Just a short one today, as I've a bunch of things that will keep me away from the 'puter, but I will try to answer whatever comments come up.
The problems of New Orleans' school system are not simply because 80% of the city was ruined by flood waters after the Corps of Engineers' levees failed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Teacher shortages, financial mismanagement, a magic-lantern gallery of superintendents and horrid financial mismanagement forced the state to take over the city's schools in November of 2005. The results do not encourage optimism.
Compounding the problem, many of the contractors, some of whose names you'll recognize from America's bang-up job in reconstructing Iraq, are treating the contents of shuttered schools--books, furniture, computers--as "storm debris" and tossing it all, regardless of condition.
A story
from the Times-Picayune last year gave a preview of what "cleanup" efforts would mean:
Ten schools visited by The Times-Picayune late last month were left wide open and largely unsecured, their upper floors still filled with supplies easily worth millions of dollars -- all of which school officials plan to throw in the garbage. That's because state school officials and FEMA fear the supplies may be contaminated with mold or spores, leaving students susceptible to infection and the system open to lawsuits, officials said. Though some environmental experts say such fears are justified, others call them a severe overreaction.
The story is solid, in-depth reporting into the issue and is worth a read.
This week, I got a close-up and personal view of what it means to "clean up" a public school.
Not from my house in Mid-City is Morris F.X. Jeff Elementary School. Housed in a beautiful three-story building, the school was named for the long-time director of the New Orleans Human Services Department Morris Francis Xavier Jeff, who passed away in 2003.
It's a mercy that Jeff didn't live to see what happened to his namesake school during and after Katrina. Used as a makeshift shelter when the floodwaters rose, it was occupied for days by scores of people with no water, power or plumbing. After the city was evacuated, the school stood empty, with little maintainence, for a year and a half.
This week, however, crews came in with heavy equipment and began their "cleanup." Equipment, furniture, books, computers, even things on the unflooded second and third floors, was tossed. Neighbors describe watching perfectly good computers flying from the third-floor windows to crash on the ground.
There's little or nothing that can be done about this. Federal and state officials, whether fearing lawsuits over mold-tainted books and equipment or because of less meritorious motives, are taking a hard line. Everything in the flooded schools must be considered "storm debris" and thrown away.
Down the street, neighbors watch the crews destroying badly needed books, supplies and equipment and shake their heads. Said one, "You know somebody could have used it." The breeze, thick with dust, carries stray papers, a list of soups from the cafeteria, an attendence report from a 1994 first-grade class.
Just another day in our fair town.