COVID & then Ida
A double whammy for Louisiana’s schools
Tara Williams’ three little boys run shirtless, because most of their clothes were swept away, and they stack milk crates beneath a blazing sun because their toys are all gone too. Their apartment is barely more than a door dangling from a frame, the roof obliterated, most everything in it lost.
A Ford Fusion is the family’s home now, and as if Hurricane Ida didn’t take enough, it has also put the boys’ education on hold.
“They’re ready to get inside, go to school, get some air conditioning,” said 32-year-old Williams, who has twin 5-year-olds and a 7-year-old and is more pessimistic than officials about when they might be back in class. “The way it’s looking like now, it’s going to be next August.”
After a year and a half of pandemic disruptions that drove children from schools and pulled down test scores, at least 169,000 Louisiana children are out of class again, their studies derailed by the storm. The hurricane followed a rocky reopening in August that led to more COVID-19 infections and classroom closures, and now it will be weeks before some students go back again.
“How concerned am I? If you pick up a thesaurus, whatever’s the word for ‘most concerned,’” said Jarod Martin, superintendent of schools in the hard-hit Lafourche Parish, southwest of New Orleans. “We were brimming with optimism and confident that we were going to defeat COVID, confident we were on a better path. And now we’ve got another setback.”
Williams was working at McDonald’s until COVID-19 cutbacks claimed her job. The family rode out the storm in their apartment as it disintegrated around them, then drove to Florida, where they found a hotel room, which they could afford for only a few days.
The streets around them are dotted with gutted trailers, peeled roofs and mounds of debris, and every mention of the Federal Emergency Management Agency seems to be preceded by a colorfully profane adjective. School would be nice for the boys, Williams says, but right now, they don’t even have a home.
A couple of miles away, at the boys’ school, Luling Elementary, crews are cleaning up fallen trees, and piping from giant dehumidifiers snakes through windows. Shantele Slade, a 42-year-old youth pastor, is among those at work, but her own children an hour away in Amite are on her mind. The pandemic had already taken its toll on her 14-year-old son, who had to go to summer school because he’d fallen behind while learning virtually. Now she’s worried he will have trouble keeping up with algebra after so many days of absence.
Though many children spent most or all of last school year back in class, some children remained in virtual programs and arrived back in class last month for the first time since the shutdowns began.
The return did not go smoothly, with nearly 7,000 infections of students and teachers reported in the opening weeks, which led to quarantines, more shutdowns and more disruptions.
The latest state standardized test scores, released in August, showed a 5% drop in proficiency among students across Louisiana, blamed largely on disruptions from COVID-19. Younger and poorer children fared worst, as did members of minority groups and those with English as a second language.
The state’s education superintendent, Cade Brumley, acknowledged that students “did lose a little bit” and that Ida dealt another blow. A quarter-million students’ schools remained shuttered Friday, but classes for 81,000 children were to reopen Monday, according to the education department. Brumley said the rest would likely be back in a matter of weeks.
But in the most devastated areas, returning to class requires not only schools to be repaired or temporary classrooms to be set up, but for students and staff scattered around the country to come back to Louisiana. That means they must have homes with electricity and running water. Buses also have to run, and cafeterias must be stocked with food and people to serve it, and so on.
After the storm destroyed their house in Dulac, a stretch of Cajun country swampland, Penny Verdin’s two children and a nephew she cares for began cramming each night into a car, along with a gecko, a hamster and a squirrel named Honey. They hope to use some lumber and tin from the carcass of their home to fashion a new shack.
The children are smiling, one doing handstands on the soggy lawn, another fishing a 3-foot gator out of a creek, but Verdin, 43, says they’ve been shaken up by the storm. After a year in which nearly the whole family fell sick with COVID-19 and her disability checks were suddenly halted, she’s worried about them falling behind in their studies.
When the pandemic first raged and students were forced to learn on screens at home, some observers warned of a “lost generation” of children falling through the cracks. The opening of the school year gave some teachers their first chance to assess the effects on pupils, only to have students forced out again.
“Last school year was rough. This school year started rough. And then there’s this thing here,” said Randy Bush, a Tangipahoa Parish school board member, who worried lack of electricity might mean students are not welcomed back until October.