Press Releases

U.S. Congressman Garret Graves (South Louisiana) announced Central Private School is receiving $10,043,000.86 in a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Federal Grant as a result of damages to the school during the 2016 Flood.

"Central Private gets to celebrate tomorrow night with a long overdue groundbreaking ceremony for their new campus – made possible by a recent law change and this grant from FEMA. It is exciting to see that their commitment to their students and community has paid off and students will now get to enjoy a great new campus. Tomorrow's groundbreaking makes all of the efforts to secure funding, insert common sense into laws, and rebuild stronger worth it," Graves said.

During the last Congress, Graves amended the Disaster Recovery Reform Act (DRRA) to prevent FEMA from diverting tens of millions of dollars from educating our students to federal coffers. President Donald Trump signed Graves' provision into law in October of 2018 – making today's groundbreaking possible.

"President Trump signed this provision into law on October 5, 2018, and just five days later, I joined Central Private officials and students at the school to discuss how this legislation changed their future rebuilding plans. We are all proud of this promising outcome," Graves said.

The legislation removed a huge penalty that was imposed on each flooded school building to be limited to a one-penalty-per-facility limit, meaning several million more could be awarded from FEMA. Central Private, for example, would have lost $6,000,000 in recovery funding without the Graves' provision.

Graves authored a series of bipartisan federal disaster policy changes which advanced the bill out of House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Click here for a list of Graves' involvement with resiliency legislation.