Dismantling A Community Timeline

Spring 2005

The New Orleans Public Schools is a struggling district of 63,000 students. The district's student population has been decreasing over the past decade. Most of the city's white families have retreated to neighboring parishes or put their children in private schools. Middle-class and professional African-American families rely heavily on the city's many Catholic schools.

Drained of this middle-class constituency and the political support that it provided, the New Orleans Public Schools are spiraling downward. Year after year, attempts to increase local funding for the schools fail to gain support in citywide elections. Year after year, the bountiful profits of the New Orleans tourist industry and the oil and gas resources that have lined corporate pockets and federal coffers so handsomely, fail to find their way into the city's education system.

Mismanagement and infighting on the Orleans Parish School Board feed the perception that the system is broken beyond repair.

But "beyond repair" is not the perception of many of the district's teachers, who commit year after year to working in some of the city's most troubled schools, like Frederick Douglass High School in the 9th Ward.

Teachers at Douglass have created Students at the Center, an elective writing course that serves as a sanctuary for small groups of students at Douglass (and other schools) each year. In Students at the Center, young people are encouraged to find their voices, develop their writing skills, and engage in their communities. Along with teacher Jim Randels, several of the students have joined the Douglass Community Coalition to involve residents of the 9th Ward in supporting Douglass, and to engage students at Douglass in community organizing efforts.

These socially active teachers, and thousands of other employees of the New Orleans Public Schools, are members of AFT Local 527, the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO). The union has a long history of progressive activism and political action.

As the summer of 2005 winds down, students, teachers, and parents prepare for another school year.

August 18

New Orleans schools open for the 2005-06 school year.

August 23

Tropical Storm Katrina forms in the Caribbean and quickly gains hurricane strength. On Aug. 25 the storm makes its first U.S. landfall in Florida, before heading into the Gulf of Mexico

August 26

Hurricane Katrina reaches category 5 status as one of the fiercest hurricanes ever to approach the United States. The massive storm inches north across the Gulf. Evacuation orders are issued for New Orleans and surrounding coastal areas.

August 29

Hurricane Katrina slams into New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Levees fail to hold back the storm surge rising in Lake Ponchartrain and the Industrial Canal that bisects the city's 9th Ward as it connects the lake to the Mississippi River. Vast sections of the city, particularly the low-lying and predominantly African-American 9th Ward, are flooded with as much as 30 feet of water.

The city's "Lower 9th," to the east of the canal and already isolated from the rest of the city, is particularly hard hit. Hundreds of mostly low-income African Americans who could not afford to evacuate ahead of the storm drown in the floodwaters.

Some of the city's more white and wealthy neighborhoods, like the famous Garden District and the French Quarter, rest on higher ground. They are largely spared from the flooding.

In Washington and Baton Rouge, while the federal government bungles its response to Katrina, conservative education groups and the education industry lobby (the Education Industry Association represents corporations that market goods to school systems — textbooks, assessments, tutoring services — and also includes major corporate operators of public schools) are ready with a unified message: This is an opportunity to create a new paradigm of publicly funded, market-based schools that provide flexibility for individual families. They begin lobbying heavily in Baton Rouge and hold private meetings in Washington with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

This influential interest group is also quick to dominate the media. Their message is simple: Those who call for rebuilding a centralized public school infrastructure are...