Times-Picayune on St. Bernard Schools

The Times-Picayune ran a pretty good piece today on the state of affairs in the St. Bernard Parish school system. Schools open on Wednesday, so the timing of the article makes sense. I also thought to point this out given many of you who check out the blog also made contributions to the School Supply Drive I'm doing for Andrew Jackson Elementary. That concludes a week from Thursday, August 23, when we will be distributing the supplies to all the classrooms. Thanks again for everyone's interest in the schools here.

ST. BERNARD SCHOOLS AIM TO LEAVE DISASTER BEHIND

Renovated sites are ready

Monday, August 13, 2007

By Bob Warren

In a parish nearly wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, not thinking about recovery might seem an odd idea.

But as the St. Bernard Parish public school district prepares to welcome about 4,000 students Wednesday for the start of another post-Katrina school year, that's precisely what its top administrator hopes for.

"The big push this year is to get past recovery and get back to what we do best," Superintendent Doris Voitier said recently. "I'll fight the battles with FEMA and the insurance companies. The teachers will teach."

Not that hurricane recovery will ever be far away. On every level, life in St. Bernard Parish is about trying to get back what the hurricane destroyed on Aug. 29, 2005.

Across the parish, houses and businesses remain empty, storm-battered shells. Some families are still in cramped trailers. Others have left to start lives in other places, a diaspora that has slashed the parish's pre-storm population of 67,000 by more than half........

To read the rest of the article, cut and paste the following link into your browser:
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-23/1186984288263340.xml&coll=1

On a different note: I've tried really hard to avoid sharing takes on things not related to Katrina recovery and what's going on specifically here in the Gulf Coast region, but, I just can't keep myself from saying something about this topic: what possesses some of the people who go to a Barnes & Noble (or a Borders for that matter) and behave like they're in their own living room at home? Sunday evening I'm at a B&N just outside of New Orleans, sitting in one of those lounge chairs, flipping through some books I was thinking of buying. I usually don't sit in these chairs, as I've always thought that probably half the people who sit in them have no regard for personal hygiene. Well, that point was pretty much proven correct just in that one sitting. This guy comes over and sits in a chair about three down from me with a book he had just picked up from one of those discount tables, something on "The Secrets of the CIA". Anyway, about a minute after he sits, he starts with the pulling up of his nose, and trust me, it wasn't just air he was pulling up. Then the coughing starts, followed by the horrifically loud sneezes, a good two or three of them. The guy is literally sneezing on his arm and hand, and just continues flipping the pages on this book that he is "borrowing" to browse through at the bookstore. I'm sitting there staring at him non-stop, with the look of death, and true to form, like so many idiots in this world, the guy is 100% oblivious to anything going on. Loud honks of snot, flem-filled coughs and sneezes all over his arm, in a community chair with a book not yet purchased as his own, and this guy is just cruising along with his day with no regard about anyone or anything around him. Ridiculous. I was so disgusted by the guy and what he was doing, I had to get up and leave. What he really deserved was for someone to go up to him and tell him what a joke he was, but I know I can't do that kind of stuff anymore, or shouldn't. By the way, a $1000 bucks says he never bought that book and put it right back on that table, for some other poor sap to later touch and swim in this guy's germs. I will never understand for the life of me what possesses some people to do the things they do!