Standing firmly amid the Lower Ninth Ward’s abandoned lots, vacant homes and shuddered buildings, lies an oasis of hope for a community still largely in exile.
At the corner of Caffin and North Claiborne Streets, sits the newly renovated Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology, the first school in the Lower Ninth Ward to reopen.
According to recent reports, less than 60 percent of the Lower Ninth’s pre-Katrina population has returned to the neighborhood. However, 70 percent of King’s students and 90 percent of the staff have returned.
Before Hurricane Katrina’s flood waters swept through Martin Luther King Jr. School and its adjacent library in the New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward, every student had a library card, and so did most of their parents, says Principal Doris Hicks.
“They were reading. That’s something we have always emphasized here,” Hicks told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “Our goal has always been to show the world that children of color from the Lower 9th Ward can achieve and succeed,” she said.
Two years after the Aug. 29, 2005 storm, the school is open once again, with a spruced-up name, brightly painted columns and shiny floors. King students, parents and teachers recently celebrated the school’s fresh, new facilities and brand new equipment, a stark contrast from the 10 feet of water that engulfed the school two years before.
With the help of some public and private funding, the library also has been restored, but its book shelves remain mostly empty. The BlackAmericaWeb.com Relief Fund has stepped in to help raise money to stock the shelves for the children and the community. Over $35,000 has been donated to the fund from private individuals and companies like Anheiser-Busch and Allstate, with an additional $15,000 pledged. Moreover, Hooked on Phonics is donating educational products and materials to the school worth over $25,000.
Today, "The Tom Joyner Morning Show" will pump up the fundraising campaign with a live broadcast from the school's campus on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s assault on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
After the storm, rumors of the Lower Ninth Ward becoming an area green space surfaced. But Hicks turned a death ear to the unwarranted rumors.
“There was never any doubt in my mind that we would be back in our school. Being from the Lower Ninth Ward, we had a lot of resolve, and I knew that we were coming back,” she said.
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In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a zealous and pulsating educational system has emerged. Under the watchful eye of state Superintendent Paul Pastorek and New Orleans’ new superintendent Paul Vallas, local educators seek to remedy the mistakes that spurred decades of underperformance. Longer school days, Saturday sessions and smaller class sizes are among the most popular of post-Katrina efforts.
Since Katrina, a new model of public education has surfaced, said Frank Williams, president of Greater New Orleans Education Foundation, referring to the city’s decentralized school system.
New Orleans’ public and charter schools are governed by two separate entities -- the state-run Recovery School District and the city-run Orleans Parish School Board.
After Katrina, the Recovery District seized all OPSB’s low performing schools and began to revamp them. Last year, the RSD operated 22 schools. This year, the RSD could open 17 more refurbished schools contingent upon enrollment numbers and the pace of renovation.
The new system of schools in New Orleans affords parents more options. Before the storm, students were forced to attend the designated public school in their areas. Even if that school was underperforming. Today, parents can send their child to school of their choice.
“Before the storm we had a school system that didn’t respond to the needs of its kids. Katrina showed that we have to change the paradigm in which we operate. Parents have to put the pressure on elected official and consistently demand high quality education for their kids,” Williams told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
A total of 35 schools are opening this fall throughout New Orleans to serve an estimated 33,000 students, said Siona LaFrance, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Recovery School District.
Some of the schools operate in renovated or restored buildings. Others still are being run out of modular campuses or other temporary facilities.
“Many of the facilities were in bad shape before Katrina,” LaFrance told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “Right now, a master plan is being developed that will address schools in need of an overhaul.”
High on the list of priorities is renovating bathrooms and kitchens. Many of the kitchens at schools damaged by the storm waters can not pass inspection. Satellite kitchens have been established to temporarily serve the schools that do not have kitchens onsite, state school officials say.
The tragedy and recovery of the Martin Luther King Jr. School speaks to the heart of New Orleans, said Hicks, who lost her own home in the Ninth Ward two years ago.
“Water covered the first floor. Everything was damaged,” she said. “Only the large picture of Dr. King on the stage was untouched. When we returned, it was there, as if it were smiling and saying, ‘Job well done. You are home now.’”
Charter schools stand at forefront of public education in New Orleans. There are currently 31 public charters schools; before the storm, there were less than a dozen. These charter schools receive public funds, but operate independently of local school boards.
Adding the charter school component accelerated the reopening of King, officials said. Without it, the school would still be tangled in administrative red tape, waiting to enter their original building. While 45 percent of the city’s schools have been re-opened, many in poverty-stricken areas have not.
“Before the storm, we thought that charters schools were at the demise of public education. We soon found out that charter schools are public schools. They provide the freedom to do what we wanted that was educationally sound, but with accountability,” Hicks said.
With the recent surge in standardized test scores among charter school students, local residents are confident charters schools will raise the bar of academic excellence in the city. School officials, however, argue it is too early to tell.
Prior to Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish was ranked among the lowest-performing urban school districts in the nation. The Orleans Parish School Board was one the board of bankruptcy and many of the city’s school’s were behind decades of repairs. “Import educators” like New York native Benjamin Kleban, who came to New Orleans to make a difference, viewed the storm as an opportunity to do just that.
Katrina displaced more than 7,000 public school employees. Many have returned, although nearly half of the more than 1,000 teachers in the system are recent hires like Kleban.
On the first day of school, Kleban, lined his all his sixth graders outside under the warm sun and performed a uniform check. Their yellow button-down shirts had to be tucked in to their khaki colored pants at all times. Name tags were to be pinned on the right-side of their shirts opposite the school’s name embroidered on the left. All had to wear belts and brown shoes. No exceptions.
As founder and principal of New Orleans College Prep, a new charter school in Central City, New Orleans, Kleban puts emphasis on the little things. “Focusing on the small things like tucked-shirts and clean uniforms and establishing high expectations early is what drives high achievement,” Kleban said.
Gazing into the eyes of his pupils, Kleban said, “This doesn’t feel like your old school, because it’s not your old school. This is a special school. You all are special. Beginning today, we are going to set a new expectation of what is possible.”
Elena Harris, a resident of New Orleans East, watched as Kleban shook the hand of the each student introducing himself personally. She bubbled with excitement at the thought of new possibilities.
“This school is a wonderful opportunity for our kids. I love the college prep concept. They have already embedded the kids’ college graduation date, 2018, into their psyches,” said Harris, who drives 20 minutes everyday from her Gentilly residence in New Orleans East to Uptown, New Orleans.
Unlike traditional public schools, students at New Orleans College Prep will have an extended school day. They will assist in curriculum development, attend four-hour Saturday sessions and be required to attend weekly tutoring sessions.
The 2007-2008 school year began at Martin Luther King on Aug. 13 with 560 students enrolled, school officials said. They are prepared to take up to 630.
“We are a charter school, but we do not have selective enrollment. If we have the space, you can attend,” said Steve Martin, director of development for the school. So far about 80 percent of the children enrolled are children who had previously lived in the Lower Ninth Ward. Some may not currently live in the neighborhood because the community still is recovering.
Before the storm, King was one of the higher performing schools in the district. Teachers at King vow to maintain a level of high performance.
“This community fought to get this school back because they knew that we were going to do everything possible to have their children back with us,” said third-grade teacher Breeda Thompson.
Thompson, like many of King’s teachers, was there at the school’s first opening in 1995. Walking swiftly around the tables in class, she asks, “Who can spell vagrant?”
Six students raise their hands.
The school serves children from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The lower grades have a student teacher ratio of 20 to 1, while higher grades averaging about 23 to 1, Martin told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Most of the teachers in the school are familiar faces for the students. About 90 percent of those who worked at the school before Katrina have returned, Martin said.
He commuted for several months, back and forth from Houston to plan for the charter school, along with Hicks who was driving back and forth from Dallas.
“We did our homework. We knew we would be able to return to this building,” said Martin, who was a resource specialist at the school prior to Katrina.
The reopening of Martin Luther King School did not come without protest. Last year, plans were for the school to reopen temporarily at the Charles Colton Middle School. But repairs on that building were delayed and it wasn’t fit to handle students and staff.
An alternate location was established at the former Edgar P. Harney Elementary School for the 2006-2007 school year following protests led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
“They tried to tell us there were obstacles, but we were determined for the students and their teachers to begin school last year as the Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School,” SCLC President Charles Steele told BlackAmericaWeb.com. SCLC, a civil rights organization founded by King and others, provided $10,000 for transportation for children to attend the school, he said.
“At the time, no school had opened to serve the children of the 9th Ward, and we know that the school is vital to that community,” Steele said.
There was a celebration on the first day of school, Hicks said. “I told the kids, 'We’re back in the Ninth Ward; let’s make some noise!'”
Still, that return was bittersweet, she said.
“Some of the children cried. They remembered the water. We lost 30 students and family members in the flood,” said Hicks.
Counselors at the school have helped the children work through their emotions, still, some have moments when they remember, though they are pleased to be back home.
For Hicks, Martin and the staff at Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School, reopening was never a doubt. “It was a struggle, and it still is a struggle, but we knew we would reopen here,” Hicks said. “Some had counted us out. Some reports had projected we could reopen by 2010.
“This community needed the school and the library to reopen as soon as possible,” she said. “I can walk out of the front door and speak to Mrs. Brown, because I know her. This is the village.”
