Katrina’s Widening Wake

With their entire community destroyed after Hurricane Katrina, and loved ones and students scattered or missing, the 7,000 teachers and education support professionals in New Orleans  knew that recovery efforts would be immense. But they didn’t anticipate the state using the disaster to undermine labor rights.

In New Orleans  , employees lost health insurance, tenure, collective bargaining, and other contractual rights—and, in many cases, were fired. But elsewhere in the Gulf Coast, relations between heavily hit districts and their unions are better. While NEA members in Mississippi were scattered in the wake of the widespread damage to coastal regions, “if anything, people are working more with union leaders,” says high school teacher Michael Marks, an NEA Executive Committee member. “I think we’ve gained a measure of respect.”

A year after Katrina struck, educators across the region are still struggling to pull their schools and lives back together. “We still have people and members who are homeless, facilities that are not at full strength,” says Marks. Mississippi  education officials estimate the damage at $1 billion, and in some cases, individual schools still play host to two or three others too damaged to use. “We still need help,” Marks says.

In New Orleans  alone, schools sustained an estimated $880 million in damage, including almost all buses. Of the city’s 128 schools, only 25 operated this past year—and most of those morphed into charter schools. A 65,000-student population plummeted to 12,500. State officials guess that about 22,000 might return this year. The rest remain in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and beyond.