Under Pressure, State Opens Two Schools In New Orleans

Two more elementary schools opened in New Orleans last week, ending a monthlong period during which education officials had kept 300 children on a waiting list to be placed in a school.

As residents of the city battered by Hurricane Katrina continue a steady return, opening schools and hiring qualified teachers and staff members have bedeviled education officials.

That four weeks passed—from Jan. 8 to Feb. 5—in which hundreds of students could not attend any of the public schools in Orleans Parish set off a firestorm of public outrage and prompted the filing...