New Orleans in Early Phase of School-Building Boom

The $54 million L.B. Landry High School in New Orleans opened this school year, one of the first new schools built since the hurricane.

—Lee Celano for Education Week

Reconstruction After Hurricane Katrina Fueled by $1.8 Billion in FEMA Money

By Erik W. Robelen

Efforts to reinvent public education in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina have drawn such interest that it’s easy to lose sight of some very concrete changes that will become obvious over time: A generation of brand-new school buildings is rising across the city.

New Orleans is in the early stages of a construction spree both to build and renovate dozens of schools, and recently got news of an eye-popping settlement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, under which the federal government is providing more than $1.8 billion to cover storm-related damages to schools.

“Everybody loves reform, but they kind of forget that we have this big [construction] program going on,” said Ramsey Green, the director of operations for the state-run Recovery School District in New Orleans, which oversees most of the city’s public schools. Even before the storm, he added, New Orleans was in dire need of overhauling its many aging school buildings, which had fallen into disrepair...