Environment
Katrina-Ravaged Schools Prepare for New Year, Despite Obstacles
(archrecord.construction.com - 08/29/2006)
By Angelle
Bergeron
This fall, the three R’s could
easily represent repopulation, rebuilding, and ‘rithmetic,
as school districts affected by Hurricane Katrina try to provide
an education with fewer intact structures, smaller tax bases,
and an undetermined and traumatized population.
In Mississippi, where 16 schools were completely washed away
in the storm surge and only 14 of 152 school districts didn’t
close, students were back in school by October 2005. Interviewees
attribute the quick rebound to the efforts of Superintendent
Dr. Hank Bounds to loosen up federal dollars for portable
classrooms.
Most students will continue to attend classes in these temporary
structures this year while officials determine where schools
may be built to comply with the new FEMA flood elevation maps,
and how they will be financed. Ironically, the Hurricane Recovery
Act provided funds for restart but not reconstruction, says
Caron Blanton, communications director with the Mississippi
Department of Education.
The event raised $900,000 for the Parrish.
Altruists were dutifully thanked: the evening’s goodie
bags included sculptural chocolates representing the different
volumes of Herzog & de Meuron’s proposed design.
The picture in southern Louisiana is
far more fragmented. In New Orleans’ St. Bernard Parish,
where all housing stock was destroyed and 10 of 22 school
buildings were recommended for demolition, 3,000 students
still are expected to return to school this fall. They will
attend classes in two renovated schools and portable classrooms.
“We were a financially healthy school district, so we
were able to buy our own trailers to get it up and running,”
says Beverly Lawrasen, assistant superintendent. “We’ve
since been reimbursed by FEMA for the trailers, but reconstruction,
which is a 90/10 split, is a different story.”
Between lost sales and property taxes and state funding that’s
based on student population, St. Bernard is having a hard
time coming up with the 10 percent match. To circumvent stipulations
for Hurricane Recovery Act funds, the district is using its
operational money for construction and shifting the federal
dollars into its operation budget. “It would have been
advantageous if a lot of the red tape had been cut for us,”
Lawrasen says.
In Orleans Parish, 56 of the 117 schools managed by the Louisiana
Department of Education will be open. Approximately 12,000
students (down from 65,000) had attended classes last year.
Meg Casper, director of communications, notes, “We’re
planning for 34,000 this fall, [but] the demographers are
telling us we will have much less than that.”
Assessing damage, the order schools should be repaired, and
availability of workers and materials has been more cumbersome
for Orleans Parish than securing funds, Casper explains. “We
are dealing with all the issues that people who are trying
to rebuild their houses face. Costs are higher, and there
is trouble finding materials and workers.”
Schools are being repaired according to the amount of damage
and repopulation trends. “As residents come back and
the city is able to do more planning, hopefully we’ll
be able to make more decisions,” Casper says.
|
