Today, we went to a school in the Bywater (Upper 9th) District. This particular school (I'll get the name tomorrow when I'm paying attention) had been part of the NO Public School District. But because of its failure to meet No Child Left Behind standards (sound familiar Seattle?), it was placed into the "Recovery" School District. For those of you unfamiliar with that name, you can Google it. I would call it a damn shame. Schools that should be given the resources to meet the needs of their struggling students are instead stripped of everything they could possibly use to draw students and families back to the neighborhood. Schools in the RSD are usually the worst of the worst, and they lack the creative and challenging academic track to prove it. That's where this school comes in. Katrina Corps is helping renovate it (it hasn't been used for years), and are hoping to turn it into a...I guess I would call it a arts/community/education/innovation center. It will host nonprofits (including KC), artists, musicians, and the like, and serve all high school students of the Lower 9th Ward.
I'm going to write more about this later. But it's dinner time.
I started this blog originally to describe my travels to the Gulf Coast in 2007-2009 to help with the rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. In March 2011, I'll start telling you all about my experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine!
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