Washington

Official visit. Visit to the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) school (30 March 2010)

In the second stage of Carla and Nicolas Sarkozy’s further visit to the United States, Washington was marked on Tuesday 30 March by the private dinner offered by Michelle and Barack Obama at the White House. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was visiting the US capital for the first time as first lady. On Tuesday morning, she chose to visit a model school located in a poor neighbourhood in the south-east of Washington. Kipp (Knowledge Is Power Program), which was opened in 2003, is a public school and one of more than eighty such institutions spread throughout America. Ms Bruni-Sarkozy was greeted by the Mayor’s wife, Michelle Fenty, and the school principal, Susan Schaeffler, and was shown the educational methods used by the school, which has more than a thousand pupils in eight locations. The Kipp schools, whose results put them among the best in the country, promote access to university by children from deprived backgrounds. Ms Bruni-Sarkozy read, in English, the story of a little girl living in France, Madeline, to a class of 6 and 7 year old children. The pupils, who broke of their school holidays for this visit, greeted the reading with a famous song of Marvin Gaye. The first lady then answered questions from a class of teenagers who are preparing a guide to Paris. “If you come to Paris one day, I will take you to the Louvre and show you the Mona Lisa”, Ms Bruni-Sarkozy promised, having just announced, the day before, her programme of exchange scholarships between French and American art schools.