LULING, La. (AP) – Tara Williams’ three young children run shirtless, because most of their clothes were taken away and they stack milk cartons under a blazing sun because their toys have also disappeared. His apartment is barely more than a door hanging from a frame, the roof was obliterated and most of it was lost.
A Ford Fusion is now the family home and, as if Hurricane Ida didn’t take enough, it has also put the boys ’education on hold.
“They’re ready to go in, go to school, get air conditioning,” said Williams, 32, who has 5-year-old twins and a 7-year-old and is more pessimistic than officials about when they might return to class. “As it looks now, it will be next August.”
After a year and a half of pandemic disorders that kicked kids out of schools and took test results, at least 169,000 Louisiana kids are back out of class, their studies derailed the storm. The hurricane followed a rocky reopening in August that caused more COVID-19 infections and classroom closure, and it will now be weeks before some students return again.
“What concern do I have? If you grab a thesaurus, whatever the word for “most concerned,” said Jarod Martin, a school superintendent in the battered parish of Lafourche, southwestern New Orleans. “We were full of optimism and confident. in that we would defeat COVID, confident that we were on a better path. And now we have another setback ”.
Williams worked at McDonald’s until COVID-19 cuts claimed his job. The family got out of the storm in their apartment as it disintegrated around them, and then drove to Florida, where they found a hotel room they could afford only a few days.
The surrounding streets are dotted with gutted trailers, bare roofs and rubble mounds, and every mention in the Federal Emergency Management Agency seems to be preceded by a profane-colored adjective. School would be nice for the boys, Williams says, but right now they don’t even have a house.
A couple of miles away, at the boys ’school, Luling Elementary, crews are clearing fallen trees and the pipes of giant dehumidifying snakes through windows. Shantele Slade, a 42-year-old youth pastor, is one of the people working, but her own children an hour away in Amite are in her head. The pandemic had already taken its toll on her 14-year-old son, who had to go to summer school because he had been left behind while practically learning. Now he worries that he has trouble maintaining algebra after so many days of absence.
“The last two years have been so hard for them,” he said.
Although many children spent most or all of last year in class, some children remained in virtual programs and came to class last month. for the first time since the shutdowns began. The return was not without problems, with almost 7,000 infections of students and teachers reported during the first weeks, which led to quarantines, more stops and more interruptions.
The latest scores from the state standardized tests, published in August, showed a 5% drop in competition among Louisiana students, largely blamed for the interruptions of COVID-19. Younger and poorer children fared worse, as did members of minority groups and those who had English as a second language.
State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley acknowledged that the students “lost a little” and that Ida gave up again. A quarter of a million student schools remained closed Friday, but classes for 81,000 children were due to reopen Monday, according to the education department. Brumley said the rest would probably return in a matter of weeks.
“We need to get these kids back with us as soon as we can,” he said.
But in the most devastated areas, returning to class requires not only repairing schools or creating temporary classrooms, but getting students and staff spread across the country back to Louisiana. This means they must have homes with electricity and running water. Buses must also run and cafes must be provided with food and people to serve them, and so on.
After the storm destroyed their home in Dulac, a stretch of the Cajun country swamp, Penny Verdin’s two children and a caring nephew began wrapping themselves every night in a car, along with a gecko, a hamster and a squirrel named Honey. They hope to use some wood and pond from the house canal to design a new shack where to stay.
The children smile, one hands on the wet grass, another catches a 3-foot gator out of a stream, but Verdin, 43, says he has been shaken by the storm. After a year in which almost the entire family fell ill with COVID-19 and disability checks were suddenly stopped, she is worried that they will be left behind in their studies.
“It will be a great recovery,” he says.
When the pandemic first erupted and students were forced to learn on home screens, some observers warned of a “lost generation” of children falling through the cracks. The opening of the course gave some teachers the first opportunity to fully assess the effects on students, only to force students to leave again.
Lauren Jewett, a 34-year-old special education teacher in New Orleans, said she was just beginning to assess any regression due to the pandemic’s alterations, not to mention the “summer slide” that happens every year. I already had students dealing with family deaths from COVID; it is now listening to its collapsed roofs, flooded houses and dwindling resources.
“We couldn’t cover all the things that were supposed to be covered because of all the disruptions,” said Jewett, whose house was damaged by the storm.
Many people are left without electricity or running water and some districts are still assessing the damage. No reopening dates for schools have been announced in several parishes. They simply close until further notice.
“Last year was tough. This school year started hard. And then there’s something here, ”said Randy Bush, a member of the Tangipahoa Parish School Board, who was concerned that the widespread lack of electricity could cause students not to be received until October.
Winds from the Ida 150 mph he tore off the roof of Christy Aymami’s 44-year-old rental house in Kenner, leaving it uninhabitable. Virtual schooling was difficult with his 12-year-old son and daughter, both socially and in what they learned, and one wonders what this new prolonged absence might mean. For the moment, look for at a hotel in Chattanooga, Tennessee, focused on finding a suitable hotel closer to home or renting a new property without seeing.
“I have all the resources, I have pretty good opportunities, I have cell phone and internet service and I have a lot of contacts,” said Aymami, a former teacher who is the school’s director of technology, “and I still can’t find anything.”
Inevitably, as parents and others ponder the future of their children, Hurricane Katrina from the 2005 monster is invoked. When researchers at Columbia University and the Children’s Health Fund tried to determine that the impact of the storm on children five years after the fall of the ground, they found that unstable living conditions persisted, serious emotional and behavioral problems were rampant and a third of students in the affected areas were left behind in the schooling. for his age.
“We don’t have to go that far to see the absolute and final failure of our children,” said Kevin Griffin-Clark, a 36-year-old businessman and father of three who now runs for New Orleans City Council. . “Now children will suffer even more.”
Katrina led to the dismantling of the New Orleans school system, which was replaced by a network of first-rate exclusive schools that has seen rising test scores and graduation rates, along with other positive metrics. But resentment calms the changes, seen by many as imposed primarily by white decision-makers on mostly black communities, with widespread teacher layoffs and the disintegration of union contracts and protections.
Douglas Harris, an economist at Tulane University whose work focuses on education, said he expects test scores to recover, as they did after Katrina, but they will not be the true reflection of the damage of the pandemic and now of a hurricane.
“In both cases, it’s a significant loss of learning, a significant amount of trauma, a significant amount of anxiety, and alterations in life and school,” Harris said, comparing the post-Katrina landscape with the present. “But the interruption has been much longer now. We are talking about 18 months of COVID. So the effects will be bigger here and the amount of time it takes to bounce will be greater. “
New Orleans Superintendent of Schools Henderson Lewis Jr. flatly rejects comparisons to Katrina, saying physical harm to schools is minimal. He said some will be able to return to class on Wednesday and that everyone should return on September 22nd. But he acknowledges the difficulties for students since COVID-19 opened the first schools on March 13, 2020 and everything that has happened since then.
“It’s something more aggravated,” he said.
When the students finally arrive, they will keep memories of howling winds and cratered houses, of weeks spent in distant or homeless places, of favorite toys and family comforts that they take away. It is a trauma for many, even if their homes survived, and pandemic anxiety is added to it.
Ashana Bigard, a 46-year-old New Orleans activist and mother of two, worries that schools will become so embroiled in academic follow-up that they won’t do enough to deal with these persistent scars. She remains concerned that her children will be infected with COVID-19 at school and expects her children to have “the same lower education” they were receiving before the pandemic. But she is willing to accept it as long as her emotional needs are met.
“Dead children cannot learn and emotionally and mentally broken children cannot do anything in the test. I want my children to be alive and happy. I prefer that and having them five degrees behind, ”he said. “I can deal with their educational deficits.”
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