School districts are helping displaced students adjust to a new life

The Houston, Galveston, Pasadena, and other Texas school districts in Rita’s path closed their schools at least until Sept. 26 as residents were instructed to evacuate.

With reports that Rita might be even stronger than Katrina, Texas school officials tested generators, fueled school buses, unplugged computers and other electronics, cleared roofs of debris, secured outdoor equipment, backed up electronic records of students and staff, and, in some cases, issued payroll advances to employees.

Meanwhile, schools across the nation were welcoming the more than 372,000 schoolchildren displaced by Katrina, including 247,000 from Louisiana and 125,000 from Mississippi.

Texas has taken in about 60,000 school-age evacuees, more than any other state, and Houston enrolled more than any other school district.

Parents were told to take their children to the Houston school closest to their shelter and provide one form of identification showing their child is from Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama.

Under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Assistance Act, passed in 2002, displaced students are considered homeless, and therefore must be quickly enrolled in schools. That act has actually helped districts prepare for disasters like Katrina. It requires them to provide transportation to homeless students and designate an employee to serve as a liaison to homeless students.

According to Houston spokesperson Terry Abbott, displaced students can remain in school for at least 30 days without having to provide academic records or documentation on vaccinations.

Louisiana state Superintendent Cecil J. Picard met with Texas Education Commissioner Sharon J. Neeley Sept. 21 to work out some educational details for displaced students. Picard hopes the Louisiana seniors who relocated to Texas will be able to take the Louisiana exit exam in Texas and will be able to receive a Louisiana diploma when they graduate this spring.

The Memphis, Tenn., school district had enrolled 775 displaced students as of Sept. 21, says district spokesperson Vince McCaskill, and was ready to accept evacuees from Texas fleeing Hurricane Rita.

“We have enough space and teachers in our school right now to accommodate these students so there has not been that huge burden smaller school districts might face,” McCaskill says.

“But certainly the resources are going to be an issue,” he says, noting that the district is working with state and federal officials “to make sure these kids get what they need.”

“The first thing we did was ease our enrollment standards so people wouldn’t have to go through a lot of paperwork when they enrolled their kids,” he says. Many didn’t have any records for their children. “They just had the shirts on their back.” The district also provided counselors because the situation is so traumatic for students.

The district provided each evacuee student with a backpack full of school supplies and a voucher for a school uniform.

So far, the district has raised $23,000 for the displaced families and has received $186,000 worth of new clothing and shoes from Nike, McCaskill says. “Our students and our employees have been very generous with their hearts, their wallets, and their time to make this transition as smooth as possible.”

More than 8,000 displaced students have registered in the East Baton Rouge (La.) Parish school system, swelling the district’s enrollment from 45,500 to 53,500, says spokesperson Tai St. Julien.

“We’re doing warm body counts right now because we’re having difficulty getting back in touch with parents who have registered their children but have no phone numbers,” St. Julien says. “We’re hoping they contact us.”

She says the district reopened two elementary schools and has not had a problem finding additional teachers. More than 500 teachers displaced by Katrina applied for jobs in East Baton Rouge Parish, and so far the district hired 27. 

Transportation, however, is a big problem, she says. Many of the displaced families do not have permanent housing and no one knows how long they will stay, so the district is reluctant to purchase more buses.

“The new students and the old students, the parents, and the teachers are all dealing very well with the situation,” says St. Julien. “The tolerance level is very high. Everyone realizes that no one chose to be in this position.”

The Georgia Department of Education reports that more than 9,000 evacuee students have been enrolled in 181 different school districts throughout the state.

As of Sept. 21, the DeKalb County, Ga., school system had enrolled 1,600 displaced students in 130 of its 142 schools and hired 11 displaced teachers.

The state of Georgia is providing these teachers with a one-year nonrenewable teaching certificate, and the district has an agreement with them that says they will stay for at least one semester if they decide to return to Louisiana, says district spokesperson Regina Fletcher.  

To expedite the student registration process, the district set up computers for online registration, she says. And school counselors, psychologists, and social workers worked at the DeKalb Disaster Relief Service Center from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. to provide information and support to displaced families.

The district distributed to evacuees school supplies donated by Target and gift cards from Staples. The district’s existing students will be asked to donate $1 each and school employees will be asked to contribute $5 to a relief fund for the displaced families.

“These displaced students have been totally embraced by their classmates,” says Fletcher. Many schools have adopted whole families and have conducted fundraisers and collected clothing.  

The district has allowed displaced students to participate in extended-day programs at no cost, so their parents can look for jobs without having to rush to school in the afternoon to pick up their children.

Fletcher says a major challenge is to make sure seniors are appropriately placed and get the information they need to apply to college. The state education department will have to determine whether the displaced students will have to pass Georgia’s high school exit exam.

If any students were hoping for athletic scholarships or other college scholarships, “we told them that we would assist them in any way we could to try to move them forward with their plans,” Fletcher says. “We don’t know what kind of information we will ever get from Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama on students because we don’t know what kind of databases they had. It’s extremely difficult.”