Where Did the Schools Go?
In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, flooding neighborhoods and destroying homes. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, 1,800 people were murdered, and 80 percent of the city was under water. A public education system that was already crumbling due to decades of failure was also upended.
The system was completely redesigned in the years that followed, not merely rebuilt.
Where the Schools Wentre examines the years preceding the storm and the issues that New Orleans was already facing in its first episode. Public trust had been so severely damaged by crumbling structures, subpar academic performance, and pervasive corruption that the FBI had even established a headquarters within the school district’s main office. What occurs when a public institution fails the people it was created to serve is the topic of the episode below.
And what ought to happen next?
We hear the narrative from others who experienced it, such as Ken Ducote, a former employee of the school district who passed documents to the FBI using vintage cars and code identities. Because the restrooms in their building were always broken, we find out about the pupils who had to leave school to use the Taco Bell restrooms. We also meet the valedictorian, who failed the math exit exam five times and was therefore not allowed to graduate.
In the first episode, we discuss the customs and practices that served to unite communities and what loss actually meant after the storm. We hear from pupils who hid under desks whenever it rained, even in new classrooms in new places, a teacher who sought refuge with her family in a room in a church basement, and a child who was unable to locate his mother for over a month.
However, this is more than a tale of what was shattered or lost. It has to do with what humans constructed after the event. A group of educators from New Orleans opened a school for their students in Houston, many of whom lived in the Astrodome, just days after the hurricane. A community for children who had lost almost everything in their lives swiftly developed on this new campus.
The argument over what happened next is not resolved by the show. However, it starts to dissect the conflicting ideologies underpinning the school reforms implemented in New Orleans after Katrina. The turnaround, which made one of the worst-performing districts in the country a national model, has been hailed by some as miraculous. Some see it as a betrayal, with local identity being erased, Black instructors being displaced, and community control being dismantled. In order to assist you in determining which, if any, of those storylines is true, this episode is the first of five volumes.
Listen to the first episode above, then tune in to the second one, which premieres on August 19.
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