Displaced by Katrina, kids learn hard lessons

“The first thing we do is give them a hug and say, ‘How can we help you?’” says Lynn Barnes, the principal at Briarmeadow, which had enrolled at least 22 refugee students. When Briarmeadow runs out of room, “we will contact other schools.”

River Oaks Elementary has been preparing since last week for the flood of Katrina evacuees. One art class got a special assignment: to make a poster that read, “Welcome, Louisiana children.”

Some New Orleans students were resettling in Louisiana itself. Schools sent employees to shelters and churches in Baton Rouge to give beleaguered parents tips on where to find school supplies, clothes, food and donated, day-to-day spending money.

Making accommodations
The Bernard Terrace Elementary School signed up two dozen refugee students for classes on Tuesday, and Principal Deborah Daniels said the school, now with 480 students, would “take however many they want me to.”

The uprooted students miss their homes, their friends — their stuff. “They say they want to go back and get this and that,” said Trellis Royal, as she waited to register her 10- and 14-year-old daughters at a Baton Rouge school.

But many seem antsy to end their forced break from school — even if starting over miles and miles from home in Michigan, Arkansas and Georgia.

“I'm not nervous at all. I'm ready to get back,” said fifth-grader Layanda Grinstead, who was playing badminton with her sister, Leslea, at a Red Cross shelter in Atlanta.

Relief for parents as kids go back to school
If kids were eager to hit the books, parents also looked forward to the stabilizing routine of classes.

“I'm so ready for them to go to school,” said the Grinstead girls' mother, Latanya.

In Michigan, Tyrienisha Smith, 10, whose school in New Orleans is underwater, registered for school Tuesday at the Best Western Sterling Inn, a Detroit-area hotel that took them in when they arrived last week.

She had all the proper gear: new SpongeBob Squarepants backpack, folders, loose-leaf paper, two boxes of crayons, colored pencils, a purple ruler, glue and scissors. And she was anxious to use it.

“I'm excited for going back to school, for writing, language, reading, math, science, social studies and recess.”

Relaxing the No Child Left Behind law?
In Washington, President Bush announced that Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is working on a plan to help the states pay their bills. The Education Department also will consider state requests for relaxed enforcement of the No Child Left Behind law.

As schools in the stricken area struggle to assess losses, Mississippi state Senate education chairman Mike Chaney provided a glimpse of the challenge, quoting one superintendent in a conference call: "'I don't know what we're going to do. We're going to educate these children. But we still have bodies in the ditch behind my house.'"

Paige DiMacco of River Ridge, La., would have preferred to finish her senior year at Ridgewood School in suburban New Orleans, where she was class president. Instead, she'll wind up high school in Arkansas, at Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock.

“I'm pretty open, so that will make it better, and we've already met a lot of nice people,” she said moments after a group of Mount St. Mary seniors encouraged her to join the student council.

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