Federal

Gulf Coast Schools Prepare to Reopen Amid Uncertainties

October 04, 2005 5 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

With many Louisiana and Mississippi schools expected to open this week for the first time since Hurricane Katrina savaged the Gulf Coast, school leaders were working hard last week to prepare despite uncertainty over how many students would actually show up.

“I don’t think we’ll really know until Monday,” Oct. 3, said Carrolyn R. Hamilton, the superintendent of Long Beach school district in Mississippi, which had an enrollment of 3,200 students before the storm. “You just have to be patient and find out.”

Many school systems in southeastern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi have been closed since Katrina approached in late August. At least eight districts were expected to reopen schools this week, though not all buildings would be usable. Some other districts have already reopened, but in some of the hardest-hit areas, such as New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish, no firm date has been set for reopening schools.

Besides uncertainty over enrollment, administrators were unsure last week how many of their employees would return. Some were worrying how they would make their payrolls in the long term, while others were awaiting portable classrooms already overdue.

In districts reopening this week, how many students to expect was one of the biggest question marks.

See Also

See lists of Louisiana and Mississippi school districts’ reopening status,

Table: Hurricane Update

“We can all speculate, but I don’t think any of us do know,” said Jeff Nowakowski, a spokesman for the Jefferson Parish district near New Orleans, which had 46,000 students. Eighty out of 84 schools in the system—far more than originally anticipated—were scheduled to reopen Oct. 3.

For his part, Glen V. East, the superintendent of the Gulfport district in Mississippi, got a clue about enrollment last week, when his district’s high school reopened.

“We’re about 80 percent strong,” he said. “We were a high school of about 1,600, and now we’re a high school of about 1,250.”

Of those students, 42 were newcomers, he said. The K-8 programs were scheduled to resume this week. The district had 6,200 students before the storm.

Textbooks Lost

Districts planning to reopen Oct. 3 were making final repairs last week to meet that target.

“We have contractors and cleaning crews” in the schools, said Henry Arledge, the superintendent of Mississippi’s Harrison County district, which had 13,000 students. “We think by the weekend we’ll be in pretty good shape.”

The district, like many others in Mississippi, was still awaiting portable classrooms promised by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Mr. Arledge said his district was to get 36 portables, and had thought they would have arrived already.

He said that a middle school will be running double sessions until the portables come.

The damage in the Harrison County system wasn’t just to buildings. Textbooks, furniture, and supplies took a hit, too. Mr. Arledge estimates that his district lost at least $220,000 worth of textbooks alone. He added that more than 280 district employees lost their homes.

Despite the upheaval, Mr. Arledge is seeing signs that life is slowly getting back to normal. Last week, two district high schools played football games for the first time since the storm. One team lost an away game, but in the home game, Harrison Central pulled out a 21-14 victory.

The St. Tammany Parish district in Louisiana, which had 37,000 students, also was aiming to open Oct. 3.

Linda E. Roan, a spokeswoman for the district, said most schools would be ready then, though as many as six might have to open later. A few schools will run split schedules.

Like officials in other systems, Ms. Roan said she didn’t know yet how many students to expect.

“We have asked principals to phone parents, to let them know if the students are coming back, so we have a bit of an idea so we can plan,” she said.

The number of teachers was also not fully clear.

“I don’t have firm numbers on employees either,” Ms. Roan said. “But I will tell you that we made every effort to contact our employees, and to have them contact us through as many venues as we could find.”

Superintendent Hamilton of Mississippi’s Long Beach schools said she expected most of her teachers to return. She knew of three, as of last week, who were not planning to come back.

Of the five schools in her system, one was completely destroyed, but the rest were slated to reopen this week. Two elementary schools were expected to run double shifts until 23 requested portables arrived.

Mr. East of the Gulfport system said he was expecting that some 20 to 25 teachers and aides would not return. “With the decrease in student body, we’re OK,” he said.

Mr. East’s worry, though, is the loss of faculty members with special expertise. Teachers of geometry and microbiology are among those on his prestorm staff of 460 teachers who are not returning, he said. But he’s not losing heart.

“We feel we will be as strong, if not stronger, than we were in the past,” the superintendent said of his district.

Payroll Worries

Making payroll is also on district leaders’ minds, though in most cases it seems that the short-term situation is covered.

Mr. Nowakowski said the Jefferson Parish district was using a $26 million reserve fund to make the Sept. 15 and 30 payrolls.

“What happens on Oct. 15?” he said. “We need money for salaries, and FEMA says they’re bricks-and-mortar people.”

He’s putting hope in a proposal state schools Superintendent Cecil J. Picard sent to Congress calling for $2.8 billion in emergency federal aid. (“La. Schools Chief Seeks $2.8 Billion in K-12 Aid,” Web Extra, Sept. 8, 2005.)

“We know the situations they’re in, and we’re as concerned as they are,” said Meg Casper, a spokeswoman for the state schools chief. “We’ve got to wait for the federal funding picture to become clearer, and once it does, the state can begin to act.”

Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish district, which aims to open several schools by Oct. 17, can pay employees through the end of October.

“Our board has committed to making September and October payroll,” said Carol A. Roberts, the director of secondary education and instructional technology for the district, which had 5,000 students before the storm. “After that, it just depends on, well, the federal government, for one thing.”

A version of this article appeared in the October 05, 2005 edition of Education Week as Gulf Coast Schools Prepare to Reopen Amid Uncertainties

Events

Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Privacy & Security Webinar
Navigating Cybersecurity: Securing District Documents and Data
Learn how K-12 districts are addressing the challenges of maintaining a secure tech environment, managing documents and data, automating critical processes, and doing it all with limited resources.
Content provided by Softdocs

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Federal What Would Happen to K-12 in a 2nd Trump Term? A Detailed Policy Agenda Offers Clues
A conservative policy agenda could offer the clearest view yet of K-12 education in a second Trump term.
8 min read
Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, March 9, 2024, in Rome Ga.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, March 9, 2024, in Rome, Ga. Allies of the former president have assembled a detailed policy agenda for every corner of the federal government with the idea that it would be ready for a conservative president to use at the start of a new term next year.
Mike Stewart/AP
Federal Opinion Student Literacy Rates Are Concerning. How Can We Turn This Around?
The ranking Republican senator on the education committee wants to hear from educators and families about making improvements.
6 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
Federal Biden Calls for Teacher Pay Raises, Expanded Pre-K in State of the Union
President Joe Biden highlighted a number of his education priorities in a high-stakes speech as he seeks a second term.
5 min read
President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on March 7, 2024, in Washington.
President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on March 7, 2024, in Washington.
Shawn Thew/Pool via AP
Federal Low-Performing Schools Are Left to Languish by Districts and States, Watchdog Finds
Fewer than half of district plans for improving struggling schools meet bare minimum requirements.
11 min read
A group of silhouettes looks across a grid with a public school on the other side.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva