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Region's Schools Turn Storm's Havoc Into Transformation

A bus ferries children to school past abandoned buildings in New Orleans East. Slightly more than half of the neighborhood's pre-Katrina population of 100,000 has returned since 2005.

—Erika Larsen/Redux for Education Week

Recovery Efforts Roll On, Despite Economic Uncertainty

By Christina A. Samuels

When Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf Coast town of Pass Christian, Miss., wiping away an elementary and a middle school, community leaders used the destruction as a chance for a new start.

Charitable organizations paid for a day-care center so that residents could return to work. The Middle Eastern nation of Qatar donated money to rebuild the local Boys & Girls Club, which was also heavily damaged by the storm.

Pass Christian pooled its resources and now has what it calls the Pass Christian Center of Excellence: a $32 million facility that houses an elementary school and a middle school, plus the new Boys & Girls Club, and the day-care center. A child could enter day care at 6 weeks old and not have to leave the 2-year-old campus until...