Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > June > 01 > Entry
The Big (Not So) Easy
I’m in New Orleans today for the Education Writers Association national conference. On Saturday, I’m on a panel with Patti Ghezzi, Get Schooled blogger for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Alexander Russo, who writes a blog called This Week in Education. We’re going to be talking about education blogging and its role in education reporting.
This afternoon, I get to tour New Orleans schools, which were devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Only 16 of 126 schools in the city remain useable and thousands of kids here are relocated to other cities and states (even some in the Dayton area).
But on the other hand, New Orleans was long known as one of the nation’s most dysfunctional and worst performing school districts. So now months after the storm, as the school district seeks to rise from the ashes, some view it as a one-time opportunity to remake the district into something better. (Read more about this issue at PBS’ Merrow Report by education journalist John Merrow, who is here for the conference.
My early impressions of New Orleans four years after I was last here and nine months after the storm? Well …
the airport — an epicenter of death, despair and destruction after Katrina — is surprisingly clean and functional. But there is a constant hint of cleaning fluid in the air and the floors appear buffed from heavy-duty scrubbing but streaks of old grime are faintly evident.
An incredible number of houses still sport blue tarps where roofs were torn away, and the closer you are to the city’s core the more piles of debris appear on streetcorners. The Superdome carries a huge banner proclaiming “Opens in September — Go Saints!” even as worker hammer away at its gaping scars.
Even my hotel, on the edge of the relatively undamaged French Quarter, is still undergoing flood-induced renovation.
But the people who are here seem as lively as ever. About two minutes after I dropped my bags in my room, a parade passed under my third-story window at 10 a.m. — bright colors and waving feathers bobbed down the sunny street.
More on the schools later.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Urban School Issues
Comments
By Mary
June 1, 2006 6:21 PM | Link to this
The catastrophe in New Orleans shows education and other systems should think outside the box. The education system should not be confined to traditional school buildings, and should be more mobile and flexible. What if more communities were hit with other types of really bad catastrophes such as a pandemic, really bad energy crunch, etc and children needed to be educated at home through well designed curriculum packets or online. If we developed the infrastructure for these types of flexible options and choices now, we might be better equipped to handle catastrophies and other unforeseen circumstances later. The added benefit - families and students would have more options even without catastrophes.