Schools Welcome Katrina Students

Gina Pace was an education reporter in Pensacola, Fla., before joining CBSNews.com.

Having worked as an educator for more than 40 years, she thought this fall would finally be her time to relax.

But Hurricane Katrina struck, and Payne got one of the most challenging assignments of her career: become the principal of a school reopening in Houston that would be filled entirely with evacuees.

Last week, Payne got a call on a Tuesday telling her that Houston Independent School District wanted to reopen Douglass Elementary school — a school that had been closed last year because the population was dwindling. Two days later, Payne had a staff comprised of retired, substitute and displaced teachers, sparkling clean hallways with bright yellow lockers, a library stocked with 20,000 donated books, and a few hundred brand new students.

"It's a wonderful assignment and I love it," Payne said. "If they need me for a year, I'll do it — whatever it takes."

Payne is one of hundreds meeting the challenge of educating what could be as many as 400,000 students who have been displaced from schools in Louisiana and Mississippi after the hurricane, according to Susan Aspey, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Education. While enrollment figures are constantly changing as evacuees search for more permanent housing, at least 28 states and Washington, D.C., have classrooms that are teaching children displaced by Katrina.

School districts like Houston have stepped up to meet the challenge, identifying space for about 14,000 students, said Norm Uhl, assistant press secretary for the school district.

"The community is all for getting these kids and putting them back in school," Uhl said. "It gives them the only sense of normalcy that they've had all day. It's really good to get these kids back in an environment that is familiar to them — a classroom, a blackboard and a teacher."

Until Aug. 29, Danyell Schulze taught sixth grade at Alice Hart Elementary School in New Orleans. Schulze and her husband evacuated to Houston, and now she is teaching a class of fourth graders — evacuees staying at the Astrodome and Reliant Arena — at Douglass Elementary.

"I think it's important that I've been here for them," Schulze said. "That they have someone that understands their situation, who sounds like them and has their accent. It's all about relating."

In the months following the storm, integrating school children into a regular routine, especially at school, will be crucial, said Catherine Tamis-Lemonda, a professor of applied psychology at the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University.

"These children have been robbed of dependability," Tamis-Lemonda said. "In the face of chaos, there is a need to have children look at what is consistent in their lives."

Leorah Mims, the principal of Escambia High School in Pensacola, Fla. — a city that was devastated by Hurricane Ivan last year — is attempting to integrate 38 evacuee students as quickly as possible into school life.

"We're trying as hard as we can to get them into every class they were taking at home and to make them feel more comfortable," Mims said. "We gave football tickets to every child and members of their family so they can start feeling part of the school. The student government is giving out tickets to the homecoming dance this weekend."

But the transition has been hard for sisters Deaja Mitchell, 17, and Dennas Mitchell, 19, who came to Escambia High School from New Orleans East. They are staying with a relative in a FEMA trailer who was displaced from her home during Hurricane Ivan. Nine people are struggling to fit in the three-bedroom trailer.

"They are real nice over there (at Escambia High)," Deaja said. "But I'm used to my old school and I'm not with my friends. I'm probably not going to graduate with my class. I hope I can go back to my old school, but I'm not quite sure."

While districts have been welcoming students with open arms, concern is growing about how they are going to pay to educate all the new students. This week, the Texas Department of Education had seen more than 38,000 new students, and were expecting the number to increase, said DeEtta Culbertson, a spokesperson for the department.

"We're waiting to hear about funding, we're talking with the United States Department of Education … we're talking to Congress," Culbertson said. "But right now we're focusing on getting students enrolled and in a semblance of a normal life."

Louisiana and Mississippi are both requesting large aid packages to rebuild the hundreds of schools damaged and to continue to be able to pay teachers, officials said.

"We are going to need federal assistance for the long-term while these communities rebuild their tax base," said Hank Bounds, Mississippi state superintendent of Education. "We're very concerned with how we are going to deal with those school districts on the coast."

For the short term at least, schools such as Escambia High say they will take all hurricane evacuees — no matter how many show up.

"The last thing these kids need is to register in a school and to be told it's full," Mims said. "We are going to do our dead-level best to accommodate each and every student who comes in. We may be bursting at the seams, but we'll burst at the seams with a smile on our faces."

By Gina Pace