been removed and sometimes taped on top of doorways or damaged with the spring broken.

The new team was studying whether any of the keyboards could be salvaged, but it appeared in many cases they would simply have to be replaced. Bush made a big deal out of his middle initial during campaign rallies, often holding up the middle three fingers of his hand to form a ‘W’.