People have asked what happened to those who were living, working, and trying to deal with high-stakes testing in New Orleans.

Our wonderful home took on 10-12 feet of water. My two kids and I fled to Kentwood, Louisiana (up in northern Louisiana). My husband stayed behind. He spent ten days in New Orleans, post-Katrina. He was transported to Tullahoma, Tennessee. Meanwhile, the kids and I flew out to Pleasanton, California, where my son, Kelly Mark Jones, resides. (I have two sons from a previous marriage). The main thing was, we all lived.

Like most of the people in our New Orleans community, we were middle class homeowners. Like many people, we’ve been outraged by the stereotypes of our communities.

We’ve been here in California about six weeks now. We are living in a two-bedroom apartment donated by an anonymous donor. The children are enrolled in two of the better schools in northern California: Jordan, 12, attends Pleasanton Middle School and Amandi, 15, attends Amador Valley High School. They do have a mandatory graduation exit exam here. Of course, you know I’m opposed to that.

It seems like things are the same all over. Californian Governor Arnold Swartzenegger is trying to censor and/or bust the teachers’ unions for buying airtime and telling the truth about his sorry education reform record. He borrowed $2 billion from the education fund and never repaid it. Now he has a referendum to stop the unions from using dues for paid advertisements to combat bad education policies. He also wants to strip teachers of tenure.

My husband, Raymond Rock, left yesterday to return to New Orleans to assess property damage and to find work. We’re both unemployed, technically homeless, and he is without transportation. On Monday, I bought a hooptie. It runs and I’m thankful. God has truly blessed us, so we’re not worried about a thing. I plan to remain here in Pleasanton, California, until the children finish high school.

Meanwhile, we celebrate a small victory in Parents for Educational Justice’s fight against Louisiana’s high stakes testing program. The Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, in an attempt to hold on to federal dollars, suspended the state’s high stakes testing policy for one year. But guess what? There are some districts that have voluntarily continued this dumb policy, in spite of the fact that 25,000 students dropped out, statewide, last year. Just as you noted from Chicago five years ago, high-stakes testing forces poorer kids out of high school. It’s even worse now that “No Child Left Behind” is forcing the same patterns everywhere that we once only saw in isolated places like Chicago, Texas, and Louisiana.

Also, the privatization and charter school buzzards are circling the half-dead carcass of the Orleans Parish School District.

Right before Katrina, the state BESE and state superintendent Cecil Picard did some hard arm-twisting and forced our school board to hire Alvarez and Marsal to handle our district’s $400 million+ budget. Then I heard that at least two CWAS schools (citywide access schools/magnet schools, similar to Chicago’s Whitney Young Magnet High School) were granted permission to become charter schools.

Now there is a proposal to make the 13 schools on the west bank of New Orleans charter schools. These schools are in areas that were not flooded. Approximately 80 of the district’s 120 schools have some type of damage. However, Katrina is the perfect cover for the privatization conspirators to swoop in and wipe out all vestiges of a public school system in New Orleans.

Furthermore, the board, in the absence of the populace, is trying to fire Superintendent Ora Watson, an opponent of charter schools. They want to appoint Roberti (Alvarez and Marsal project director) to the superindent’s position. They’ve been sued over the lack of public input. I’m still watching Board activities and education activities from where I am now.

Tell everyone I said hello. I don’t know when my forced exile will end. Please keep my family in your prayers.

Yours in the Struggle for Educational Justice,
CC Campbell-Rock
3767 Vineyard Avenue
Pleasanton, California 94566
(925) 218-6965; (504) 432-4243 (cell))

Alderman’s Senn Park plans continue attack on Senn H.S.
October 24, 2005

Substance:

The Board of Education’s Sean Murphy talks about “danger” in the Senn High School parking lot. Let’s talk about he real danger at Senn.

Once again the Senn High School community is being silenced as to what is best for Senn High School as plans are being finalized for a $1.5 million “makeover” of the western portion of the Senn High School campus.

Last fall Alderman Mary Ann Smith — along with the support of Arne Duncan and Mayor Daley — refused to allow an honest community process regarding the opening of naval academy in Senn High School. The Senn Local School Council voted unanimously at that time to oppose the naval academy as did over a thousands others in the community including teachers, the principal, students, parents and community residents. None of this mattered as the decision for the naval academy was a done deal before the pretense was even given by Daley, Duncan, and Smith to include a community process.

One year later, the Rickover Naval Academy has taken over the northwest of corner of Senn H.S. and Mary Ann Smith continues to move ahead with plans for expensive further change without true community process. Smith’s plan includes ripping up a perfectly good park campus — including basketball and tennis courts, a track and baseball field and easily accessible parking for teachers and staff — in order to “green up the space” and, according to CPS Chief Operating Officer Sean Murphy, “make the entrance to the current the parking lot less dangerous.” Yes, there is danger, but Smith, Murphy and and their supporters have miscalculated what the danger really is.

What is dangerous, is not including the Senn principal in the original plans that directly affect his staff and students. What is dangerous is not respecting the October 2005 Senn Local School Council unanimous vote to oppose Mary Ann Smith’s plan. What is dangerous is spending $1.5 million dollars to revamp a perfectly good park campus when Senn students and staff are lacking resources. What is dangerous is throwing away $1.5 million dollars on “greening up a space” when many families in the Edgewater community no longer have space to live due to the lack of affordable housing. What is dangerous is letting the Rickover Naval Academy slide into Senn High School under the guise of “educational alternatives” while Chicago has the most militarized school system in the nation allowing quick and cheap access for military recruitment.

Smith’s refusal to allow the community to speak continues. Hundreds in the community have spoken out against wasting the $1.5 million dollars. And though our voices continue to be pushed to the back of the closet where there seemingly is no light, we will continue to shed light on these injustices. We will not be silenced.

Chris Inserra
Friends of Senn, Chicago
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It’s the tests
October 8, 2005

Hola Substance:

Thank you for your interest in my poem. You may use it. Here is a copy of the poem. I edited the errors.

Joe Navarro
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IT’S THE TESTS

I tried, but it did not matter.
I told them to line up straight.
Think alike and do as I say, but
they did not think this was so great.

Sometimes they thought about things,
you know, things in the universe.
I told them not to think just listen
And things just got worse.

Look and listen and learn, I would say.
I commanded them to comply.
They had other ideas, like free will,
open inquiry and asking why?

It’s the test, I would say,
you must get ready for the test.
Think of nothing else,
do only better than best.

I rewarded them, punished them,
and wrote their names on the board.

But they grimaced, snarled and
sometimes yawned and acted bored.
I told them, no imagination, no
revelations, only do as I say.

It was an intense battle we waged
month after month, day after day.
I drummed the information into them
as their eyes rolled back and they drooled.

I repeated drill after laborious drill,
I thought I had them ruled.
Some thought with their eyes, some with
their hands, and some with their fingers.

They needed more than my voice and books
to ensure that knowledge lingers.
They wanted silky crescent moons
with silver dancers in the sky.

They wanted wild rivers and cool breezes
And hills that run a mile high.
All the repetition and treadmill learning
Is not-at-all inspiring or fun.

What? A fun standard?
I can’t think of one.
Oh, and how dare the children be different?
Not one, not one is the same,

they all progress unevenly, unequally
as if it were a game.
Those foolish children, how dare they
not meet the criteria for their age?

Don’t they know? Don’t they understand
this standards war we must wage?
Why do they resist? Why don’t they conform?
These rigid standards are what best, you know?

Line up their little brains, straight and neatly
like little desks, all in a row.
No time for experiencing things.
No touching, no feeling, no poems or songs.

No families, no cultures, no distinctions,
no joy or pain, or rights or wrongs.
Only memorization of disconnected facts.
Only the drudgery of again and again,

simply repeat the repetition, not once
or twice, try ten.
I push and push, they pull and pull.
I don’t have time for this.

Get ready for the test, I say,
they just snarl and hiss.
Who cares if butterflies are
interesting and if art is fun.

Fun is not in the standards
so just test - prep until we are done.
It’s the standards and tests,
nothing else matters, you know.

Nothing else is important, so
everything else must go.
Meaningless, useless, purposeless nonsense
is what we need today.

I hope the kids get the message.
From this point, they better not stray.

(Joe Navarro, Copyright 2005)

Reilly not‘independent’ pension candidate
October 25, 2005

Dear Substance:

In Lotty Blumenthal’s article “Knazze speech highlights RTAC” (Special Mid-October Pension edition of Substance, Page One), retiree pension trustee candidate Mary Sharon Reilly is in effect endorsed by your staff writer, Blumenthal, who calls her an “independent” who is not endorsed by any group.

In fact, Reilly was endorsed by the United Progressive Caucus (UPC) leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union. Blumenthal mentions no other retiree candidates in her article, not even the ones endorsed by the Retired Teachers Association of Chicago (RTAC), at the very same RTAC meeting (held September 29, 2005) that she purports to be covering.

This is a standard trick used by the UPC when they send out their expensive mailings promoting their candidates. They never mention the names of the candidates they do not support. Mary Sharon Reilly should not have been called an independent by your reporter, and your reporter should have reported that RTAC endorsed James Ward, Vaughn Barber, and Walter Pilditch for retiree pension trustee in the October 28 pension fund election.

Norine Gutekanst
Delegate, Inter-American Magnet School
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[Editor’s Note: In general, as readers know, we don’t comment on Substance letters. The letter above is unusual for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is the letter writer’s desire to ensure that every report he makes is factual.

September and early October were an interesting time on line at Substance, the first time that we were beset with “mail” from what appear to be right-wing bloggers and their spammers. The e-mail we received claiming that Substance had “lied” by publishing Resnikoff’s report on the Medved show was signed by “C. Spear” was answered, as we try to answer all e-mail. As is our custom, we informed the “writer” of that e-mail that we only publish letters that are signed and from our regular readers. Like most newspapers at this time, we also ask for a telephone number so we can check on the existence of a writer.

A check of our mailing list showed people named “Spears” but no “Spear or “C. Spear.” Although “C. Spear” wrote to us in mid-September and we answered immediately, we have not heard back from it. (I use “it” here consciously because for all we know, the letter from “C. Spear” could be robotically generated.

During the past couple of months, we have found ourselves beset with anonymous and pseudononymous e-mail from what seem to be organized groups of right-wing bloggers, coordinated from places we haven’t generally bothered to investigate because that’s generally a waste of time. (In one case, we did hunt backwards through a trail in cyberspace and found a nest of blogs, each of which is supposedly run by a young, rather attractive minority group person — and all of the talking points of which read like tracts from The Heritage Foundation. We stopped there, being quite busy.)

After our editor published a scathing critique of the response of President Bush to the early days after Hurricane Katrina (still available on our website), we received dozens of irate Emails, all making one or two of the same points over and over. Not one responded when we asked for more information about the “writer.”

We suspect that “C. Spear” is similarly an anonymous right winger, or something even more exotic.

What was of value to our readers is that “C. Spear” provoked Mr. Resnikoff to investigate his information further and exposed the shocking abuse of data on veterans’ unemployment rates that has been done by the Bush administration. That’s a much longer story for another time.

As more and more Chicago veterans of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan return home, we are noticing that many of them suffer the same post-traumatic stress problems that we knew among combat veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The stress of combat and the post-traumatic stress that follows a return to “normal” life is what creates the problems — and the unemployment. A “Vietnam era veteran” who served at a stateside base or in, say, Germany during the Cold War has quite a different reality in his or her mind from a grunt who humped a ruck in I-Corps, the Mekong Delta, or the Central Highlands.

Most people who serve in the military, even during time of war, do not experience combat — let alone prolonged periods of intense combat in the “thin red line” of death. As a result, any blurring of the official data by aggregating combat veterans with “veterans” who were, in effect, REMFs obscures the specific impact of combat and the violence of war on those who are the most engaged in it — the front line warriors themselves.

In our own experience among the members of the Substance staff, we also want to note one tragic way in which the long-term unemployment numbers (based on percentages, remember) among “veterans” are changed to reflect more favorably over time. Suicide.

The most traumatized veterans of every war we have studied (most intimately, Vietnam) often kill themselves, either directly (by walking off buildings, driving at high speed into concrete walls, or by eating a pistol) or indirectly (substance and other problems that ruin health and result in “premature” death). Hence, long-term data show improved employment rates among “veterans” because the most vulnerable combat veterans (suffering from post-traumatic stress problems) are dead before they reach the age of 35 or 40. This eliminates from the long-term sample those people who are most likely to “score” “low” and hence raises the percentage employed. (Note that this statistical mumbo jumbo is similar to how a school can raise its test scores by getting rid of the kids who will score “low” without solving the problem, but that’s another story for another time).

We hope that our readers will thank Mr. Resnikoff for taking the time to learn more of the truth and share it with others. As to “C. Spear”? It’s now been more than a month since we were spammed by “C. Spear” and his cohorts. At each point when we asked for a telephone number, we didn’t hear back from our critic.

We hope our readers will let us know of other experiences with right wing “writers” who are cluttering cyberspace with their rants. The example of “C. Spear” is one of the reasons Substance adheres to our present “Letters” policy. We publish letters from our readers provided that we can verify the existence of the letter writer and the authenticity of the letter.]

Letter to CPS Official

September 25, 2005
Mr. Greg Darnieder
Director, Office of High School Programs
Department of Postsecondary Education
125 S. Clark Street, 12th Floor

Chicago, Illinois 60603

Dear Mr. Darnieder,

Thank you for your letter of September 14 informing me that the www.military.com link has been removed from the CPS web site. I am pleased that you continue to ensure that inappropriate links are not added to the CPS/Postsecondary web site.

Your comment that “the link to violent military games was a sub-link within this [www.military.com] site” puzzles me. I am not sure if you were subtlety trying to excuse its presence. But that could not be, because any of the resources you wanted Chicagoans to find off the www.military.com link would have also been sub-links. Moreover, you agreed with me to take the www.military.com link off your site. Therefore, I am unclear why you raised that point.

But since you raised it, I draw your attention to the problem that still exists. Let me raise a not unrealistic scenario. A parent asks her 15 year old to explore the CPS/Postsecondary web site for resources and funds for college. Walk with me through the following steps:

1. After going to the CPS/Postsecondary Resources site, the young student clicks on the first resource under your military list: www.navy.com. 1

2. Immediately, the student is faced with a flashing banner that says $150,000 for college–surely a tempting sub-link—and clicks the banner.

3. After reading the page entitled, “Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC),“ the student sees a new link: “Questions? Get answers. Visit the Navy Message Board” and clicks that link.

4. One then sees a long list of questions, so this student clicks Search Forum and given the options, types in “college funds” for search terms and clicks education in the Category or Forum box. Although the initial question is about spouses, this student sees at the bottom of the page: “For more information about these programs, visit: http://www.military.com /Resources/Resources Content/ 0,13964,43481—1,00.html#USN” and clicks it.

5. As the student explores this page, she sees that it is part of the www.military.com web site that you have just removed from the CPS web site. Out of curiosity, she finds it is only one click away to the www.military.com home page and its advertisements for video games and opportunities for free downloads of some of those games. And before she knows it, she is exploring all those video games that you agreed with me did not belong on the CPS web site. Her parent, meanwhile, thinks she just looking for college funds and resources.

Given your enigmatic comment about sub-links, you may be saying that www.navy.com does not suffer the same egregiousness of www.military.com as it may be the sub-link of a sub-link. I disagree and urge you to continue to “make sure that inappropriate links are not added” and eliminate www.navy.com from your web page.2

As I discussed in my previous letter, it is also most interesting that the Armed Services place a banner ad at the end of many of the game reviews that I looked at, encouraging the students excited about the violence of the games to obtain funds for college by enlisting in one of the Armed Services. Thus, the bigger problem is that the CPS has chosen to partner with an organization that expends recruiting funds to attract those who are attracted to these violent video games. The more critical problem is that we give our children such mixed messages. Guns are bad–they are not allowed in school. Violence is bad–we expel those who turn to it in our schools. But then CPS partners with an organization that sees a cost-benefit in recruiting our youth who peruse these violent video game reviews and perhaps download and play them at home. Don’t do this at school, but seek college funds from the organization that these video games emulate.

Go to the CPS web site to explore postsecondary funding resources and one’s child ends up reading about how to impress friends with the firepower of a video game.3 Or your child downloads and plays violent video games while you, the parent, thought she was just going to a safe CPS web site.

Sub-link or not, you send such a contradictory and false message to our students and parents. I urge you to take the www.navy.com link off your web page. I also urge you to work with others to eliminate this partnership with the Navy that has led to imposition of the Rickover Naval Academy at Senn High School.

Thank you for your attention to this request.

Very truly yours,
Craig B. Mousin
cc: Dr. Donald R. Pitman, Arne Duncan, Mayor Richard Daley, U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky, Ald. Mary Ann Smith, State Rep. Harry Osterman, Board President Michael Scott, Board Members, Friends of Senn.

1 All the sites visited in this letter were last visited on September 25, 2005.

2. I find it especially sad and ironic that among the games that www.military.com reviews in its archives is “Silent Hunter III” which allows you to command a German U-Boat and sink ships of the enemy, i.e. ships of the United States and British Navies. The review states, in part, “Silent Hunter III puts you in command of a German U-boat, which was one of the most destructive devices Germany had in the early stages of World War II. U-boats created havoc among British as well as American ships.... The 3D rendering and animation also make for a very realistic experience....Destruction of a ship by your torpedo or a deck gun accurately depicts damage and sinking of a ship.” John C. Miner, Military.com Reviewer, GAME REVIEW Silent Hunter III, (http:// www.military.com /Shock/0,,SA_GameReview_ 050405,00.html), (last viewed on September 25, 2005.) Through these steps, the CPS web site link to www.navy.com sends one to a link for video games where children sink ships of the United States Navy.

3. See for example the review of America’s Army 2.0, which notes that this free game is given to students by recruiters to encourage them to join Army: “Maybe Top Gun types will disagree, but chicks dig the firepower, man. Light up your favorite Lady’s face with your SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) and she will definitely be impressed. I could play this game forever, except for the whole “real world” stuff like family, and a job! This is version 2.0 of America’s Army, a gift from your local recruiter if you dare, or downloadable for free.... This game rocks from start to finish.” Greg Thomas, GAME REVIEW America’s Army 2.0 Special Forces, http://www.military. com/Shock/0,,SA_ GameReview_040129,00.html, (last reviewed September 25, 2005).

Open Letter to the Labor Movement
October 22, 2005

Substance:

I thought your readers might also find this interesting. We have been involved in a major struggle here in New York City, as you know. The following appears also in Monthly Review. http:// mrzine.monthly review.org/ katrina 201005.

Sean Ahern,
Public School Teacher,
Brooklyn New York
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An Open Letter to the Labor Movement regarding Hurricane Katrina

Brothers and Sisters,

The crisis for the working class (whether employed or not, waged or not) continues to grow. Even as the nation, and especially the poor and Black working class of the Gulf states and New Orleans in particular, tries to pick up the pieces after Katrina’s (and Rita’s) devastation, the assault by capital and their partners in the government grows more intense — the suspension of Davis Bacon and OHSA safeguards, plans to defund the safety net to finance business interests in the reconstruction of the region, little thought to how those left behind will find a home in the reconstruction process and its outcome. The Democrats have failed to articulate a credible alternative to this plan or address this crisis in any significant way.

It is also true that the flip side of disaster is opportunity. For the trade unions the moment presents a unique opportunity, not open since the sit-downs of the 1930s, to bring dignity, voice, a living wage and benefits in the form of unions to the masses left behind in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, particularly the poor and African Americans. It is a well-established fact that Blacks are the most pro-union force in the U.S. They have proven time and time again to be this country’s most dedicated fighters of oppression. But the trade union movement may not be able to take advantage of this opportunity unless it addresses issues not yet confronted in any meaningful way by the debate and programs of the two new federations.

Now these issues have surfaced in the wake of Katrina, specifically in a piece by ACORN and SEIU leader Wade Rathke entitled “Chalabi and Katrina” (www.ChiefOrganizer.org, 3 October 2005) that disparages an organization, Community Labor United, and one of its principal organizers, Curtis Muhammad, with deep roots in the voter registration drives in Mississippi, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and for the last 20 years a part of the New Orleans community.

Days after the hurricane and while struggling with their own displacement, CLU folks began to pull together what has become the People’s Hurricane and Relief Fund. Since then they have held two national meetings, the first on September 10th with participation from 49 different organizations, and the second, September 30th-October 1st, with more than 100 participants from prisoners’ and women’s rights groups, predominantly black cultural, faith-based, and educational groups, non-union worker organizations, community groups, legal scholars, and the ACLU. A Coordinating Committee, representing the breadth and community organizations throughout the Gulf Region as well as CLU’s own base, was chosen by the survivors, and working subcommittees and 6 regional communications centers (organizing offices) have been established. There has been widespread support for the PHRF both nationally and internationally. (For more, see the PHRF website: www.communitylaborunited.net.)

With this background we want to examine the issues raised by “Chalabi and Katrina”:

1. Confront racism within our movement. White leaders, even those whose membership base is predominantly Black and Latino, should be careful about making pronouncements about who is genuine and who has the requisite skills. Confronting racism means understanding that our culture and economic and political system is build on racialized capital and we operate within that context. Diversity should not be confused with power. If we are serious about bringing unions to the south (all those red states and their right-to-work laws), then we need to cede power to those very folks we seek to organize. The job of unions is to help give these forces additional information and resources they might not currently have so that they can chart their own future.

2. This movement must be built democratically from the bottom up, engaging the base to develop tactics and strategies that speak to their constituencies’ own needs, culture, and history. The grassroots must control their own organization and movement. Remarks that belittle the work of grassroots activists of many years standing, organizing on a model based on experience among working-class and poor Blacks of the south that does not fit the union template, have no place in the labor movement. We have too much to learn from each other.

3. Fund and collaborate, and be prepared to take leadership from indigenous Black (and Latino, Asian, and Native American) forces on the ground. Many of these forces prior to the hurricane were not organized in ways that the unions are. They do not have a large paid staff, or offices with all the trappings. But that does not mean that organizations like CLU are “little bitty” or insignificant or cannot “handle money” or could not “organize a two car funeral” (as Rathke puts it in “Chalabi and Katrina”). This disrespect fails to acknowledge, on one hand, that the base of the labor movement (and with it dues dollars) and that of the CLU are the same, and on the other hand, the severe obstacles, principally racism and the legacy of slavery, that on-the-ground folks face in the south. Networking and informal ties have protected and nourished their organizing long after efforts like Operation Dixie or the Civil Rights Movement have moved on or declared victory. Organizations like

CLU demand our respect and support.

4. Build a united front against the enemies of working people, employed or the unemployed poor. Our task is so huge that we can not afford to undercut each other with name-calling, patronizing statements, and inappropriate remarks. We must air differences in a principled way. Many of us work with ACORN in our cities and are on good terms with many organizers from that group. We cannot believe that such a provocative and destructive letter was circulated by Rathke to other ACORN leaders or reflects their views. We hope that people of good will in ACORN will give some signals to disassociate themselves from this divisive and chauvinist tactic. None of us has discovered the sure-fire way to organize or build a movement. Let’s not give our enemies more fire power than they already possess. The Cold War era purges of the labor movement should have taught us that.

We exist at what one might describe as a “Katrina moment.” It is a moment of both reflection and action. It is a moment to better understand and unpack the issues of race and class that have become so obvious through this disaster. It is also a moment to challenge the prevailing neo-liberal economic theories that were partially to blame for the scope of the disaster and seem to be central to the discussion of the nature of reconstruction. It is also a moment for a mass response to the disaster, which means that this is not the time for any one organization to hold itself up as the central core or the provider of franchises. To put it in other terms, this may be a moment to lay the foundations for a rebirth of a labor movement that is in synch with other social forces that share our opposition to the steady slide toward barbarism.

In solidarity,

(In alphabetical order)
Ajamu Baraka, Executive Director, US Human Rights Network
Gene Bruskin, co-convener of USLAW*
Kathy Engel, founding Executive Director MADRE, cultural and communications worker
Ray Eurquhart, retired UE 150 volunteer organizer
Bill Fletcher, Jr., President, TransAfrica Forum
Badili Jones, member, SEIU Local 1985
Elly Leary, Vice President and Chief Negotiator, UAW 2324 (retired)
Eric Mann, veteran of CORE, SDS, and UAW
Marsha Steinberg, Field Representative/Organizer SEIU Local 660
Makani Themba-Nixon, Executive Director, The Praxis Project
Jerry Tucker, former member, International Executive Board, UAW
Steve Williams, Executive Director, People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER)

* for identification purposes only

Teachers in tears as they discuss Katrina

Federal education officials visit south Mobile County (Friday, October 14, 2005, By RENA HAVNER, Staff Reporter, Mobile Register, Mobile Alabama)

BAYOU LA BATRE — U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Henry Johnson said he was “a little surprised” by the show of emotion by Mobile County teachers and principals during a tearful meeting Thursday about the long-term effects of Hurricane Katrina. Teachers cried and passed tissues to one another as they spoke and listened to their colleagues talk about students who have lost everything.

“I was a little surprised — though I shouldn’t have been — at the emotion in the building,” said Johnson, one of 10 federal officials and national trauma experts hosting a discussion with about 70 local educators Thursday in the auditorium at Alma Bryant High School. One Bayou La Batre teacher whose house and family business are gone didn’t mention her own troubles as she read a paper written by a student, bringing herself and others to tears: “The hurricane took more than our homes. The hurricane took our hope, and it took our pride,” she read. “All it left was our names.”

Federal officials accompanying Johnson reminded the teachers to take care of themselves as well as their students, telling them that they, too, are victims of the hurricane.

The officials, representing various education and health agencies, offered to provide counseling and other services for the teachers.

“Our kids didn’t have food. They didn’t have clothes. I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Alma Bryant Assistant Principal Michelle Brooks. “You wonder what you can do. You can’t take them all home with you. You worry about them realizing, ‘I was poor before this, and now I have even less.’”

Johnson, a former state superintendent in Mississippi, said he’ll take some of the teachers’ tales back with him to Washington, D.C. Mobile County is in a unique situation, he said. The county received substantial damage due to Katrina, yet the schools within two weeks welcomed 900 new students from Louisiana and Mississippi.

After meeting with the teachers, Johnson said the school system should receive the proposed $7,500 for each of those displaced students as has been proposed in Congress.

And he agreed with Mobile County schools Superintendent Harold Dodge that the system should also receive that amount for each of its 600 local students who have become displaced themselves.

That would mean about $11.25 million for Mobile County schools. Dodge said he could use that to hire teachers and buy textbooks.

There has been some debate over whether Mobile County should receive compensation for its own displaced students, some of whom are living in tents and trailers on their property or with friends and family. Some have moved to other parts of the county, enrolling in different schools.

State schools Superintendent Joe Morton, in a letter to Alabama’s congressional delegation, has requested $111 million statewide, including money for 5,400 displaced students from Louisiana and Mississippi and up to 1,200 from Mobile County. The letter asks for money to repair damaged buildings, provide additional bus transportation and replace cafeteria food lost in widespread power outages.

Dubbed a “teachers’ roundtable,” Thursday’s three-hour discussion included federal officials and other national experts who have helped schools recover from natural disasters as well as school shootings and other events. The group was in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday and plans to go to Houston soon for similar discussions.

Johnson said Mobile County school officials, who sent social workers to affected students’ homes after the hurricane and took in massive amounts of donations, “pretty much have your act together.” He said schools suffering from tragedies in the future can learn from Mobile. Several Mobile County teachers said that they have cleared the first step toward Hurricane Katrina recovery. They have passed out donated school uniforms and supplies and have allowed students to talk and write about their hurricane experiences.

Now, their focus is turning toward how the children will feel months and a year down the road. Several said they’re concerned in particular about Christmas, when many students won’t be getting any presents and the reality that they really have lost everything may sink in.

Charlotte DeMouy, a counselor at Alba Elementary School in Bayou La Batre, said the fact that she suffered much damage to her own home has helped her relate to her students.

“I tell them, ‘I’m just like you. We’re going through this together,’” she said. “‘You’re not dead. You’re not in a wheelchair. Your mama and daddy are OK. We’ll get through this.’”