Displaced Students to Enter Tangipahoa Schools Monday

AMITE – More than 1,000 students displaced by Hurricane Katrina will start school in Tangipahoa Parish on Monday, school officials said Thursday.

The School Board held a special meeting Thursday afternoon where members approved starting school for the students. Students enrolled prior to the hurricane went back to class on Thursday.

Registration for evacuees continued through Thursday and will reopen on Monday.

The new students will be assimilated into the regular schedules of schools, parish school system spokeswoman Cindy Benitez said.

The students will go to schools in the attendance zones in which the students now reside, she said.

Class sizes will be capped at 30 students, but the largest class reported so far under the assimilation plan is 27 students, Benitez said.

Hammond’s four elementary, one junior high and one high school will receive most of the displaced students for a total of 300. Hammond High alone has 99 enrolled so far. The Ponchatoula schools received 251 students, and the Amite schools received 107.

The school system also enrolled 61 students in its pre- kindergarten program, which some school districts in other parishes declined to do because the program is not mandatory.

The only schools that will not have displaced students are the two alternative schools, Benitez said. The school system could place displaced students in those schools, too, if they need to be there.

The two alternative schools educate students who are a year or more behind their peers in school.

The school system planned to send buses to St. Vincent de Paul in Baton Rouge today to pick up uniforms for the evacuated children, Benitez said.

Students will receive the donated uniforms on Monday. Benitez said the school system is looking for volunteers to help the students find uniforms that fit them.

School supplies also have been donated to give to the new students, she said.

Decisions on whether to buy more textbooks will be made later, when the school system learns how many of its new students will stay, she said.

Nearby districts in Jefferson, St. Tammany and Washington parishes are expected to reopen schools soon, and some students may go back home, she said.

Hammond and Ponchatoula high schools will hold registration and orientation for displaced students from 8:30 a.m. to noon. Buses will pick up evacuated students to bring them there, Benitez said.

Anyone interested in volunteering to distribute uniforms is asked to call the School Board central office at (985) 748-7153.