News from Central Gulf Focus: La./Miss (Ala contributors)

[Audrey2Katrina]

2 more senators get look at storm damage

One cautions against rebuilding all areas

Saturday, July 15, 2006 TP/NOLA.com
By Gwen Filosa
Staff writer

By invitation from the activist group Women of the Storm, two Republican senators toured the New Orleans region Friday for the first time since Hurricane Katrina made landfall and the levees failed on Aug. 29.

U.S. Sens. Robert Bennett of Utah and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are longtime political heavy hitters on Capitol Hill, with Bennett, the chief deputy whip, serving on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and McConnell the Senate's majority whip since 2004.

They were prompted to visit hurricane-torn Louisiana by Women of the Storm, the local activist group formed to make sure elected leaders from every state see the damage firsthand and meet with residents.

Inside the McIlhenny Company's Tabasco boardroom, 18 floors above Poydras Street, the senators were given an intensive, detailed presentation on the troubles and losses left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

"It impacted the poorest and the elderly the most," said Donna Fraiche, a board member on the Louisiana Recovery Authority, as she led the presentation, which ticked off the statistics that locals know by rote.

"People may ask, 'Why can't they help themselves? Why has it taken so long?' It's very difficult for them to help themselves when every aspect of their being has been destroyed," Fraiche said.

Fraiche, a lawyer who is also chairwoman of the LRA's long-term planning committee, showed the numbers that tell the toll the flooding took on Louisiana, which sustained 75 percent of the Gulf Coast housing damage caused by last year's hurricanes and flooding that washed away 217,000 homes, 835 schools and 10 hospitals.

Months back, Bennett made headlines by saying that it makes no sense to rebuild a city that is "ten feet below sea level," despite the fact that it was an incorrect description of New Orleans, a low-lying city but not without its higher ground.

On Friday, Bennett said he never meant the nation should abandon New Orleans, only that not every neighborhood can be rebuilt safely.

"She's singing my song," Bennett said, before leaving downtown to tour the Lower 9th Ward and other flood-ravaged places. "If you've read 'Rising Tide,' that showed that the Corps of Engineers did dumb things on the river," Bennett said. "Let's not do dumb things."

Fraiche said that residents must rebuild safer and stronger, but duly noted that had the levees in New Orleans not failed by design, many homeowners would have been spared. She said restoring the state's coastline is a dire need to keep the region healthy, and called upon outsiders to remember the state's huge contribution to the oil and gas industries. But Bennett seemed focused mostly on the notion of higher ground for rebuilding.

"I compliment you on embracing the controversial notion that there may be some places where it doesn't make sense to rebuild," Bennett told his hosts at the meeting's end. "I don't want the next one to be a man-made disaster either."

In response, Fraiche said, "People, who all they had was a postage stamp (sized lot) in the 9th Ward, they have no money and they don't know what to do."

Possibly, residents in such straits could live somewhere else, yet still in Orleans Parish, she said.

Bennett, 72, and McConnell, 64, both dressed in casual button-down shirts and slacks, listened quietly during the computer-aided presentation, while eating box lunches from Heavenly Ham. The senators and their aides were in a rush to complete their tours, and both men spoke briefly after the meeting. A request by The Times-Picayune to accompany the senators on their New Orleans tour of the damage was declined.

McConnell asked how much it would cost to stop the erosion of the Louisiana coastline.

"It would be trillions," Fraiche replied, adding that state leaders aren't asking for a lump sum but instead a fair return on the revenue from the oil rig leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

Women of the Storm has successfully ushered to New Orleans elected leaders from every state except four: West Virginia, Wisconsin, North Dakota and New Hampshire.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Southern governors tour N.O. devastation

Musicians' Village is bright spot of day

Sunday, July 16, 2006 TP/NOLA.com
By Robert Travis Scott
Capital bureau


Gov. Blanco and Virginia Governor Tim Kaine navigate their way through the Musician's Village.

After a tour of Hurricane Katrina's devastation in the New Orleans area Saturday, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine summed up his feelings with the same awed expressions heard from many other political leaders who have made the same journey.

"It's very powerful," Kaine said. "There's just no way of imagining it without seeing it."

As one of several state chiefs in town for the Southern Governors' Association's annual meeting, Kaine witnessed not only the vast scope of devastation caused by the floodwaters, but also the effort to instill hope for a recovery.

In a symbolic gesture, he and Gov. Kathleen Blanco joined a group of corporate volunteers under the intense afternoon sun to raise and hammer into place a framing wall for a house in a new community in the St. Claude neighborhood called Musicians' Village.

"This is called the 'loaves and fishes story,' " Kaine said, referring to the New Testament miracle in which thousands were fed from a few loaves of bread and fish.

Nearly 11 months after the storm, cold realities and strong faith continue to blend in official discussions about the future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Blanco and Hunt Downer, assistant adjutant general of the Louisiana Army National Guard, served as guides for a two-hour bus tour for association guests that covered Lakeview, eastern New Orleans, St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward.

A deeply religious Catholic who once served as a missionary in Honduras, Kaine said the bus tour was a "very sobering trip" that gripped him more with each mile of devastation they passed. He said he saw neighborhoods with no one around, others with only a single resident visible in a block of houses, and others where people are back, planting signs in their yards saying they're glad to be home.

The trip left Kaine with a "jumble" of questions and concerns about residents' mental states as well as the condition of their properties.


Sparse attendance


Only a handful of governors had arrived in New Orleans by Saturday afternoon to take part in the association's 72nd annual meeting, which is being hosted by Blanco, this year's chairwoman of the group. Hurricane Katrina had halted her trip to the 2005 meeting in Greensboro, Ga.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour checked in Saturday. Some other governors are expected today, but it appeared that fewer than half of the association's 17 governors will attend the meeting. Upcoming elections caused some to decline their invitations. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley is on an economic development tour of China and Korea.

The scene Saturday at the Musicians' Village, just west of the Industrial Canal, demonstrated that the nascent housing complex is developing rapidly with widespread support. The New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity is shepherding the community, which was conceived by New Orleans-born jazz musicians Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. in partnership with Habitat to help displaced musicians and others come home.

From 250 to 400 people per day have been volunteering to work on houses in the village, totaling about 3,000 volunteers in recent weeks, said Elizabeth Lisle, deputy director of the Habitat group. Most of them have been supplied through Baptist Community Ministries, First Baptist Church of New Orleans and other related groups thanks to support from the Baptist Crossroads Foundation.

Gathering steam


In April, the Dave Matthews Band pledged a matching grant to the Habitat project of up to $1.5 million.

Blanco announced Friday that the local Habitat organization will receive $1.5 million from a group of corporations in a gift coordinated by the Southern Governors' Association. Underwriters of that support include 84 Lumber, Entergy, LP Building Products, American Electric Power, Chevron, Freddie Mac, ExxonMobil, Shell Oil Co. and Symantec. On Saturday, 84 Lumber kicked in even more.

The money will assist the village with its proposed 75 homes and other Habitat projects. The group plans an additional 225 homes in the Upper 9th Ward.

The first homes in the village began construction in early April, but a rush of work since the beginning of June has resulted in substantial progress. Two homes are nearly ready for occupancy by musicians J.D. Hill and Fredy Omar. Thirty should be complete by Aug. 19.

The houses are popping up in cheerful, New Orleans-inspired colors such as "orange liqueur," "hosta green" and light-plum with lilac trim. Each of the 1,100-square-foot homes has three bedrooms and one bath, 8-foot ceilings and central air and heat. A mix of facade designs give the rows of houses a visual variety. The homes cost about $75,000 apiece to build, Lisle said.

The houses are raised above the neighborhood's Katrina flood level of about 5 feet. Lisle said the neighborhood is not in a flood plain.

The surrounding neighborhood is still characterized by piles of trash and debris, discarded tires and boarded-up homes -- and an occasional FEMA trailer. Behind one trailer on Mazant Street, a freshly painted and landscaped home flies two flags with the image of a bright sun and the word "Welcome."

On a corner near the village, an old service station has collapsed into a pile of boards and junk, but across the intersection a newly painted diner sports a sign saying, "Now Open."

The Southern Governors' Association covers Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Virginia and West Virginia.

The annual meeting, which ends Monday, includes discussions of emergency preparedness and interstate coordination in a crisis, electronic medical records and education.

[Audrey2Katrina]

LEARNING FROM KATRINA

An unexpected upside to the hurricane is emerging for some displaced families:

Children are discovering education opportunities they never imagined.

Sunday, July 16, 2006 TP/NOLA.com
By Rob Nelson
West Bank bureau

Joining hundreds of thousands of American teenagers in a springtime ritual, Kendall Collins marched across the stage, grabbed his diploma and walked into a new world, letting high school fade into history.

For the Algiers native and former senior at L.B. Landry High School, that May afternoon marked a second foray into unknown territory.

The first was not part of a ceremony, but a Coast Guard rescue. And what faded into history then was not homeroom, but home itself.

Days after graduating from West Jordan High School in suburban Salt Lake City, Collins, 18, spoke of the academic milestone with pride, but also with an emerging sense of hope, even liberation.

Far away from the schooling experience he had known in New Orleans -- the beeping of metal detectors, outdated textbooks and the pressure of keeping a younger female cousin out of school fights, he said he found more classes to choose from, extra attention from teachers and a calmer social life that put fewer distractions between him and the books.

"Down there, I felt like I wasn't going to graduate," Collins said. "I felt like I was caught up in too much stuff. I wasn't focused. I just feel like I've gotten a lot of help."

Much as it scattered the city's singular cuisine and music into kitchens and nightclubs across America, Hurricane Katrina dispersed to the nation's classrooms another equally precious and now precarious commodity: the children of New Orleans.

Collins is one of tens of thousands of public school students who spent most of the past year far from home after Katrina drowned New Orleans, dismantling a public school system long-decried as one of the country's worst and tossing its children into educational, cultural, financial and racial conditions often wildly different than what they had known before Aug. 29.

From Colorado to Connecticut, from Baton Rouge to Jefferson Parish and from Mississippi to Texas, more than 200,000 south Louisiana students made their way to 49 states and the District of Columbia in the immediate aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, spurring what officials label as one of the greatest educational upheavals in modern American history.

Even now, the number of students who will return to the New Orleans area is perhaps the greatest question mark looming over an upcoming school year already riddled with uncertainties.

Protected by federal law guaranteeing "homeless" children easy access to schools, more than 40,000 New Orleans public school students ended the school year elsewhere.

And more than 130,000 Louisiana children are still counted as displaced by federal officials, including about 50,000 in different school districts within Louisiana.

In a state already lagging when it comes to public education, New Orleans schools reigned as Louisiana's chief academic blemish: poverty-choked, violent, notoriously mismanaged, bitterly political and academically foundering.

And among the students, parents and teachers Katrina washed out of town into new schools, the consensus seems clear.

They found something better.

"When I got here and saw the stuff they had, I was blown away," said Tyese Robinson, 15, who finished the ninth grade at Zachary High School outside of Baton Rouge after starting the year at Walter Cohen High School in New Orleans.

Robinson praised fresh textbooks, an accelerated reading program and a newfound interest playing tuba in the school band. There was no such band at James Singleton Charter Middle School, Robinson's campus before moving to Cohen shortly before Katrina struck.

"It's challenging me in a way I've never been challenged before," he said.


Priority on education

While many of the displaced long for home and some still vow to return, most praise their new surroundings.

Students cheer new textbooks, clean buildings and a better selection of courses. Hundreds of teachers who wound up in other school districts tout supplies delivered on time, higher pay, fewer fights and a priority on education that had proven elusive or nearly nonexistent back home.

Parents applaud their children's higher grades as well as instructors who they say work harder and care more.

Demetrice McDowell, a Lower 9th Ward resident who lost everything in Katrina and now lives with her three children in a low-income Philadelphia neighborhood, said she likes what she sees in her new city's schools.

"My little boy couldn't do math, and now he's doing it," she said of her 9-year-old son. "They teach my kids. They learn more. I think my children are advancing. I see them getting a decent education and being somebody."

The historic diaspora also came with a dark side, as some Crescent City students suffered through the stigma attached to their crime-stained hometown and its failing schools.

Keana Holmes, a former Warren Easton High School student from eastern New Orleans who attended an Atlanta public high school last year, said several New Orleans students were expelled for fighting as tensions escalated with Georgia pupils who apparently felt their turf had been invaded.

"They said we came here thinking we were going to run the school," she said.


Challenges for teachers

For many of the displaced, the educational upswing boils down to three factors: more attentive teachers, an absence of violence and chaos, and a heightened community priority on academics.

"We tend to think of Katrina as a disaster that happened," said Jerry Willis, an associate dean in Louisiana State University's School of Education. "America, and Louisiana in particular, already had a disaster. We don't know how to solve the problem of providing an education to poor, minority children."

Debra Moran-Reimonenq, former principal of Marion Abramson Senior High School and Martin Luther King Middle School, said many city educators, facing the added challenges of teaching a high-poverty population, did the best they could.

"We have to educate children despite their environment," said Moran-Reimonenq, who has since taken a job in Caddo Parish public schools.

"We have a lot of obstacles to overcome. If you look at any school system that is doing well, look at the community in which it is situated. If the community is thriving, the school is thriving."

Courtney Jones, whose son Terance attended McDonogh No. 32 Elementary School before the storm chased the family to Conway, Ark., said Katrina helped free his son from a broken system, where the boy often got into fights.

"They weren't educating children like they were supposed to," he said of New Orleans schools. "Here, he's getting more attention from the teachers."

Terance arrived at Sallie Cone Elementary School defensive, aggressive and academically behind in every subject; he was reading on a second-grade level, said the boy's fourth-grade teacher, Carmen Maglievaz.

"He did not respond to the authority figures in the building very well," she said. As time went on, Terance's behavior improved as did his grades at Cone, a school with a strong concentration of low-income families.

Cone Principal Delanna Lacy credited the boy's transformation to the school's family atmosphere, an outpouring of community support for storm victims and counseling in which Terance, 10, vented about his storm experience.

"When you love kids, they give love back," Lacy said.


'We learn more"

Of significant help, Terance's parents added, were his daily sessions with a "reading recovery teacher," who helped boost him to a third-grade reading level by the second semester. "He's made tremendous gains in his academic growth," Maglievaz said.

When asked about the differences in his school, Terance replied: "We learn more."

Ashley Harrison, 16, a former student at Francis Gregory Junior High School in New Orleans, said her 11th-grade peers at her new school in Memphis, Tenn., are as focused as she is.

"At Gregory, there's not a lot of people trying to get ready for college," she said, touting her new school's efforts to help students seek scholarships.

"It feels great (here) because we help each other out. The teachers are more dedicated. They're more of a challenge than New Orleans teachers are."

Her father, Dwain Harrison, has decided to relocate to Memphis, saying the move will benefit his daughter. "I don't want her to be deprived of getting a scholarship and going on to a better college," he said.

Even native New Orleanian Francesa Ridge-Robinson, who taught in the city's public schools, has decided to stay put in New Albany, Ind., outside of Louisville, Ky., to give her children, who attended Paul Dunbar Elementary School, a fighting chance.

"I've never seen a cleaner place -- the town, the school," she said, adding that bathrooms fully stocked with paper towels and toilet paper came as an encouraging surprise.

Fencing and swimming classes along with a chess club also have impressed her, as well as the closer tabs kept on students.

"When my children are absent, I get a phone call," she said, adding that such a policy never played out at Dunbar.

Cynthia Isaac, a 25-year veteran New Orleans educator, is also impressed by the little things in her new job in the Natchez, Miss., public school system.

She talks excitedly about on-time paychecks, clean hallways and art classes in which children craft projects, not just pencil-and-paper drawings.

"These people have supplies," she said. "They have equipment. In Orleans Parish, you buy almost everything for the children. Here, you just requisition it."

And a $10,000 increase in salary isn't too bad either, Isaac added.

Ridge-Robinson, who has enrolled her two special-needs sons in New Albany public schools, said the difference in quality is enough to keep her away from the hometown she loves.

"I'm willing to be here for the next 10 years because I know they're being educated," she said. "I decided I needed to be here for my children. I need to give them a chance."


Look, no chaos

Perhaps the most glaring difference between New Orleans public schools and districts elsewhere is an absence of chaos, students and educators said, lamenting how the city's violence had crept into schoolhouses.

Assailants armed with handguns and an assault rifle stormed John McDonogh Senior High School in 2003, killing a 15-year-old boy and wounding four others in retaliation for an earlier, off-campus killing of another youth.

In March 2005, two youths opened fire in a crowded hallway at O. Perry Walker High School in Algiers, wounding a student.

O'Ryon Brumfield, who attended school in Shreveport after the storm, said the metal detectors at his old school, Cohen High, made the campus feel like a "prison."

While his new school wasn't violence-free either, there was a stark contrast between the two campuses.

"They don't have as much security as us," he said of Huntington High School. "In New Orleans, Cohen had a fight like every day."

The absence of security was not lost on Kendall Collins either.

"You don't have to walk through metal detectors or anything like that," he said of his Utah campus. "They don't pat you down."

His grandmother, Bessie Collins, who lived in New Orleans for more than 50 years, speaks with similar relief.

"You don't have things happen here on a daily basis," she said. "I can feel that they are safe in school here. That was my big worry in New Orleans, somebody coming to shoot up the school."

The more tranquil environment makes for better schools and allows teachers to focus on their jobs, many displaced residents said. It also helps communities as a whole give education its due attention, they said.

"We don't have those issues here, not to the degree they interrupt learning," said Moran-Reimonenq, who worked with displaced high-schoolers in Caddo and noted a near absence there of the violence and neighborhood rivalries that gripped the city. "It's just a different culture, a calmer one."

Daphne DeLeon, whose daughter attended A.D. Crossman Elementary School, said she also sees a glaring difference among students in her new neighborhood in Durham, N.C.

"The behavior of the children is totally different," she said. "The respect level is much higher."

Robinson, who was displaced to Zachary High after leaving the "fighting and fussing" at Singleton and Cohen, said he felt the need to conform in his new school.

"When I came here, I saw the other kids doing a lot of things they didn't do in New Orleans," he said, referring to their stronger commitment to the books. "I just jumped in and started studying. I didn't want to be the only one who didn't get it."

Students clash

Still, violence trailed some New Orleans students to their adoptive communities.

Jamyra Williams, who lived in the Lower 9th Ward and now attends Martin Luther King High in Lithonia, Ga., recalled a near brawl between New Orleans and local students one day in the cafeteria.

The Georgia female students started giving attention to the displaced boys, provoking tension in the school, Williams said, adding that the evacuated students quickly "cliqued up" and formed tight bonds after arriving at King.

"The girls went crazy over the New Orleans boys," she said.

The friction became too much for her, and she eventually transferred to a public school in Ascension Parish near a relative. "It was too much drama," she said. "They wanted to fight us."

More often, though, the dissension was sparked by turf battles and not hormones, students said.

"They felt like we were coming here to take over," Brumfield said of his Shreveport high school.

The most high-profile of the flare-ups occurred in Houston, where the system took in the lion's share of displaced students.

In September, a fight broke out at Jones High School between New Orleans and Houston teenagers, sending three students to the hospital and resulting in the arrest of five others.

Another melee -- this one captured on video -- erupted in December at a second Houston high school in which 27 students were arrested, including 15 from New Orleans.

Most New Orleans students said they were treated with dignity and welcomed with open arms, but there were also isolated cases of students complaining that teachers and other students slurred them with critical, condescending comments about the city.

Williams said some school officials made passing references to New Orleans' murder rate. And Brumfield recalled a math class in which he was the first to answer the teacher's question.

The teacher, Brumfield said, then chastised the rest of the class for "letting the New Orleans kid get that before you."

"It made me feel lower than them, like I'm a slave and they're my master," he said.

Displaced Orleans Parish teacher Diana Boylston, who has worked closely with evacuated students, said many children were met with fear as they arrived at new schools, largely because of the city's violent reputation and suffering educational system.

"There was a lot of prejudice against the children," she said.

Culture shock

For some, the change in schools ushered in a sudden brush with diversity.

Far from what was a predominantly black New Orleans, many students found themselves for the first time in classrooms with students who looked nothing like them.

Some described the experience as odd but said they adjusted and made friends, if nothing else because their "Katrina kid" status made them an instant attraction.

"I haven't been around a bunch of white people in my life," said Johnny Collins, Kendall Collins' cousin who attended Utah's West Jordan Middle School and played on the basketball team. "I knew I was going to make it because I'm a good person to get along with."

The Collins family rode out Katrina in their Algiers apartment and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard five days later because grandmother Bessie Collins, 72, was unable to leave the city without assistance.

They were taken by helicopter to Louis Armstrong International Airport, where they boarded a plane headed for San Antonio.

For some reason, the destination suddenly changed to Utah, a place Kendall and Johnny said they knew only from their classroom lessons on states and capitals.

Overall, 16 members of the Collins family arrived in the Beehive State. Most still remain, and Bessie Collins said she is prepared to stay for the long haul as well.

"I thought it was going to be hard, but it hasn't been hard at all," she said of the adjustment. "Everybody was just so nice. They did everything to make (Kendall and Johnny) feel comfortable being here."

Kendall Collins was one of seven black students in West Jordan's graduating class of about 500. Overall, less than 1 percent of the district's 77,000 students are African-American.

For Domonique Talton, a former student at McDonogh No. 35 Senior High School, the racial makeup of her new school, in Cherry Creek, Colo., was jarring.

"In New Orleans, you never see Asians walking around with Ethiopians," she said. "We don't have that kind of diversity. It was weird for me. It was hard for me to open up to people."

But now her best friend is an Asian teenager named Lee, whom she met in physics class. "It's kind of neat to learn different things from different people, " said Talton, 17.

Making the grade

In the eyes of some parents and students, Katrina managed to wipe a little luster off the city's most successful and sought-after schools, revealing as average what had been revered as top notch by New Orleans standards.

"I had so many classes to choose from," said Sammantha Helmstetter, a student at Benjamin Franklin who attended William Fremd High School, a public school in suburban Chicago that has been ranked among the nation's best.

"They offered math courses I've never heard of before," she said, pointing to multi-leveled trigonometry and statistics classes.

Like other public school students, Helmstetter, who returned to Franklin in January, praised the condition and cleanliness of Fremd, which has a pool and two gyms.

"I would feel a little dirty getting out of Franklin," she admits. "I definitely felt up in rank at Fremd. I didn't know schools could be that way."

Helmstetter, 16, said she made straight A's at Franklin and continued that trend at Fremd, except for a B in a European history class she described as the hardest course she'd ever taken.

"I felt a little more challenged there, and I definitely took that to heart," she said of Fremd. "In some Franklin classes, I don't even try that hard."

Talton, the displaced McDonogh 35 student, said her ego took a hit in Cherry Creek, where the public school system also has earned national recognition.

Her grades plummeted from A's and B's to D's and F's, and during the spring semester Talton said she felt like giving up altogether because she was so far behind her peers.

"The work is so much harder," she said. "I would say we do preschool work in New Orleans compared to what we do here. I guess the teachers really teach here. In New Orleans, we don't take school as seriously. Kids actually read on their own out here. It's crazy to know they're just all interested in learning."

Opening doors

Larger classrooms, lounge areas in the cafeteria and the number of students who drove to school also mesmerized Talton, who said the school "was like something you'd see on TV."

A cousin of Jamrya Williams, Kentrell Butler, 17, a former student at St. Mary's Academy in eastern New Orleans, also attended King High in Lithonia, a suburb of Atlanta, where a newfound course in human anatomy has spurred an interest in becoming a doctor.

"It's opening doors for me out here," she said. "I think there's a reason for the hurricane: for me to learn."

Some magnet and private school students did not have to go far from home, they say, to find stronger schools.

A former student at selective Edna Karr High School in Algiers, Theresa Perry said she was shocked by the quality of education at West Jefferson High School in Harvey, the lowest-performing school in Jefferson Parish under the state's accountability system.

"The West Jefferson kids were actually ahead of us in a lot of areas," she said, referring to an honors Algebra course that covered more ground than at Karr. "They were on stuff I've never even heard about."

In addition, there were West Jefferson underclassmen in courses that would have been for seniors only at Karr, said Perry, who passed on a chance to return to Karr months ago. West Jefferson "is actually an amazing school," she said. "I thought it was going to be a breeze."

In some cases, however, students found that they had to take a step down from their New Orleans schools.

Cheramie Williams, a former Karr student, said her grade-point average increased dramatically because her new school in Baker was far less advanced. She admits, though, the higher scores will look better to colleges.

And Lucinda Broom, who switched from the city's selective New Orleans Science and Mathematics High School to Durham, N.C., said it's clear her new public school is comparatively short on resources.

"We did a lot more hands-on kinds of things (in New Orleans)," she said, missing her chemistry lab sessions. "We would actually observe things."


'Our babies were behind'

For educators around the country, Katrina's aftermath provided a personal look at the products of New Orleans public schools.

In some cases, educators said their experiences confirmed the school district's poor reputation, while others touted displaced students who excelled.

Zachary High School Principal Kevin Lemoine said most of the 125 evacuee students who arrived at his school were academically behind and unprepared for the more rigorous curriculum there.

Even students who were on an honors track in New Orleans were overwhelmed by similar courses at Zachary, Lemoine said.

"The schools they were at didn't prepare them," he said. "We're not letting you sit in the back of the class and do nothing."

The small, rural district, formed in 2003 after breaking off from East Baton Rouge public schools, recently dethroned St. Tammany public schools as the highest-performing system in the state.

Nicole Bowman, a former Orleans Parish teacher whose Houston-area school system took in displaced New Orleans students, said the disparities between the Texas and Louisiana children were clear.

"Our babies were behind," said Bowman, who now teaches in Texas. "I knew they didn't have the foundation. Kids here are learning in third grade what I would have taught in fourth grade in New Orleans."

In Houston, the academic differences seem acute, with some school leaders there labeling the gaps in standardized scores between Louisiana and Texas students "astounding."

Fifty-nine percent of third-grade hurricane evacuees passed the reading portion of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills compared with 89 percent of students statewide in Texas.

And among fifth-graders, 47 percent of Louisiana evacuees passed the test compared with 80 percent statewide.

Not all educators, however, tell tales of such disparity.

Scott Steckler, principal of George Cox Elementary in Gretna, said, despite a strong influx of New Orleans students, the school's traditional bell curve stayed firm. The school, which had served primarily poor, minority students before the storm, ended the year with half its student body from the city.

"There were many students who did extremely well," he said, recalling his philosophy of "hugs and homework" to help restore normalcy to the children's lives.

At Melrose Elementary School in East Baton Rouge Parish, Principal Catherine Greenwood said that in some areas her school's standards seemed higher than New Orleans, but that evacuee students still achieved.

By the end of the school year, about 90 displaced students remained at Melrose, a poor, largely black and underperforming school in a low-ranked district.

"They were absolutely wonderful children," Greenwood said. "I think they actually performed better than they thought they would."

In fact, Greenwood said, the school's passage rate on the fourth-grade version of the LEAP test underwent a 10 percent uptick.

In Caddo Parish, Moran-Reimonenq said, a New Orleans student became valedictorian at one high school.

Royal treatment

By any measure, America opened its arms to its Katrina kids.

In addition to extra social workers and counselors called to duty and school-based buddy systems to help displaced children make friends, school districts around the country reported an extraordinary humanitarian outpouring.

The National Education Association raised $2 million and dispensed most of the cash to Gulf Coast states. Jefferson Parish received 1,000 tuxedos for prom night from a Jewish group in New York, and evacuee students in Caddo Parish were given $50 gift cards for Christmas shopping.

And in Baton Rouge and Houston, two closed schools were reopened solely for displaced children: Scotlandville Middle School and KIPP: New Orleans West Prep.

At both, academics merged with a communal sense of loss among teachers and students devastated by the storm.

"What I went through, these kids went through, too," said Doreyon Jeff, 15, an eighth-grader from eastern New Orleans who finished the year at KIPP. "They understand where I'm coming from. I've made friends with mostly everybody here."

Erin King, 23, an LSU education major, dropped out of college her senior year to help run a makeshift school in a trailer park in Baker set up for evacuees.

From a tent without air conditioning to a cramped trailer, King, even after suffering a miscarriage in December, worked with children whose parents had not sent them to a public school or those who had been expelled.

"I felt like God was calling me to do more," said King, who has since returned to LSU to study psychology and pursue a career in social work. "I have a heart for kids."

Such compassion also motivated Boylston, a former New Orleans teacher who has since made it her mission to help relocated students.

After posting an emotional online plea for her students shortly after Katrina, Boylston secured two scholarships for New Orleans students to the elite Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Conn., which had contacted her through the Internet posting.

The 400-acre school, where tuition runs $37,000 per year, boasts an average class size of 12 with 240 available courses, a $200 million-plus endowment and an alumni roster that includes former President Kennedy and has recently included wealthy children such as Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka.

Hall monitor

Into that world walked Johari Antoine, a 10th-grader at Warren Easton, who said she was impressed with Choate Rosemary Hall's diversity, cleanliness, array of classes and the sense of independence it helped instill within her.

"When I first saw it, I was like, 'Wow, it's like a college campus,' " she said. "I wouldn't expect a high school to be like this."

Classes in acting, ceramics and media studies caught the attention of the 15-year-old, who said the school also introduced her to lacrosse, a sport she had never heard of.

Still, Antoine admits she struggled academically and missed the parties, marching bands and cheerleaders that would have shaped her high school life in New Orleans.

"You get depressed here sometimes," she said. "I don't think New Orleans prepared us to go away. It was a big challenge. When I was in New Orleans, I thought I was so smart, but then I got here and was like, 'Wow, I have to really work for these grades.' "

Though Choate Rosemary Hall officials would not return calls for comment, Boylston said the school did not offer Antoine a second year under the scholarship because of her academic troubles.

It was news the teenager didn't take too hard. "I really don't think it was the place for me," said Antoine, who returned to New Orleans in June. "I really want to go back and be with my family."

The other New Orleans teenager Boylston got into the school was asked to leave in the fall after failing to show enough "academic discipline," Boylston said.

While community compassion eased the devastation for many students and parents, the displaced also had the law on their side.

Given teeth by the 2001 passage of the sweeping No Child Left Behind Act, the McKinney-Vento Act guarantees homeless families a free, easily attainable education.

The act calls for homeless children to be immediately enrolled and provided transportation without the typical required paperwork, that they not be segregated from other students and that each school system appoint a worker to oversee that population.


A different world

For the unknown number of students who find their way back to New Orleans, further change is inescapable.

The system that reopens later this summer is essentially a different world from the one families fled.

The state now controls the vast majority of the city schools, a burgeoning charter school movement has taken hold and yet another superintendent has taken the reins.

Of the 128 schools in the city, 107 were taken over in November by the state, which plans to open an additional 32 campuses this fall on top of the 25 that have reopened since Katrina.

Of the nearly 60,000 students in the district before Katrina, about 12,500 returned to classes in New Orleans after the storm and state officials say they will be ready for about 34,000 in the fall.

In addition, only four schools remain under control of the Orleans Parish School Board, and charter schools, free from centralized bureaucracy, now dominate the city's educational landscape.

Some officials tout the transformation as a first-of-its kind experiment in the country.

"It's taken (the district's) destruction to motivate action that is long overdue," said Michael Grimes, chairman of LSU's sociology department.

Many educators and officials agree that Katrina has given New Orleans perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime chance to finally reverse decades of decline.

"We are at the threshold," Grimes said. "The opportunity is there."

In the meantime, Boylston said, opportunity can also be found in Katrina's upheaval of so many young lives.

"It's got potential to crack their world wide open and let them know there are other places they can go and live," she said.

"The silver lining is one we may see in the future, that they will realize they had an opportunity to see the world is bigger than the street they grew up on."

[Audrey2Katrina]

Map of Katrina and Rita Displaced Students:

http://www.nola.com/katrina/pdf/schools_071606.pdf

[Audrey2Katrina]

Planner: Get an outsider to lead recovery

Others say council needs to step up

Sunday, July 16, 2006 TP/NOLA.com
By Michelle Krupa

New Orleans needs a rebuilding czar, ideally someone without ties to the city, who can spearhead the stymied recovery process and exercise final authority over the nuts-and-bolts rules of how residents can return home, an internationally renowned urban planner told a citizens advocacy group Saturday.

Ed Blakely, an urban affairs professor who led recovery efforts after Oakland's 1988 earthquake and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, said success in those and other massive rebuilding efforts resulted from leaders' swift action, sometimes laying out recovery plans within 24 hours of a disaster, and their willingness to install a single chief to guide a comprehensive plan "so that you're not moving home by home."

"It should not be a local person," said Blakely, who paid his own way from his home in Australia to address the African-American Leadership Project's summit in Central City. "They (should) have no baggage, but they have to have a real human touch to know where people are coming from."


Blakely said such a leader would be less likely to be influenced by historical, cultural and political factors that can sway the decisions of local residents on issues including which geographic areas, if any, should be off limits to rebuilding.

"Everyone should be allowed to rebuild. But that doesn't necessarily mean everyone should be allowed to rebuild in exactly the same place they built before," he said, noting that property rights derive not from individuals but from the government.

Jeffrey Lowe, an analyst schooled in the planning theory of New Urbanism who also participated in the summit, said it also is crucial that goals for rebuilding be defined clearly by the City Council, which he and AALP leaders agreed has let its authority over the recovery wane since Aug. 29 storm.

"The City Council needs to act," Lowe said. "They're the ones that the citizens elected collectively."

Mtangulizi Sanyika, the AALP's project manager, criticized the council for taking a back seat in the recovery effort since Katrina and for frequently failing to step in when Mayor Ray Nagin has made conflicting statements about the process or remained silent on some issues, such as exactly which sections of eastern New Orleans may be situated on dangerously low ground.

"There has been a lack of process from Day 1," he said. "From the beginning, the city of New Orleans has acted paralyzed. . . . We've gotten so many mixed messages that we are thoroughly confused."

Sanyika suggested, for instance, that the council adopt a formal definition of "a low-lying neighborhood," as well as catalog, once and for all, which neighborhoods will be allowed to rebuild in their pre-Katrina locations. Such action also could help dispel the notion among some displaced residents that their intentions are being ignored, he said.

"The perception is that business has become the predominant stakeholder and that the citizens' interest has become secondary," Sanyika said.

Blakely said the city needs a clear, systematic approach to rebuilding. But he also acknowledged that New Orleans is a facing challenge of immeasurable scope.

"This may be the most unique rebuild in the history of the world," he said.

[Audrey2Katrina]

SHERIFF JACK STRAIN is STICKING TO HIS GUNS

him in the end, he says

Sunday, July 16, 2006 TP/NOLA.com
By Paul Rioux
St. Tammany bureau

In his 10 years as St. Tammany Parish's top cop, Sheriff Jack Strain has sought to burnish his law-and-order reputation by drawing a line in the sand along the Lake Pontchartrain shoreline, vowing to protect his constituents from the threat of "spillover crime" from New Orleans.

The tough-talking sheriff has occasionally taken jabs at the Crescent City's legal system for "coddling criminals."

Strain also has drawn a sharp contrast between the willingness of north shore residents to cooperate with police and a New Orleans public that he says too often turns a blind eye to crime.

After Hurricane Katrina brought thousands of storm evacuees to St. Tammany from the south shore, Strain's rhetoric became more heated, coming to a full boil after four people were shot to death June 27 near Slidell in what he called a drug-related, "gangland-style execution."

In a TV interview the next day, Strain lamented the influx of "thugs and trash from New Orleans" and said people with dreadlocks or "chee wee" hairstyles similar to descriptions of the two gunmen could "expect to be getting a visit from a sheriff's deputy."

The NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union cried foul, saying Strain had crossed the line into unconstitutional racial profiling. The groups called for a federal investigation and demanded that Strain retract his statements.

Clearly surprised by the backlash, Strain has refused to back down, saying his words have been taken out of context to manufacture a controversy.

"I'm trying to solve a horrible murder, and the way you do that is by looking for people who match the description of the suspects," he said in an interview last week.

"It baffles me how some people either can't understand that or choose not to."

Occurring just four days before Strain's 10th anniversary as sheriff, the quadruple killing was the deadliest crime in St. Tammany Parish that anyone in local law enforcement could remember.

The killings alarmed residents who are increasingly voicing concerns that the parish is approaching a post-Katrina crossroads as it faces the twin challenges of managing growth and keeping a lid on crime.

The popular sheriff now finds himself squarely in the eye of the storm, deflecting allegations of racism while addressing his constituents' rising anxieties.


Backed by electorate


The defiant stance Strain has taken mirrors the disdain he has often displayed for scrutiny by watchdog groups and the news media, often dismissing criticism by pointing out that he is ultimately accountable to voters.

The sheriff also has had high-profile squabbles with other elected officials in the parish, usually centering on competition for scarce tax money.

But Strain has enjoyed strong support from voters since he was elected in 1995. He was re-elected without opposition in 1999 and trounced two challengers in 2003 to win a third term with 79 percent of the vote.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the sheriff's popularity is that his tough, crime-fighting rhetoric is backed by results.

Since Strain took office, annual reports to the FBI show, crime has remained essentially flat in St. Tammany while the population ballooned 25 percent from about 175,000 in 1996 to 216,000 last year. Thousands more people have resettled in St. Tammany since Katrina.

During Strain's tenure, the Sheriff's Office has maintained a solve rate of nearly 60 percent for major crimes, which is more than double the national average, according to FBI statistics. And in the biggest cases, deputies have always gotten their suspects -- at least so far.

Of the 78 killings that have occurred in unincorporated areas of St. Tammany since Strain took office, the Sheriff's Office has solved all of them except the four from last month's slaughter in a trailer park north of Slidell.

Strain, who prides himself on his perfect record solving killings, has released few details about the case.

"I will say this: I can guarantee that whoever did this can rest assured that this Sheriff's Office will be dogging them for the rest of their lives," he said.


Comparisons to Harry Lee


Strain's comments about targeting people with hairstyles commonly worn by African-Americans have drawn comparisons to Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee's infamous vow 20 years ago to stop any "young blacks driving a rinky-dink car" in white neighborhoods.

"If you live in a predominantly white neighborhood, and two blacks are in a car behind you, there's a pretty good chance they're up to no good," Lee said in 1986 after a rash of robberies in which shoppers were followed home and held up at gunpoint in their driveways.

The comments set off a firestorm of criticism and drew national media attention, prompting Lee to apologize and rescind the order the next day.

Although Lee later called it "the lowest moment of my life," the flap might have helped save his career. Some political observers said it re-established his law-and-order credentials with voters who were outraged by revelations that Lee had let a convicted rapist out of jail to walk the streets unsupervised during daytime hours in 1985 as a favor to another elected official.

Similarly, it appears that many St. Tammany residents don't fault Strain for saying in an interview with WDSU-TV, "If you're going to walk the streets of St. Tammany Parish with dreadlocks and chee wee hairstyles, then you can expect to be getting a visit from a sheriff's deputy."

Internet chat rooms targeting parish residents have been buzzing with praise for the sheriff.

"It is time for the rest of the metro area to wake up and realize Strain is right. Look like a criminal, get treated like a criminal," a poster identified as TruthCaptain wrote Tuesday in a typical comment posted in a forum on http://www.nola.com, which is affiliated with the Times-Picayune.

But another poster on the same forum responded by pointing out that six of the top eight suspects on Strain's "most wanted" list are white.

"If the sheriff were serious about crime like he says, then he would have made a similar statement about white men with blond hair and blue eyes," a poster identified as dhoward24 wrote. "It seems it was OK for the white guys to commit their crimes, but when someone black committed a crime, now it's time for the name-calling and the bad attitude."


Mayors offer support

James Lavigne, the longtime mayor of Pearl River, said he doesn't think the controversy will hurt Strain politically.

"I bet 95 percent of the people agree with every word he said," Lavigne said.

Strain even got some sympathy from an old adversary, Slidell Mayor Ben Morris, whom Strain defeated in a heated runoff in 1995.

"I can understand his frustration and anger," said Morris, who served three terms as Slidell's police chief before being elected mayor. "We have enough to deal with without worrying about garbage coming over here to deal drugs and commit murders."

He said Strain shares Lee's reputation for bluntly speaking his mind.

"They both could probably word things a little more carefully," Morris said. "But who am I to talk? I've been accused of that myself."

But not everyone sees Strain's comments as well-intentioned, if not artfully worded.

Annie Spell, president of the Covington branch of the NAACP, said she has received calls from residents who feel intimidated by Strain's remarks.

"When you start trashing people who live in public housing and say you're going to go after people because of their hairstyle, I'd say that's a pretty clear attempt to intimidate them," she said. "His words have had a real chilling effect on a lot of the people I've talked to."


Up from Abita Springs

Strain was hardly one of the favorites when he elbowed his way into a record field of 10 candidates for St. Tammany Parish sheriff in 1995.

As police chief in Abita Springs, the parish's fourth-largest municipality, Strain was up against two high-ranking Sheriff's Office officials, former U.S. Attorney John Volz and Morris -- who both outspent him.

Strain, then 32, shed his childhood nickname "Boo Boo" but still sought to capitalize on his youth, energy and engaging personality to connect with voters, running a shoe-leather campaign that played to north shore residents' law-and-order sensibilities.

After a narrow runoff victory, Strain's popularity soared as he kept crime in check despite the parish's population explosion.

In 1998, an anonymous St. Tammany businessman led an effort to supplement Strain's $75,000 annual salary with privately raised money.

The idea was nixed by the state attorney general's office, which cited a law that sets the salaries of sheriffs based on the parish's population. But Strain's secret admirers revealed the public's growing affinity for the new sheriff.

In 1999, Strain quietly changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, breaking with his family's political roots a year after St. Tammany became the first majority Republican parish in the state.

The unannounced switch was in keeping with Strain's preference to keep a low profile politically, said Mike Stevens, secretary of the Northshore Republican Men's Club.

"I'm more likely to run into him at Sam's Club than a Republican function," Stevens said. "He's not very active politically."


Confronting the church


But when it comes to fighting crime, Strain has never been bashful about taking a public stand, even if it means a confrontation with the Catholic church.

In 2002, Strain took a hard-line approach with the Archdiocese of New Orleans in demanding that it hand over any allegations of sexual assault by priests.

Strain sent a letter to Archbishop Alfred Hughes questioning reports that Hughes reserved the right to evaluate complaints of criminal sexual misconduct by priests or other church employees before referring them to police for investigation.

"As a lifelong Catholic and faithful Christian, I have the utmost respect for the institutions, hierarchy and traditions of the church," Strain wrote. "But as a career law enforcement official, I also hold the law in high regard. Indeed, while the laws of Almighty God supersede the law of man, the traditions of the Catholic Church do not."

In response, Hughes turned over a criminal allegation against an unnamed church official and changed archdiocesan policy to explicitly order church officials to notify law enforcement authorities every time such complaints are received.

The Sheriff's Office closed an investigation into the allegations after determining that any wrongdoing would have occurred in New Orleans.


Pyramid scheme


One of the darkest moments in Strain's tenure occurred in 2000, when 51 of his deputies were involved in an illegal pyramid scheme.

Participants in the Friends and Family Private Gifting Program each put up $2,200 to enter a 15-player "gifting board," with a promise of a $16,000 payoff if they recruited enough new members.

Strain said little publicly about the scandal, leaving residents to choose from two embarrassing possibilities: Either the deputies knowingly broke the law or they didn't realize the classic Ponzi scheme was illegal.

The district attorney's office declined to prosecute the participants, saying it would be impractical.

Strain issued two-day suspensions to 17 deputies who made a combined $100,000, which they agreed to donate to charity. The remaining deputies lost money and received citations in their personnel files.

Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a watchdog group, sent a letter to Strain asking him to investigate allegations that high-ranking officers had pressured their subordinates to participate.

Strain responded with a sarcastic letter that concluded, "Have a nice day, and may you never want for windmills at which to joust."

Goyeneche could not be reached for comment Friday. But in an interview at the time, he said Strain's response "smacks of some type of cover-up on his part to me, and it appears he is not really trying hard to get to the bottom of this."

A year later, Strain sent another testy letter to Goyeneche about the crime commission's investigation of alleged irregularities at one of the parish's fire departments.

"There you go again," Strain said in the letter. "Please be reminded that you are neither licensed nor commissioned to conduct investigations into alleged crime in St. Tammany Parish."

The responses are indicative of Strain's contempt for what he once labeled "unelected, self-appointed, so-called watchdog groups."

Strain dismissed the recent criticism from the NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union as "shameful political grandstanding," saying he is answerable to voters.

"I believe the people support the job we're doing. If not, they have the right to choose a new sheriff," said Strain, who will be up for re-election next year.

Joe Cook, executive director of the Louisiana chapter of the ACLU, said Strain's highest allegiance ought to be to the rule of law.

"I think it's absolutely unconscionable that someone who is sworn to uphold the Constitution would target people based on their hairstyles, the color of their skin or where they're from," he said. "He accuses us of grandstanding, but this is serious business when you have a law enforcement officer talking about violating the law."


Failed tax proposals


Strain has had mixed results in turning his popularity into voter support for new taxes to benefit the Sheriff's Office.

Although he spearheaded a successful campaign in 1998 for a sales-tax increase to finance a $19.4 million expansion at the parish jail, voters in 2002 and 2004 rejected his requests for new taxes that would have generated nearly $8 million a year for deputy raises and general operating expenses.

Many municipal officials in St. Tammany opposed the tax proposals, saying the raises might spark a bidding war over police officers. They also said they feared the parishwide taxes would make it harder for cities and towns to generate tax revenue to meet other pressing needs.

After the 2002 tax defeat, Strain, angered by the municipal opposition, announced that he would seek reimbursement from the parish's cities and towns for $150,000 in overtime pay for deputies who help with crowd and traffic control at Carnival parades.

But before the parades rolled, a compromise was reached in which the parish's police departments agreed to deploy officers to parades in one another's jurisdictions to cut down on the number of deputies needed.

Two years later, Strain found himself in a similar showdown, this time with his constituents.

In August 2004, a month after voters overwhelmingly rejected a quarter-cent sales tax for the Sheriff's Office, Strain announced sweeping cutbacks, including the elimination of all 22 crossing guards assigned to schools in unincorporated areas of the parish.

The backlash was strong and immediate, as parents accused the sheriff of jeopardizing their children's safety to make a political point. The next day, Strain reversed his decision to pull the crossing guards and announced an agreement to split the costs with the school system.


Not immune to critics


The about-face revealed that Strain is not impervious to criticism, especially when it comes from voters. And in an interview last week, he acknowledged that the current uproar has taken a toll on him.

"Welcome to the worst day of my life," he said. "Well, maybe not the worst, but one of the worst."

Strain said he doesn't enjoy being the center of controversy. But in his next breath, the brash cop was back as he reiterated his refusal to give an inch when it comes to doing whatever he believes necessary to protect the public.

"If that hurts the feelings of the ACLU and NAACP, they can go elsewhere," he said. "I have some suggestions, but I'd rather tell them in person."

[Audrey2Katrina]

Insurgent assessor learning the ropes

Early efforts to change system meet resistance

Sunday, July 16, 2006 TP/NOLA.com
By Gordon Russell
Staff writer

Nancy Marshall's first reform as the assessor for the 6th Municipal District in New Orleans was a simple, if slightly painful, one.

She nearly tripled the valuation of her Lowerline Street home, boosting her own tax bill by about $7,000 a year in the process. A bit of a bitter pill, considering that, as the only successful member of the "I.Q. Ticket" -- a slate working for the elimination of New Orleans' seven-assessor system -- she had already pledged to refuse her $90,000-plus salary and other perks of the job.

But if the first reform was easily accomplished, the bigger picture -- fixing a system that's widely acknowledged to be antiquated and unfair -- is a bit more of a challenge. It's more so given Marshall's awkward position as the lone advocate of radical change in an especially hidebound area of city government.

The clash of the old versus the new was evident at a recent meeting of the Board of Assessors, the bureaucratic name for the monthly gatherings of the seven assessors, which, though open to the public, have rarely attracted the public. In fact, the atypical presence of reporters at the board's two meetings since Marshall's election led longtime Assessor Claude Mauberret, whose family has held the 2nd District seat for more than a century, to grumble about "intimidation tactics."

In the past, there was little reason to attend meetings of a group whose fealty to tradition is highlighted by the dozens of yellowed portraits of past assessors that line the room. Their names are Degan and Heaton and Comiskey and Hickey and Mauberret; their respective tenures, listed beneath their pictures, are, in some cases impressively long.

Marshall walked into these clubby surroundings as an uninvited, and unwanted, guest. In her first few meetings with her peers, she has pushed hard for changes that she believes would allow the assessors to quickly and cheaply update much of the information on their rolls, efforts that have, not surprisingly, met with resistance.


Found wildly irregular


She and others who ran on the I.Q. ticket -- which stood for "I quit" -- seek a drastic overhaul of tax assessment practices in the city, which have been found to be wildly irregular. Step one is envisioned as elimination of six of the assessorships to streamline management and redirect money from salaries and perks for politicians to the hiring of professional appraisers. The further goal is more even-handed assessment practices.

To that end, Marshall's two top priorities coming in were to download onto the assessorial computer system two sets of data: the Multiple Listing Service, MLS, database used by real-estate agents, which contains both sales information and details about the size and nature of every house sold or listed by an agent in the past couple of decades; and a second database created by researchers at the University of New Orleans based on years of appraisals of homes in the city.

Both efforts are now under way, at least in Marshall's district -- but even that move has met with resistance.

When Marshall asked that the MLS data be downloaded onto the assessors' computer system, 7th District Assessor Henry Heaton, the board's president, fired off a letter instructing her to stand down. The system, the letter said, "is the entire Board of Assessors system and not each assessor's individual system to change or modify as he or she sees fit. . . . The quality of the data and the cost of maintaining that data must be approved by our Board, and it must benefit every assessor equally."

The letter added, however, that there was no reason Marshall or any other assessor couldn't download information onto the computers in his or her own office.

But the assessors raised other concerns about the MLS data: Was it accurate? Do real-estate agents actually measure the houses they sell?


Size, location, value


Marshall acknowledges that the MLS data base is imperfect and incomplete but points out that it provides at least roughly consistent data about the relationship between size, location and value -- something that studies have found to be sorely lacking in New Orleans. Instead, past practices have been tainted by political favoritism and a tendency to automatically underassess properties that have not changed hands for a while.

Fifth District Assessor Tom Arnold was among those who questioned using the real estate industry data: "The problem with the MLS is the measurements. It's very important that we have accurate measurements for equalization. But when you sell a house, the Realtor asks, 'How big is your house?' And I say '2,600 square feet,' and that's what they put down."

Marshall fired back that having data that could be assumed to be at least reasonably accurate was better than none at all.

In the end, a compromise was struck. Marshall was cleared to do a pilot project, under which the data will be downloaded into the system, but only for properties in the 6th District. Marshall plans to use the information as she prepares to conduct the reappraisal of all residential property that the Louisiana Tax Commission ordered the assessors to perform.

"She can do whatever she wants to do, as long as it won't affect everything else," Arnold said. "I have a feeling what will happen is that we'll find the problems and the good points, and then we'll work it out."

Because of Katrina, the date of the mandatory reassessment was pushed back. It's now due Aug. 1, 2007, giving Marshall a year. She thinks it's a deadline she can meet.


Reduce seven to one


In the meantime, New Orleans residents will be voting Nov. 7 on an amendment to the state Constitution that would reduce the seven assessors to one -- essentially, the change that Marshall and her cohorts on the I.Q. ticket were trying to accomplish using another tack.

But even if the change wins the majority both within New Orleans and statewide that is required for passage, the system is not slated for change until 2010.

That means Marshall's effort to bring real science to the reassessment could be significant. It's possible -- likely, perhaps -- that many residents of the 6th District who have been underassessed for years will see big jumps in their appraisals.

"People want to know, 'Will my taxes go up?' " Marshall said. "What can I say to them, when we have a house on Garden Lane assessed at $30,000?"

It's also possible that if Marshall's reappraisal shows a big change overall -- and those of her six counterparts don't -- that the Tax Commission could order another reassessment. In a sense, Marshall's reassessment is likely to become the yardstick against which the others are measured.

The 6th District pilot project could also help shed light on precisely what must be done to modernize the city's tax rolls. The Board of Assessors has been pitching a plan under which a private firm would be hired to collect data on all parcels and buildings in the city.

The downside of that plan: It could cost as much as $12 million, and it's not clear where the money would come from.


Huge amount of legwork


Marshall is hoping that the other sources of data will prove sufficient to assess property scientifically. In theory, the two databases could provide detailed measurements and values for tens of thousands of homes. Those numbers could then be used to estimate values for the homes not in the databases.

Still, she acknowledges, doing so will require a huge amount of legwork. Someone will still have to visit every property -- or at least all of those not in the database -- to estimate size and to appraise condition.

That's one reason cutting back to one assessor is important, Marshall and other advocates of the concept say: Getting rid of the salaries and benefits for the extra six assessors would free up enough money to hire a veritable army of field workers and appraisers.

As a for-instance, Marshall is about to hire a well-qualified appraiser using part of the salary she decided to forgo. She figures she can hire two more workers with what's left.

In total, her office has only three employees, all of them veterans -- and all of them "excellent," she hastens to add. But the point is simple: By skipping the salary, she will be able to double the staff. And that, in turn, will make completing the reappraisal a more attainable goal.

Though Marshall is clearly out of place in the political world, her entry into it hasn't been completely abrasive. She has tried to be respectful of her colleagues, even as she deplores the system they inhabit, and they've tried to offer help to her, knowing that she wants to do away with their jobs.

"I feel like I'm not a person who wants to make things awkward," she said. "I'll just stay the course and do what I need to do."

Arnold views the situation similarly. Things on the fourth floor may not be the way they used to be, he said, but they're not unpleasant, either.

"There's a guy who ran against me (I.Q. ticket candidate Ron Mazier) and I beat and now he comes to every meeting," Arnold said.

"But I'm not a vindictive person. I respect the fact that she won the election. One thing you have to learn in politics, if you take it personal, it'll put you in the hospital. So I never take it personal. It's strictly business."

[Audrey2Katrina]

The New Orleans Times Picayune:

EDITORIAL: Counting on corps reform

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Louisiana urgently needs hurricane protection and coastal restoration projects contained in the Water Resources Development Act, and for that reason alone it's critical for Congress to move on this long-delayed measure.

But Louisiana's fortunes are also tied, for better or worse, to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Efforts to reform the agency are critical for this state, which -- after the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina -- could serve as the poster child for the corps' shortcomings.

Congress is four years overdue in adopting a new water resources bill, in part because of disagreements over corps reform. But the Senate is expected to vote on the measure this week, and Sens. Mary Landrieu and David Vitter need to do more than push for crucial Louisiana projects. They need to push for changes that will make the corps a better, more responsible agency in the future.

The best chance for changing the way the corps operates is through reforms sought by Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold. They're offering two amendments to the water resources bill. One would establish independent review of corps projects from planning and design to construction. The other would require corps projects to be ranked in importance based on three national priorities: flood and storm damage reduction, navigation and environmental restoration.

While the McCain-Feingold amendments won't fix everything that's wrong with the corps, Louisiana stands to benefit from both proposed changes.

The catastrophic failure during Katrina of canal floodwalls built by the corps is Exhibit A in the case for independent review. If such a process had been in place, surely subsidence wouldn't have been discounted when New Orleans' levee system was being built, and research on soil strength wouldn't have been ignored.

Louisiana also should fare better under a system that uses criteria other than political clout to decide which projects should be done. The corps already has a $58 billion project backlog -- an amount that will grow by another $10 billion if the water resources bill is adopted. That means competition for the $2 billion per year that the corps gets for projects is intense.

Without a rational system for prioritizing that work, there's no guarantee that Louisiana's critically needed flood control project will prevail even over less-needed or justified projects. While there's a danger that a Louisiana project could be pushed aside in a priority-based system, this state is helped by the fact that the McCain-Feingold approach favors projects that reduce flood damage and restore the environment.

The effectiveness of the proposed changes will depend on details. If an independent review panel isn't given adequate time to evaluate a project, for example, the benefit of oversight could be lost. Conversely, a cumbersome review process could end up further delaying badly needed projects.

But an independent review process that works, combined with a ranking policy that makes sense, should result in a better-performing agency.

Unfortunately, not everyone in Congress is interested in changing the way the corps does business. The McCain-Feingold amendments face opposition and a rival set of measures by the main authors of the water resources bill, Sens. James Inhofe and Kit Bond.

What those senators offer as reform is meaningless, however. The Inhofe-Bond review process would be controlled by the corps and would only apply to projects that exceed $100 million, compared to a $40 million threshold in the McCain-Feingold measures. The Inhofe-Bond amendments also call for prioritization, but their system would simply measure projects against a set of national priorities without actually ranking them.

Sham reform won't do anything to restore confidence in the corps, and Congress must do better. The public should be able to rely on the agency that builds levees and dams to do work that will stand up to independent scrutiny. Taxpayers shouldn't have to wonder if there's a rational basis for spending billions of dollars.

And Louisianians should be able to believe that the corps, which is rebuilding our levee system and restoring our coastline, is a wiser, better managed and more reliable agency than the one that failed us when Hurricane Katrina came to town.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Council: Rebuild before program kicks in

St. Bernard to adopt FEMA elevation rules

Sunday, July 16, 2006 TP/NOLA.com
By Karen Turni Bazile

St. Bernard Parish council members told property owners who think their homes are more than 50 percent damaged from Hurricane Katrina to start rebuilding within the next few weeks if they don't want to be forced to elevate their houses at least 3 feet off the ground.

About 150 people packed a town meeting at the St. Bernard Parish Council office Saturday where state and federal officials encouraged residents to build to the new elevation advisories when possible.

However, Paul Rainwater of the Louisiana Recovery Authority said the agency would still make rebuilding grants available to owners who start repairs before Louisiana's Road Home program officially begins, no matter what the elevation of their structure is. The program awards home construction and buyout grants of up to $150,000 minus insurance proceeds.


"We're not going to penalize pioneers who wanted to get started early because they wanted to move back," said Rainwater, who is the director of LRA's intergovernmental affairs and the hazard mitigation program.

St. Bernard Parish Councilman Craig Taffaro said the council objects to the elevations being recommended by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that require owners of substantially damaged structures to build to current flood elevation levels plus an additional 3 feet if they want to get LRA grants.

However, possibly within the next few weeks, the LRA will force the parish to adopt those elevation requirements for new homes or substantially damaged ones.

"Get it started," Taffaro told the crowd. "Once you have started you are in compliance. If you sell, that compliance (that allows you to get flood insurance) stays with the property unless it gets substantially damaged in the future."

To be certain of compliance, Mike Hunnicutt, the parish director of community development, said residents should file for a permit with his office to be able to prove they have started work.

Hunnicutt said just putting on a new roof and cleaning the property won't count as starting repairs in the eyes of federal officials monitoring construction for flood insurance elevation issues.

State and federal officials encouraged residents to build safer and smarter.

"When the Road Home program officially starts, applicants who qualify as having more than 50 percent damage will be required to follow the (new elevations) to get the grant," Rainwater said.

Of 90,000 applicants statewide, about 13,500 are from St. Bernard.

The parish is being forced to adopt the FEMA guidelines because residents who don't comply once the program starts wouldn't be eligible for grants and the parish would lose up to $11.3 million in hazard mitigation grants, Rainwater said.

Rainwater said owners who can fix their structurally sound but hurricane-damaged homes for less than 50 percent of the pre-Katrina value won't be forced to raise their homes.

For information about the Road Home program, call (888) 762-3252 or visit http://www.louisianarebuilds.org.

[Audrey2Katrina]

RISING ABOVE RUINS

Their school no longer stands, but teachers and alumni of the 9th Ward bedrock still have vivid memories to share

Sunday, July 16, 2006 TP/NOLA.com
By Gwen Filosa
Staff writer

had the teachers, the principal and the name tags, along with at least 250 alumni dressed in their reunion best. A dance floor just begged for the music to start while drinks and food flowed as easily as the conversations among old friends.

Hugs and cheers filled a reception hall in eastern New Orleans as graduates of Alfred Lawless Senior High gathered Saturday for a party. Uniformed waiters circled the floor with trays of fried catfish bites and bacon-wrapped scallops.

The only thing missing was the school, which stands shattered and abandoned in the Lower 9th Ward, a victim of Hurricane Katrina with more history than future.

More than 10 months after the storm's floodwaters devastated the neighborhood, Lawless High, which opened in 1964, exists mostly in the minds of those who grew up within its walls and of people like Jackie Mahatha, a longtime teacher who served as its last principal before Katrina struck.

Whether the school, which included grades eight through 12 and had the mythological mascot of "The Pythian Warrior," will ever reopen is unclear. Before the storm, it had 800 students and 64 faculty.

"They're not saying anything," Mahatha said of the state and local officials running a post-storm district of mostly charter schools. "But Lawless was the cornerstone of that community. If the community comes back, so will the school, and I think the community is going to come back. The Lower 9 will never be the same again, but the people will always be the same."

Retired teacher Henry Baptiste said: "Not in the near future. It will be a while before that is rebuilt."


Connecting with pals


But Saturday's reunion, held at the elegant Southern Oaks Plantation off Hayne Boulevard, was a high-spirited event, with several speakers, most of them former teachers, gently scolding the guests for talking during the brief program.

The table talk was pure post-Katrina. Many of the guests had traveled from cities and towns in Texas, Georgia and Louisiana to a city that most were forced to flee last year.

"Are you in Houston too?" longtime economics teacher Geri Davis asked another guest as the crowd filed into the reception hall. Gonzales, the West Bank and Baton Rouge are other common post-Katrina homes for alumni.

Throughout the room, old classmates caught up with one another, finding out who lives where, who has a FEMA trailer, who is rebuilding and who has moved on. Many alumni had lived in eastern New Orleans, Gentilly or the Lower 9th Ward, all among the city's hardest-hit neighborhoods.

Shekinah Anderson, 22, a 2002 graduate, spent three days at the Superdome before evacuating the city for Houston. His Holy Cross house destroyed and his possessions gone, Anderson said he will study music education at a Houston college.

"The football games," Anderson said, when asked about his favorite Lawless memories. "Watching them from the back benches."


Honoring the dead


Lawless is just one building in the Lower 9th Ward, where the few residents who have returned struggle with a lack of basic city services and sprawling debris still littering every block.

"I am working and fighting for you all every day," City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis told the audience. "So you all pray for me. Your treasures and your possessions are all on sacred ground in the city of New Orleans. And the world recognizes that."

Others who had lived outside New Orleans pre-Katrina said the reunion was one of the few ways they can keep in contact with old friends now.

"Everybody's displaced, and when you come back, you can't visit like you would normally," said Nefertimah Kelly, 39, a 1985 Lawless graduate who has lived in Dallas for the past 15 years, working as a clinical social worker.

The grief and loss that Katrina caused did not eclipse the event's jovial mood and fond memories. But alumni did pause to honor their dead. Kendricka Smooth, a recent Lawless graduate, her sister Kendra Smooth, 16, and Doneika Lewis, 15, all drowned with their aunt Ersell Smooth, 33, in the Lower 9th Ward after the levees broke.

"I hope I can get through this," Lawless history teacher Katrena Ndang said as she read their names. "I agonized over this, but I want you to keep it upbeat."

Ndang was among the Orleans Parish schoolteachers who lost their jobs when the district laid off most teachers after the hurricane.


Planting memories


Alumni wrote down their favorite memories of Lawless on postcards. A stack of them will be buried today on the ruined campus.

Many of the memories honor the 36-year tenure of principal Shirley Taylor, now 80, who was unable to make Saturday's event because of illness, organizers said.

"Ms. Taylor's voice of God on the intercom," said Albert Conley, class of 1998. "No matter where you were in the Lower 9, you knew the voice of Ms. Shirley Taylor."

Taylor was known for using the intercom as a bully pulpit and as a way to interrupt any foolishness going on outside. Her voice could be heard blocks away.

"She was a disciplinarian, a true disciplinarian," Mahatha said, recalling her first meeting with Taylor, whom she mistook for a custodian because Taylor was dressed down for summer break.

Despite her error, Mahatha said, Taylor hired her right away, telling her, " 'Look, you better not have no discipline problems, a big old girl like you.' "

The alumni and teachers plan to attend Franklin Avenue Baptist Church services today before touring the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood that once was home to 14,000.

Pastor Fred Luter, a Lawless alumnus, will lead the church service.


'Truly devastating'


Still largely vacant, despite a couple of dozen temporary trailers, the Lower 9th Ward remains a desolate sight. A few demolition crews were at work Saturday dismantling destroyed homes and buildings. Electricity and potable water are still not available in stretches north of Claiborne Avenue.

Lawless itself, in the 5300 block of Law Street, is in one of the hardest-hit parts of the neighborhood.

"It's truly devastating," Mahatha told the crowd Saturday. "But when you look at the building, you will look at what is inside. The spirit of the building will be there forever."

[Audrey2Katrina]

Hurricane Evacuation Tips

Hard-earned advice from the ultimate experts

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Here's a tip that we learned after being without power for weeks. We were running out of candles one night and noticed that those solar powered garden lights really lit the yard up. So we brought them inside and used them as "candles." We would put one in each room inside of an empty 2-liter bottle and they lasted for hours. They especially came in handy for the bathroom!

There was no need for batteries and no risk of children burning themselves. You just have to remember to place them outside the next day so they can recharge.

Pam Howell, Slidell

I learned from Hurricane Cindy something that assisted greatly with Hurricane Katrina. After the unpleasant task of cleaning out defrosted seafood and ice cream from the bottom of my freezer, I placed the contents of my refrigerator and freezer in black garbage bags and put the bags back in the appliance on my way out for Katrina.

If the electricity goes out -- everything will still be good.

If the electricity goes off and everything defrosts -- just hold your nose, pull out the bag and bring it to the can outside.

Donna Coons, Metairie

What did I do right that I will do again?

Use a two-phase evacuation plan. Two days before projected landfall, move to a short-term site west of Lafayette, monitor track, landfall and aftermath. In case of near miss (i.e., Ivan) make a quick return to NOLA. If direct hit (i.e., Katrina), proceed to secondary, long-term evacuation site.

Avoid hotels. Stay with family, friends, campgrounds, anything. Only as a last resort should you lock yourself into a box with nothing but two beds and non-stop cable news coverage of the hurricane.

When entertaining the kids on the road, keep talking. Never let them see you sweat. Pull over at every playground, bumper-car ride, snake farm or video arcade you pass. Keep looking at them in your rearview mirror and thank God that all that really matters in your world can fit into the seats of your car.

L.E. McNutt Jr., New Orleans

[Audrey2Katrina]

Mississippi GCN UPDATE 7/16/06

From gulfcoastnews.com

FEMA to use a site in Purvis to store FEMA trailers for a least another year...Several key milestones will occur next week regarding Biloxi's Katrina recovery...In the 10 months since Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29, Biloxi reports more than 122 permits for new homes have been issued. Biloxi lost nearly 6,000 structures, mostly homes, from Katrina. But that figure tells only a portion of the overall story of Biloxi’s recovery. Between Sept. 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006, the Community Development Dept. has issued nearly 12,000 construction and storm-related permits representing an estimated $475 million in construction...Gulfport delays adoption of tougher building codes for further study...Old Town Bay St. Louis is becoming a ghost town as redevelopment there is nearly at a standstill... The Mississippi Development Authority is asking for people to sign up for phase II of the Homeowner Grant program, which will include homeowners who suffered flooding even in the flood zones, but time is running out. The last day to apply for an appointment is July 21... FEMA reports that more than 101,000 people are housed in 37,582 FEMA-provided trailers...The Coast is on the cusp of recovery nearly 11 months after Hurricane Katrina. 7/16/06 8:53 AM

[Audrey2Katrina]

Special Report: Mobile could become aerospace mecca

Last Update: 7/14/2006 11:20:52 PM
NBC15.com


(Mobile, Ala.) July 14 - Mobile is in line to be the next aerospace mecca. To assist in that effort, state, county and city leaders are heading to Europe for the air show in London and to tour production facilities that could help shape Mobile's future. One single project could impact the region for generations to come.

The aerial tanker proposed by the EADS - Northrop Grumman team can refuel several planes simultaneously in flight. It can carry cargo, passengers or both and can also be used as a medevac aircraft.

"It's impressive as hell." said Ralph Crosby, the CEO and Chairman of EADS North America.

EADS and Northrop Grumman are hoping the U.S. Air Force selects their KC30 re-fueling tanker for its new tanker fleet.

"And hey it's our view Mobile has to win." added Crosby.

The KC30 tanker assembly and production plant would be located at Mobile's Brookley Complex. The body is based on an airbus plane; Northrop Grumman would then militarize it.

"Building big airplanes and turning them into tankers it isn't rocket science but it's pretty complex." said Crosby.

Crosby said he expects the Air Force to purchase 189 tankers at a cost of more than 100 million dollars each.

Mobile County Commissioner Stephen Nodine is on the European trip. To better understand what the Brookley plant might be like, Alabama Governor Bob Riley along with community leaders and elected officials from Mobile and Baldwin Counties are now on their way to tour several European EADS facilities.

They will also attend the London Air Show. Mobile County Commissioner Stephen Nodine will be there. "We're going to be establishing not just business ties, tourism ties but ties through suppliers and vendors that will support the KC30 project." he said. "There's no doubt the future of Mobile and the changing face of the economy is gonna be in this project."

If awarded the tanker project, the Mobile facility would provide one thousand high paying jobs. "These are very high tech jobs. You're taking the world's most modern aircraft, taking it from design and a bunch of components and turning it into a world class tanker." said Crosby.

Community leaders are optimistic the EADS/Northrop Grumman team will win the tanker project. "The airplane itself is first class and that's what the military wants. It's far superior to anything boeing has to offer." said Nodine.

The U.S. Air Force is expected to decide who will build its next generation tanker fleet by early 2007.

In the meantime, EADS subsidiary Airbus has already broken ground on its engineering center at Brookley. EADS executives say while this will create a wave, the air force project would create a tsunami.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Identity theft adds to post-Katrina woes

Military latest group to be touched by crime

By JOSHUA NORMAN
sunherald.com 7/16/06

For some, the question of identity theft can be existential, bringing into new light just how personal identity is defined.

For a Pass Christian resident named Catherine, who asked that her last name not be used because her and her children's personal information may still be for sale, identity theft is a new headache to add to the long list of post-Katrina woes.

Catherine was married to a Seabee until a few years ago, and she and her two children were still receiving medical benefits from the Navy when she received a disturbing letter from a Navy commander postmarked June 23.

"Recently, Navy Personnel Command learned that sensitive personal information belonging to you was released without authorization and placed on a publicly accessible Web site," the letter from Rear Adm. D.A. Gove read. "This Web site... included names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses among its data. Some 28,000 active-duty and reserve personnel and their families were affected by this unauthorized release."

At first, Catherine thought it was related to the infamous laptop theft in Maryland, in which the personal information of millions of military personnel disappeared into unknown hands and was later recovered.

Instead, it turned out to be a whole new case.

Catherine and the thousands of Navy personnel from this area and elsewhere affected by this are part of an ever-expanding group. Identity theft is such a rapidly growing crime it has spawned a whole new cottage industry - for those who steal and those who seek to protect people from the thieves - and there is little sign of this type of theft being a passing fad.

Naturally, the prospect of identity theft set off a bit of a panic, Catherine said, and left her feeling helpless and in the dark.

"I haven't heard anything from anybody" since that letter, Catherine said.

The letter advises her to contact one of three credit monitoring agencies, which Catherine did.

"I had to pay $129 to put an alert on my account," Catherine said, adding she did the same for her older child. "My (youngest child), they can't do anything about."

The younger child is a minor, and therefore cannot have credit, but Catherine said she is still worried because that child's personal information could be used to get cell phones and other items.

As far as she can tell, no one has used her information for wrongdoing, but Catherine said she is worried that can happen any time. This is why, she said, she plans to pay the credit-monitoring agency every year indefinitely, and when her younger child comes of age, she will begin paying more, because that child's personal information could be used at any time to wipe out any good financial standing.

In response to the rise in identity theft and the general lack of knowledge on its trends and effective methods of preventing it, Utica College in New York recently opened the Center for Identity Management and Information Protection, the first of its kind.

Professor Gary Gordon, executive director of CIMIP, said Catherine's case - in which a large pool of personal information is taken all at once - is not the most dangerous kind of identity theft right now, but may become so in the near future.

"There's been little evidence to show that people who have been parts of these groups have actually had their identity stolen," Gordon said. "Given the research we have to date, it tends to show that offline as opposed to online theft has been the root cause of identity theft. I don't think that's gonna stay that way."

A recent New York Times article says methamphetamine addicts - with their ability to root through garbage for pay stubs, focus on details and perform mundane tasks for long periods of time - are taking to identity-theft crimes for their large payouts.

Gordon said although this could be true, more organized criminals are beginning to take notice of the lucrative nature of identity theft, and that is why online identity thefts, like Catherine's, may start going up.

"There needs to be better ways in developing trust in transactions," Gordon said. To protect people like Catherine, the best method may be to ask for more proof that someone is who they say they are, such as asking for more than just Social Security numbers and birthdates Gordon said.

"The information is out there," Gordon said. "You can't necessarily pull it back. It's not tethered to anything. We need to build better means of authentication of individuals."

- FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION

What to do if your identity is stolen

• Place a "Fraud Alert" on your credit reports and review the reports carefully. The alert tells creditors to follow certain procedures before they open new accounts in your name or make changes to your existing accounts. The three nationwide consumer reporting companies have toll-free numbers for placing an initial 90-day fraud alert: call Equifax (1-800-525-6285), Experian (1-888-397-3742) and TransUnion (1-800-680-7289).

Placing a fraud alert entitles you to free copies of your credit reports.

• Look for inquiries from companies you haven't contacted, accounts you didn't openand debts on your accounts you can't explain.

• Close accounts. Close any accounts that have been tampered with or established fraudulently. Call the security or fraud department of each company where an account was opened or changed without your OK. Follow up in writing, with copies of supporting documents. Use the ID Theft Affidavit at ftc.gov/idtheft to support your written statement. Ask for verification that the disputed account has been closed and the fraudulent debts discharged. Keep copies of documents and records of your conversations about the theft.

• File a police report. File a report with law-enforcement officials to help you with creditors who may want proof of the crime.

• Report the theft to the Federal Trade Commission. Your report helps law-enforcement officials across the country in their investigations. Online: ftc.gov/idtheft. By phone: 1-877-ID-THEFT (438-4338) or TTY, 1-866-653-4261.

• You can have your Social Security number changed, but only if you have taken all of the above steps and can prove you are still being victimized.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How to protect your identity

• Shred financial documents and paperwork with personal information before you discard them.

• Protect your Social Security number. Don't carry your Social Security card in your wallet or write your Social Security number on a check. Give it out only if absolutely necessary or ask to use another identifier. Have it removed from your driver's license.

• Don't give out personal information on the phone, through the mail or over the Internet unless you know with whom you are dealing.

• Never click on links sent in unsolicited e-mail; instead, type in a Web address you know. Use firewalls, anti-spyware and anti-virus software to protect your home computer; keep them up to date. Visit OnGuardOnline.gov for more information.

• Don't use obvious passwords like your birth date, your mother's maiden name or the last four digits of your Social Security number.

• Keep your personal information in a secure place at home, especially if you have roommates, employ outside help or are having work done in or selling your house.

[Audrey2Katrina]

RITZY BEGINNINGS

Gautier theater goes for hometown appeal

By JAIMEE GOAD-BISHOP
SUN HERALD 7/16/06

GAUTIER - Carolyn Gaffney can't even answer a few questions about her new business - Ritz Theatre in Gautier - without being interrupted by the ringing phones.

"It's OK. We know when that phone rings, someone's calling to see what's playing."

Gaffney has been in high spirits since June 9, the day her dream of owning a hometown theater came true. But her good fortune didn't stop there.

"Business has been great. It seems like everyone from Jackson County and the surrounding counties are coming to see us," Gaffney said, laughing.

Gaffney said every weekend is bustling with families and couples coming to relax and enjoy the latest flick. To her surprise, her projectors have been rolling nonstop on the weekdays, too.

"We've got day-care groups coming in on the weekdays," she said. "We've got birthday parties booked back-to-back."

Gaffney said she knows the theater she now owns at the Singing River Mall has changed names quite a bit over the years, but she feels the recent business shows the Ritz Theatre is here to stay, because she's giving Jackson County what it wants.

"The corporations that came in were trying to run it like a big corporation and they didn't know what the community needed. I've lived in the community most of my life. I know what the community wants. They want a small-town theater," Gaffney said.

Gaffney says a small-town theater is close to home, plays the movies the community wants to see and the prices are affordable. Gaffney said she believes her theater is on the right track. Judging from the comments she gets from customers everyday, Gaffney would give the Ritz two thumbs up.

"Even after a month, we still have customers who are saying, 'Thank you for opening. We got tired of driving to see a movie.'

For movie listings, you can call the Ritz at 497-9993 or log onto its Web site at http://www.ritztheatregautier.com.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Donation a sweet sound to St. Stanislaus

By EMILY RANAGER
SUN HERALD 7/16/06

BAY ST. LOUIS - It's been a tough year for the St. Stanislaus marching band, but thanks to a Georgia high school, Rockachaw football halftime shows this fall won't pass by without flair.

A group of six parents and students from the Warner Robins High School band loaded up a van and flatbed trailer with 400 marching uniforms and other accoutrements and trekked about nine hours to the Coast on Friday.

The WRHS band just bought new uniforms after two years of saving for their $32,000 cost, booster club president David Byrd said. They wanted to give the old ones to a deserving school.

"We started looking around and found St. Stanislaus," he said. "Their school colors were the same as ours, so it was the right fit... We really felt for these guys."

St. Stanislaus band director Joe Council said the band lost all its uniforms and most of its instruments to Hurricane Katrina last August.

"We had had a football game that Friday night, and at that point no one was thinking much of the storm," he said. "I told the kids to just hang their jackets on their chairs and we'd take care of them on Monday... Of course, that's not what happened."

Council said because St. Stanislaus is a private school, it's been extremely difficult finding the money to replace band necessities such as uniforms, instruments and sheet music.

"It's through people like these coming down on their own time, their own energy and their own money that saves us," he said, adding people have donated a number of smaller instruments such as flutes and clarinets. "We're still trying to get the big equipment, but there's just no budget to be had."

Money or not, Council is trying to get the band program marching again, despite Katrina sending 75 members of the 90-student band to make music at schools elsewhere.

"It's people like this who wake me up at 8:00 in the morning to haul boxes that are going to get us where we need to be," he said.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Gulfport puts off building code, wants public involved

By JOSH NORMAN
sunherald.com 7/15/06

GULFPORT - The City Council met briefly Friday and voted to delay adopting the 2003 International Building Code for up to 60 days in order to have more time to review the code.

If the City Council had taken no action on the 2003 IBC by the end of the day Friday, then the city would have adopted the codes by default because of recent legislation passed in Jackson, said David Nichols, chief administrative officer.

The council voted 4-0 in favor of the resolution to put off adopting the code. Council members Brian Carriere, Jackie Smith and Gary Holliman were away and unable to make it back in time for the quickly scheduled meeting.

Council President Barbara Nalley said the council not only wanted to go over the code more thoroughly, but wanted the public to get involved in the debate.

"We want to put it on the agenda so the public can be fully aware of what's going on," Nalley said.

Nalley also said she bemoaned the fact that the city had taken no action on the 2003 IBC to that point, but no one at Friday's meeting seemed to have an explanation as to why nothing had been done.

"It came to my attention last week," Nichols said.

The 2003 IBC is more strict - and therefore sometimes makes buildings more expensive - than previous building codes in use in the city. Gulfport was one of the last cities on the Coast to take any action on building codes post-Katrina.

Part of the reason the city chose to not immediately adopt the 2003 IBC in full had to do with a building manufacturer who is producing seven or eight metal building shells for the city, Nichols said.

Those buildings are built with a wind rating of 110 mph, Nichols said, but the 2003 IBC requires they be built to a rating of 130 mph.

Mayor Brent Warr said he believes other cities on the Coast may be facing the same quandary.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Bucktown shrimpers cut adrift

By Kate Moran TP/NOLA.com 7/16/06
East Jefferson bureau


Katrina forced Bucktown shrimper Richard McNulty from his longtime berth on the 17th St. Canal

These days Norman Bordes wears a day-glo nylon vest to work, where he blends in with other inspectors overseeing the removal of storm debris from New Orleans. But something about the uniform is wrong - strident - as if he has put on the other team's jersey.

Before Hurricane Katrina, Bordes never expected to make a living anywhere but on Lake Pontchartrain. Like his brother, Peter, and their father before them, he harvested shrimp, crabs and black drum, unloading his catch at the Bucktown piers at the mouth of the 17th Street Canal.

Today he wears that nylon vest because he made the mistake of sheltering his boat behind the locks at Bayou Bienvenue as Katrina gathered strength at sea. When he returned, he found his boat wedged like a caterpillar tent in the trees.


Bordes is repairing his boat, but the historic Bucktown fishing fleet - the last one operating on the east bank of Jefferson Parish - is in shards after the storm, and its few remaining boats have lost their longtime berths in the 17th Street Canal. Shrimpers who inherited the trade from older generations are now working as carpenters, roofers and inspectors, and some of the older ones, lacking savings or insurance, might not return to the water at all.

"They are not going to get back into the business because the price on shrimp is dropping so bad, the fuel is skyrocketing and you can't hardly make it anymore," Bordes, 62, said of the old-timers. "Imports are killing the Louisiana market."

Forced from historic home


The problem is not simply loss of boats and want of capital. The Army Corps of Engineers is building a floodgate to segregate the weakened 17th Street Canal from the lake, a project that will seal the traditional passage to open water for the fleet's 25 or so boats. Widening and dredging of the canal displaced other fishers in years past, but the exile now appears to be total and permanent.

A core group has moved a mile west to the Bonnabel Boat Launch, a recreational boating site that the Jefferson Parish Council has converted to a temporary home for the fishers. In the mornings, shrimpers such as Walter "Bubie" Tarantino and Frank Wooley meet under the shade of the gazebo to chat as they keep up their boats in the lull between the brown and white shrimping seasons.

Meanwhile, Russell Boudreaux, a part-time fisher and professional firefighter, is working on a plan to reconstitute the fleet back in Bucktown, at a long-planned marina next to its old home at the mouth of the canal.

Jefferson Parish built the artificial harbor for the fishers when a previous restoration project dislodged them from the canal, but the water proved too shallow for their boats until the Coast Guard built a new patrol station there in 2001 and agreed to dredge the floor of the lake.

Nothing much has been built on the marina site since then. The shops and hotel rooms envisioned over the years by starry-eyed planners remain a mere chimera, resisted by Bucktown residents bent on preserving the rustic nature of their community.

Corps to pay some costs


Boudreaux and the others, far from seeking a marina fully loaded with a fuel station and hundreds of piers for commercial and recreational boaters, are hoping to build just 25 finger slips to replace what they lost when the corps booted them from the canal. The federal engineers have agreed to pay for construction of the slips.

Deanna Walker, who handles real estate acquisition for the corps, said the agency won't pay to buy land for the new marina but will replace the lost piers and help the fishers relocate their equipment. There are no estimates yet of the project's costs, but Walker said there is no cap on relocation expenses as long as the invoices the fishers submit are "actual, reasonable and necessary."

Some Bucktown fishers are now mooring at the Bonnabel launch for no charge. Boudreaux is exploring a cooperative endeavor by which the fleet would lease slips at the Bucktown marina from Jefferson Parish, which in turn leases the land from the state. The fleet previously held a lease in the 17th Street Canal with the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board.

Jefferson civic and political leaders are supporting the effort to build slips at the marina site. Mark Schexnayder, an agent with the Louisiana State University AgCenter, and Pete Chocheles, port manager at the Jefferson Economic Development Commission, investigated various sites for the fleet, including the Industrial Canal, before settling on the marina in the village that many of the fishers call home.

"They are a historic fleet and part of the Bucktown tradition," said Schexnayder, also a member of the Bucktown Citizens Advisory Board. "They are part of our connection with seafood in New Orleans."

Luring the boats back


Boudreaux says the Bucktown marina would draw back the shrimpers and crabbers who have decamped for the Rigolets, Delacroix Island and the north shore since Katrina tossed them from their ancestral home in the 17th Street Canal, which was lined for decades with fishing camps until the dredging imperative brought them down about 1990.

"Older fishermen before us lobbied to have this done. Now it is there for us to use," Boudreaux said of the marina.

Gerald Turan is one of those who still lives in Bucktown, but he won't do his fishing on the lake this year.

His boat survived Katrina after he pulled it deep into the Tchefuncte River, stocked with enough fuel and provisions to last three months. It took him 17 days to steer the skiff around the felled trees in the river, and when he finally reached the lake, he found a bounty of shrimp but no restaurants or markets where he could sell it.

"When the hurricane was over, the only two boats out there were my boat and my son's boat," he said. "There was nobody out there."

Crabbers such as Joseph Trosclair and Norman Groh were not so lucky. They have been working the waters of Lake Salvador since they lost their boats to Katrina - or, more precisely, to the furious cleanup after the storm.


Katrina forced Bucktown shrimpers from their longtime berths on the 17th Street Canal.

Both men docked their boats in the 17th Street Canal for Katrina. After the eastern wall of the canal crumbled from the force of the storm surge, corps contractors swooped in to clear debris and begin mending the breach. Cranes crunched some of the boats together with other flotsam that had accumulated around the Old Hammond Highway bridge. Trosclair lost his boat when the crane punched a hole in the bottom.

"When I got back, the boat was out of the water and upside down," Trosclair said. "I lost my income for the rest of the year."

He and Groh filed claims with the corps months ago but have been told their cases are on hold. They are working together on a smaller boat he bought after the storm, but both are getting older and not pulling in much of an income.

"Where me and Joe are running 200 traps, the younger boys in it, they run 600 to 1,000 traps," Groh said. "When I finally can't do it no more - and I'm pushing myself now - I figured when it comes to that, I'd sell my boat and have something. I ain't got nothing now."

Times are better for Frank Wooley, a semiretired shrimper who pulled his boat out of the canal and onto a trailer before Katrina. He ties up these days at the Bonnabel launch, though he is eager for space at the Bucktown marina, whenever it gets built.

Boats are stacked two or three deep at the Bonnabel launch, making it difficult to remove a trawl for repairs. Wooley says the place gets crowded when commercial and recreational fishers brush shoulders on weekends.

"It's a little bit of a problem down there, a little hard on the recreational fishermen," Wooley said, while emphasizing that he was grateful to have the boat launch as a resource at all. "We'd like to get into the marina."

[Audrey2Katrina]

Planning begins for N.O.-area health care overhaul

By Jan Moller 7/16/06
Capital bureau

BATON ROUGE - With a sharp nudge from the Bush administration, Louisiana officials today will formally kick off an ambitious three-month effort to overhaul a New Orleans-area health care system that was physically and financially battered by Hurricane Katrina.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco is scheduled to join U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and more than three dozen politicians, advocates and policy-makers in New Orleans to sign a "charter" document for the newly created Louisiana Health Care Redesign Collaborative.

The 40-member group is charged with reshaping how health care is delivered and financed in the New Orleans area, where Katrina's flooding worsened conditions in a system that was already suffering from high costs and poor quality.


The goal by Oct. 20 is to ready an application for Leavitt that proposes major changes in the rigid rules governing the Medicaid and Medicare programs and provides everyone in the area with a "medical home," regardless of whether they have insurance.

Officials describe the effort as the best, and perhaps last, hope of achieving long-term changes in a system that studies identify as fragmented and inefficient. It also might be Blanco's final chance to lay claim to being the health-care governor she vowed to become during her 2003 campaign for office.

But it also presents an unprecedented challenge for the collaborative's chairman, state Health and Hospitals Secretary Fred Cerise. In a state that has long proved resistant to change, Cerise is charged with forging consensus among dozens of health-care lobbyists and policy-makers who are more accustomed to protecting their turf.

"There's no illusion that this is going to be an entirely peaceful process," Cerise said.

A veteran of 13 years in the Charity Hospital System, Cerise said he's keeping an open mind on the ultimate shape of the redesign. The focus will be on taking a systemwide approach to improving quality and access to care in a way that also makes better use of state resources.

"People are going to have to put aside their special interest and really come together and say, 'What's the best thing to do?' " said Roxane Townsend, deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals and a member of the collaborative.

Policy-makers say the attention from Leavitt's office and the chance to start with a virtually clean slate in the New Orleans area gives the state's latest attempt at reform a greater chance for success than previous efforts.

"The encouraging part. . . is the fact that you've got the secretary of (health) who's focused on Louisiana and thinks it may be an opportunity for them to do a health-care redesign," said Sen. Joe McPherson, D-Woodworth, a member of the collaborative who is chairman of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee.

Leavitt refused through a spokeswoman to comment for this report, and no one from his office would discuss his expectations for the plan. But he told a legislative committee in April that the devastation in New Orleans presents a unique opportunity to redesign the health-care delivery system from scratch and that he wants the city to become a national model.

His involvement is key because Louisiana must get approval from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to make changes to the Medicaid program. And because the federal government pays all the bills for the Medicare program, Leavitt will have to sign off on any project that seeks to reshuffle dollars in that program.

Blanco said earlier this year that she would like the state's plan to be similar to the universal-care model recently adopted in Massachusetts. Bay State residents are required to buy insurance, and businesses pay into a pool if they don't cover their workers. But Cerise said the state's plan is unlikely to result in coverage for everyone.

The emphasis will be on making better use of existing dollars by providing people with primary and preventive care and keeping them out of expensive settings such as hospital emergency rooms.

Although today's ceremony marks the formal start of deliberations, members of the collaborative group have been meeting on a weekly basis since the spring to discuss policy options and search for common ground.

Jack Finn, president of the Metropolitan Hospital Council of New Orleans, said the discussions have yielded few details but have laid the groundwork for difficult negotiations ahead.

"Maybe the most important thing that's happening is the types of people who are gathering for this thing," Finn said, citing members of the business community who haven't been actively involved in previous reform efforts. "People who normally don't gather are gathering and are talking," he said.

Finn said targeting the New Orleans area, where the upheaval from Hurricane Katrina makes the status quo unacceptable, also improves the plan's odds for success. The original idea behind the health-care collaborative was to do a statewide redesign plan. But the scope was quickly condensed. Instead the group will focus on Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes.

"If you were to make radical changes in Alexandria or Shreveport or Monroe, you'd have some very, very radical political opposition from very, very powerful politicians," Finn said. "By focusing it on where people are more willing to accept change, you minimize political opposition and you give the governor wiggle room" to make deals that might be tough to sell on a statewide basis.

Former state health secretary David Hood, now a senior health-care analyst for the nonpartisan Public Affairs Research Council, said the collaborative should be looking at the entire state. "It takes no longer, it takes no more effort, to do a statewide plan that would also make New Orleans the first priority of business," Hood said.

Ultimately the Legislature will have to sign off on whatever the group comes up with. Cerise said it's too soon to say whether lawmakers will need to meet in a special session to implement a redesign plan.

Limiting the redesign effort to the New Orleans area also avoids the politically explosive question of what to do with the statewide Charity Hospital System.

A post-hurricane study of Louisiana's health care system by PricewaterhouseCoopers recommended a sharply reduced role for Louisiana State University in managing the state's unique network of public hospitals. The report recommended that LSU keep control of its academic teaching hospitals in Shreveport, New Orleans and Baton Rouge, but that it relinquish its management of other hospitals in the system.

Such a proposal would be a tough, if not impossible sell in the Legislature, where support for the current system runs deep, and could complicate efforts to pass a broader health-care plan.

McPherson said the big difference between this restructuring effort and previous attempts at reform is that the collaborative will look to reconfigure the Medicare program as well as Medicaid. While Medicaid primarily finances care for the indigent, including the uninsured population that uses the charity hospitals, Medicare covers mainly senior citizens and works like a private insurance program.

According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers study, Louisiana's Medicare program has the highest per-capita costs and the worst quality outcomes in the country. Most Medicare services are delivered in private settings, suggesting that Louisiana's problems go far deeper than simply changing the way care is delivered to the poor and uninsured in the public hospital system.

"The problem is not, as so many people believe, in the public sector," McPherson said. "It's in the private sector."

Cerise said he wants the collaborative to take a comprehensive approach that looks to capture the best of the public and private systems. "You have components of good and bad in each area," he said.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Part of Uptown loses power

NOLA.com update:

About 1,400 Uptown residents lost power for as long as two hours Sunday evening as wind and an electrical storm swept through New Orleans.

The apparent cause was a breaker that went out shortly before 6 p.m. at Entergy’s Joliet Street substation, spokeswoman Beth Raley said.

“I’m not sure it was lightning, but it was weather-related,” she said.

The area primarily affected was bounded by South Carrollton Avenue and Fig, Lowerline and Jeannette streets, she said.