The ‘Recovery District’ in New Orleans struggles to reopen buildings and reform its programs
By Hazel Trice Edney
Of the NNPA
WASHINGTON – Corey Dew Sr. is waiting. The father of 9-year-old Corey Jr., who will be a fourth grader at Moton Elementary School in New Orleans this fall, has begun shopping for school clothes and conferencing with teachers. But there’s one crucial detail left to resolve. Dew has been trying to find out exactly when his son’s school will open.
“They told me ‘some time next week.’ I don’t know exactly which day,” Dew explains. “They’re kind of slow and not as informative as they need to be. They’re still working on it.”
Sure enough, a list of 56 schools posted on the New Orleans Public Schools website shows Moton as one of three schools listed as “status unknown at this time.”
One year after Hurricane Katrina, the nation’s worst natural disaster in history, Dew’s predicament is a microcosm of New Orleans’ public school system – full of uncertainty about exactly what to expect as the school year approaches while much of the city is still in ruins.
With only 56 of an original 128 schools to reopen – because of flood and wind damage – and about 30,000 of the pre-Katrina 60,000 elementary, middle and high school students expected to return, school officials are scrambling to provide enough classrooms and teachers in a safe, clean and learning-conducive environment.
“It is a horribly frustrating process, and we’re trying to open up 56 schools,” says Meg Casper, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Education, which took over the New Orleans public schools after the hurricane, calling it the Recovery District.
Momentarily stepping away from an intense planning conference with local school officials, Casper tried to explain the magnitude of what education planners are facing by comparing it with the lengthy struggles of individual homeowners.
“My twin brother, he had a 100 percent homeowners policy, a 100 percent flood-owners policy, he kept his job, he’s college-educated – and he just got into his house last week,” she said.
“So, multiply what one person feels with their own home, multiply that times 56.
Still, she insisted, “There are any number of challenges, and we’ve just taken a no excuses posture that we’re going to get it done. We’re going to get these schools open.”
Even after opening, beyond the walls lie other serious issues that concern parents and school officials. They include potential environmental hazards in the schools, which were shut down for months with no air conditioning in often 98-degree heat with 100 percent humidity. As construction engineers are working feverishly to meet the Sept. 7 opening of most city schools, other problems are being uncovered, causing opening dates and plans to change.
Particularly the older schools, some of which were built decades ago, have been found to have lead-based paint, termites and asbestos problems that may have been pre-existing, but are now worsened or exposed because of the flood damage and reconstruction, school officials say.
“Obviously, we are having to address environmental issues because everything has mold on it,” says Casper. “But all of the schools that we open for this school year are going to be certified that there are no environmental issues before we open them.”
In their caution, city and state officials have not set dates for all schools to reopen simultaneously. Eight opened on August 8, giving 4,000 students a new summer agenda. Forty-eight others are scheduled to open by mid-September with most in the Recovery District scheduled to open Sept. 7.
School construction and environmental safety are far from the only problems.
“One of the biggest concerns we have right now is we don’t know how many children are coming and we are not sure whether or not we have enough teachers to meet the need if more children come than has been anticipated,” says Louella Givins, who represents New Orleans on the 11-member Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (LBESE).
Givins – who is featured in the new Spike Lee documentary, After the Levees Broke – also expressed concern for the mental and emotional health of returning students, many of whom experienced the greatest trauma of their lives, having been displaced.
After the winds subsided and the rains ceased 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005, all seemed calm. Though thousands had evacuated, many residents stayed in their homes and braved the storm, thinking that damage was not as bad as had been predicted.
Then news slowly circulated about broken and damaged levies built to restrain the Pontchartrain Lake. Water on the ground mysteriously began to rise. More than 60,000 adults, children and babies, including mostly poor residents from the 9th Ward, frantically took refuge at the Superdome, on bridges, rooftops or wherever there was dry ground. They were seen on television around the world begging for emergency aid three days before it came. There was no running water, electricity, or air conditioning as fights and some of those who had been robbed of normal living conditions were robbed a second time by thugs seeking to exploit the situation.
Before it was over, 80 percent of the city was flooded, more than 1,339 had died in Louisiana, 786,372 citizens were displaced, 18,752 businesses lost.
A year later as the most often used words for the recovery are “slow” and “frustrating”, mental health offices are now flooding, this time with people. The emotional and psychological stress of the tragedy affected adults and children alike.
“We’re talking about people who have no homes and who have no jobs. These are children who were rescued from roof tops by helicopters. Yes, they are having some mental issues,” Casper says.
“We have school counselors in every one of the schools that we open. We are also staffing with social workers in all of our schools. We also have contracts with a group called the Louisiana Spirit that provides mental health evaluation for students as well as faculty and staff.”
Freda Jones says her daughter and son, in the fourth and sixth grades, are adjusting well, partly because have been journaling their Katrina experiences.
“They’ve adjusted, but this is not the community that they had. Just like my son said in his letter that he’s got this big beautiful brand new house, but he doesn’t have any neighbors,” she said. “He said it’s ‘creepy’ because we don’t have any neighbors.”
Some parents are choosing to send children to private and charter schools to avoid the potential crowds of the Recovery School District.
Chanda Augustine’s biggest concern is transportation – she has chosen to keep her 7-year-old son in a private Catholic school that he entered before the public schools began reconstruction. She has to drive him 15 miles to the school bus stop every day. He is a former student at the Silver Forest Public School, which is one of the schools not immediately reopening.
“For the babies, it’s important that they get a good start, that the environment is conducive to them learning and that the environment is a welcoming and nurturing environment,” she says. “For the older children, their lives have been so badly disrupted.”
Givens says she believes that most teenagers are suffering from some level of disassociation from past friends and loved ones from whom they may have been separated in the flood either by death or relocation.
“First they were torn away from some friends and family. Then, they were put in new environments with new children. And teenagers are cliquish. They were outsiders and they were not always accepted,” she says.
“Then they were brought back to New Orleans with their families, but not necessarily to their homes, not necessarily to their schools and not necessarily to their friends and the city is still a mess.”
Normally, high school students have sports and other extracurricular activities to offset social stress and the pressures of education. But even that may be vastly absent as the school year begins.
“There will be no middle school and secondary athletic programs, period,” Givens says. “In most of the schools, there will be no football, basketball.”
Casper confirmed that while all schools will have physical education classes, athletics will start from scratch because of new enrollments.
“Many of the schools are opening with completely different student populations,” Casper explains.
“They will have to reapply with the Louisiana High School Athletic Association. As soon as those applications have been processed, the schools will be able to have athletic programs. We are starting from scratch and must focus our priority on academics first.”
Givens says athletics should have been prioritized.
“Those are the kinds of things you look forward to in high school. I don’t understand why the children continue to suffer. And I don’t understand why the children continue to pay the price,” says Givens.
She is backed by community sentiment.
“Many of the responses have been, ‘We’ll have these programs next year,’” says Vincent Sylvain, a New Orleans activist.
“And I’m saying that next year may be too late because the drug dealers on the corner may capture these youths. And we need these programs in the schools to try to prevent those things from happening.”