Hurricane Devastation Drives Unprecedented Relief Effort

School buses play major role in evacuation, transporting displaced students to new out-of-state schools

By Ryan Gray | Senior Editor

BATON ROUGE, La. - With months upon months of cleanup ahead before inhabitable conditions return to the area, school officials in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama struggle to make ends meet following the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina.

And, as a result, schools across the country are under pressure.

Schools in at least six Louisiana parishes, mostly in the New Orleans area, were damaged or completely destroyed by 100 mph winds, driving rain and flooding from the broken levees that were designed to keep the Mississippi River at bay.

"I have been through many hurricanes before but no one in our state has ever seen anything like this," said Louisiana State Superintendent of Schools Cecil Picard.

He added that Orleans Parish Schools and St. Bernard Schools will likely remain closed for the entire school year, while other districts will take anywhere from several weeks to several months to reopen.

The Mississippi Department of Education said Hurricane Katrina directly impacted some 160,000 students attending 271 schools in 44 districts.

"Katrina has devastated the education community," said Dr. Hank M. Bounds, the state superintendent of education. "We are aware that we have completely lost some schools and many schools have experienced significant damage on the coast and well inland also."

Public Relations Director Caron Blanton said communities have been asked to seek temporary alternate sites such as churches in which to hold classes while schools are rebuilt. She did not yet have any figures as to how many students were actually displaced.

The storm, widely considered the worst in the nation's recorded history, was known to have displaced estimates of at least one million people and over 300,000 total students - approximately another 135,000 from New Orleans alone - from throughout the battered Gulf Coast region. New Orleans authorities originally said the death toll there could number around 10,000 but the National Guard on the ground there said it would be "a heck of a lot lower."

Regionally, over 400 total deaths were confirmed at press time, 211 in Mississippi and seven in Florida.

Thousands of storm survivors were evacuated from New Orleans on approximately 400 state yellow buses.

Larry Ourso, a transportation program coordinator with the Louisiana Department of Education, worked with the state's Office of Homeland Security Emergency Preparedness for two days following the hurricane's landfall.

"Please know that many Louisiana school buses played a very important part in the Katrina rescue operation," he said. "Almost all of the districts that I contacted responded and provided buses. I am very proud to be associated with all of the individuals that responded."

Accepting with Open Arms

Evacuees en mass have settled throughout Texas in the major hubs of Austin, Dallas and San Antonio. But Houston, by far, is the most taxed with about a quarter million new people. Houston ISD, the largest district provider of transportation in the state and seventh largest in the nation, is dealing with an influx of 250,000. It sent 142 of its 1,000 school buses to New Orleans to assist in evacuation efforts (see related story on pg.10).

"Houston is just saturated now. It's really a challenge," said Phillip Smith, Houston ISD's assistant general manager for transportation services .

HISD is the state's largest district provider of transportation and the seventh largest in the nation. It buses over 50,000 students a day on 1,000 buses and travels more than 70,000 miles per day and approximately 16 million miles annually. Those numbers will skyrocket, Smith said, as an additional 10,000 students displaced from the hurricane were being transported at press time.

"We're at least receiving manageable numbers," said Pauline Gervais, transportation director at Adams 12 Five Star Schools in Thornton, Colo. "This is truly a test of how well we can take in and provide services that kids need." At press time, s tates as far away as Colorado, Michigan and North Carolina were known to have accepted students into their classrooms, and their school buses, under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Act. Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi schools not affected by Katrina also received students. Schools as far away as North Carolina were known to have provided emergency certifications to teachers displaced by the storm.

"The piece that gives us a little bit of leeway is there is no school of origin," she added, as over 1,000 families that relocated to the Denver area alone have already indicated they won't return to the Gulf Coast.

Over 100 schools in Missouri enrolled nearly 500 displaced students, said Kent D. King, the state's commissioner of education.

"I am confident the figures that have been reported to us (through Sept. 8) are low and will continue to change," he said.

Return to Normalcy

The first priority is getting children back in school.

"I implore superintendents around the state to take these children in," Louisiana Superintendent Picard said. "I have heard from many of them who are already doing so. To them I say 'Thank you.' To the others, again, I implore you to take care of the children who come to your districts."

Picard added that the Florida Superintendent of Education sent an action plan used last year after Hurricanes Charlie, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne. The U.S. Department of Education has also offered Louisiana any assistance it needs.

But funding will inevitably be an issue.

"If (school districts) are expanding their coverage area they'll have to foot the bill now and not receive funds until the following year," said Suzanne Marchman, a spokesperson at the Texas Education Agency. "We may have some issues with school districts that don't have resources.

She added that schools have not yet had time to worry about funding for these extra students, or petitioning the federal government for assistance.

"Everyone's primary concern is to get these kids enrolled," she said.

Shared Burden

Randy Boatman, program administrator of the state's School Transportation Funding Unit, explained that the true cost to school districts goes beyond transportation, such as text books and additional classroom space. Historically, Boatman said the state legislature has funded eligible transportation services at an average clip somewhere between 40 and 50 percent, with the remainder paid from local taxes.

Oklahoma is receiving displaced students into its classrooms. Randy McLerran, the state's director of student transportation, said Tulsa Public Schools also sent 50 school buses to New Orleans on Sept. 2 to assist in evacuations.

"In the future, I am sure that FEMA will not ignore the nation's school bus fleet," he said.

Arkansas is also accepting students and is tapping its resources to offer as much assistance as possible. Mike Simmons, the state's director of pupil transportation, said school districts were mobilizing any spare school buses for the relief effort.

"The governor is trying to put together a convoy of as many school buses as he can," said Simmons on Sept. 2. "I've sent out a call to all districts to find out how many spare buses they have."

"Depending on where these families' residences are located they may have nothing to go back to," Gervais said, adding that how McKinney-Vento relates to the school of origin once the evacuees find permanent housing remains an unknown. "This is unprecedented. The scope is beyond anything we'd ever imagined."

With school overcrowding more than just a possibility, Gervais said school districts will need to be creative in allocating resources. McKinney-Vento mandates that schools absorb the cost of transporting homeless students.

Fuel Shortages

While at the same time welcoming some 3,300 student evacuees into its schools, Alabama is dealing with its own hurricane fallout. Power outages continued to cripple the coastal and western edges of the state days after Katrina passed, but fuel reserves remained the key concern.

"The school systems we surveyed as of (Sept. 1), the average across the state is four to five days they could operate with their current fuel supply," said Joe Lightsey, the administrator of the state's pupil transportation section.

Across the country, diesel fuel prices rose several cents a gallon according to the Energy Information Administration, with the West Coast being the hardest hit.

When asked if they could get more fuel if needed from distributors, Lightsey said most answered "yes," but that it would come in reduced shipments. The schools reported that fuel distributors say they are only at 50 to 60 percent of their normal capacity, but that in a week or two supplies could begin to replenish. The Federal Emergency Management Administration can also make available reserve fuel.

In the meantime, Lightsey said school districts have been allowed to use off-road fuel to run school buses. Schools were also directed to cut idling and cancel field trips in favor of regular education. Athletic trips were a grey issue, however, due to the nature of advance scheduling.

"I talked to a lot of different school systems and it seems it's getting somewhat better, they're getting some fuel but not getting the quantities they'd like to have," said Brad Holley in the state's pupil transportation section on Sept. 8.

State Superintendent of Education Joseph B. Morton had warned that he would close any schools if fuel reserves run out.

The hardest hit school system in the state was Mobile County, which re-opened on Sept. 12.

South Carolina averted school closure on Sept. 7 when a New York-based Amerada Hess Corporation agreed to temporarily sell the state 75,000 gallons of diesel fuel a day to make up for a fuel shortage caused by the shut down of two Gulf Coast pipelines.

Both pipelines are back online, but suppliers told state officials it could be up to a month before fuel deliveries could resume and meet the daily needs of South Carolina's fleet of 5,000 school buses, which consume about 66,000 gallons a day.

"Obviously this was too close for comfort, but we believe that we have a short-term solution to our bus fuel problem," said State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum, who added that the state's existing fuel reserves were days from being exhausted.  "All of the logistics will take place behind the scenes, so South Carolina's educators and students shouldn't notice any differences in their daily routines. They'll be able to stay on task and concentrate on teaching and learning."

Amerada Hess received its fuel shipments via barge at its Charleston terminal, where the state's current fuel supplier, United Energy, picked it up and delivered it to the Department of Education's 44 regional bus shops.