Rita Closes Many Texas, Louisiana Schools
Not as potent as feared, hurricane still wreaks havoc.
School districts in southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas were still struggling to assess damage, make repairs, and reopen nearly a week after Hurricane Rita swept ashore.
The storm skirted some Texas districts that had girded themselves for damage, such as the 210,000-student Houston school system and the 9,100-student Galveston district. Those districts resumed classes last week after closing for a few days to support the evacuation of their cities’ residents.
But as Rita made landfall on Sept. 24 farther east than was first predicted, sparing some densely populated areas, the hurricane shattered communities in Louisiana’s Cameron, Calcasieu, and Vermilion parishes, all parts of the state’s bayou region. And it pounded the Texas cities of Beaumont and Port Arthur as it traversed a path roughly up the Texas-Louisiana border. As of late last week, more than 140,000 students remained out of school in dozens of affected...
This article is available to subscribers only.
To keep reading this article and more, subscribe now or start a 2-week FREE trial.
Subscribe to Education Week
You Save 20% or More!
Viewed
Emailed
Recommended
Commented
Sponsored Whitepapers
• Best Practices in Information Management, Reporting and Analytics for Education
• Smart infrastructure report to get your district ready for future IT needs.
• Integrating Social and Emotional RTI to Improve Student Performance
• Taming the wild west: How America’s third largest school district manages PCs, Macs, and iPads
• Overcoming the Odds: Getting Every Student to College YES Prep Shares Its Success Story
- Principal
- The Berkeley Institute, HAMILTON, Bermuda
- Principal
- Amargosa Valley Elementary School, Amargosa Valley, NV
- Charter School Director (Head of School)
- International Preparatory Academy, Detroit, MI
- Principal
- Chattahoochee Hills Charter School, Multiple Locations
- Superintendent
- Round Rock ISD, Round Rock, TX