• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

First Public School Reopens in New Orleans

Posted on: Thursday, 22 December 2005, 21:00 CST

By KEVIN McGILL

First public school reopens in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS Ronald Colemans elation was outstripped only by his lingering frustration: After two years of trying, he was at last delivering his children Monday to one of New Orleans best public schools thanks in large part to a catastrophe.

It took Hurricane Katrina to get my children in a good public school in Orleans Parish, Coleman said as he and his wife, Germaine, escorted their son and daughter into Benjamin Franklin Elementary, the first New Orleans public school to open since Katrina blasted the city Aug. 29.

Welcome signs hung over the door and in the hallways as students began trickling in, escorted by parents and running a gantlet of television crews, photographers and reporters that lined the sidewalk leading into the three-story brick school building.

For the students, the day opened with a breakfast of granola bars, canned peaches and fruit juice in the schools cafeteria, where Sabina Puri, a teacher in the schools gifted program, had a tearful reunion with first-grader Michael Bankston. She had taught him in kindergarten last year (he was reading at third-grade level), and she had not heard from since his family evacuated.

He started crying and I started crying, Puri said, wiping away a tear as she sat next to Michael.

Franklins opening was both a hopeful sign for the citys recovery and a portent of a difficult road ahead in repopulating the city.

The building has a capacity of 550, but only 210 students were pre-registered and approximately 120 showed up.

State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member Leslie Jacobs of New Orleans said many parents likely have their children enrolled in other public or private systems and will return in January.

Still, where public school enrollment pre-Katrina was estimated at close to 60,000, only about 4,000 to 5,000 are expected back in the current school year as public schools sputter back to life around the city.

One impediment to returning cited by teachers and parents is the continuing housing shortage. Puri and second-grade teacher Ava Price were left homeless after Katrina. Puri was staying with friends while her husband and children remain in Texas. Price was staying with an aunt.

Tony Collins, who hopes to rehabilitate his once-flooded home in eastern New Orleans, has been unable to get a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer. He said he commutes each day from north Baton Rouge, a trip of about 90 miles to work on his house. The routine now will include dropping off his son James, a fifth- grader, at Franklin Elementary.

The main thing is, the kids want to be home, Collins said.

Franklin is among about a dozen schools still under control of the Orleans Parish School Board. Most others were taken over by the state during a special legislative session that ended last week.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco proposed the takeover, saying the closure of the schools by the storms gave Louisiana a rare opportunity to essentially rebuild the schools from scratch. Lawmakers readily voted for the plan, venting years of frustration with constant political infighting on the board and mismanagement, waste and corruption at the front office.

Coleman shared their frustration. Most public schools in New Orleans were so bad that he refused to let his son and daughter attend. They went to private schools while he tried for two years to get them enrolled in Franklin, which until now had operated as a magnet school with selective enrollment.

But what happened? he asked the children, Gerron, 7, and Gobrielle, 8, as he talked to reporters Monday morning.

They didnt call us, the children said in unison, echoing their fathers frustration.

They wouldnt even answer the phone, Coleman added.

But magnet schools are no more in New Orleans, at least for the time being. Franklin and Eleanor McMain, which opens Jan. 9, will be open to anyone in the city who wants to attend. That gave Coleman and his wife, Germaine, the opportunity they needed. Just over a week ago they returned from Atlanta, where they had evacuated, and easily enrolled their son and daughter in Franklin.

It was a dream come true, he said.

At least 10 public schools are expected to open in the coming weeks. The School Board will control two of them, Franklin and McMain.

Five other public schools are slated to open as independent charter schools an arrangement the School Board reluctantly agreed to in order to take advantage of federal funding. Also, three other schools that were taken over by the state in 2004 and 2005 will reopen.

Source: Advocate; Baton Rouge, La.

More News in this Category