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Houston Handles Student Influx With Few Problems, So Far

Houston

This time, the school buses that rolled into the Astrodome here weren’t filled with exhausted New Orleans residents fleeing one of the nation’s most destructive storms.

Instead of ferrying people away from their flooded city, the buses on Sept. 8 took hundreds of excited children to school in the Houston Independent School District, where the superintendent says he plans to do “the right thing” for the thousands of children from the New Orleans area who were left homeless by Hurricane Katrina and who now are being sheltered here. “We want to show the children and their families how much we care about them,” said Abelardo Saavedra, the superintendent of the 208,000-student district.

The buses arrived the day after registration began in earnest for the children living at the Astrodome stadium and other nearby buildings, which have collectively been dubbed “Dome City” by evacuees. While the complex had sheltered as many as 25,000 evacuees early last week, the number had dropped to an estimated 8,000 later in the week as many found more permanent quarters in Houston...