Jackson, Miss. – Thousands of Gulf Coast students remain displaced two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region, and school reconstruction projects remain unfunded, according to a report released Wednesday.
The Atlanta-based Southern Education Foundation’s report, billed as the first independent, overall assessment of education in the region since the storm, urges the federal government to adopt a “new response” to restore struggling institutions.
“It means doing a full assessment of what the child-care centers, preschools and K-12 schools need to restore themselves,” said Steve Suitts, the foundation’s program director. “That’s a lot different from throwing a few million dollars into a bill as it’s going through the hopper.”
The foundation analyzed government data, school records and private surveys to estimate the scale of damage and displacement after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005. Among its findings:
Only 2 percent of the federal government’s hurricane-related funding went toward education recovery.
The costs of hurricane destruction in K-12 and higher education were estimated at $6.2 billion, but only $1.2 billion in federal funding had been committed to restoring physical structures and property. Some rebuilding funds have come from the local and state levels and insurance, but several projects are unfinished.
Displaced students re-enrolled in schools in 49 states, but inadequate federal funding meant that schools with the most displaced students had insufficient classrooms, staff and supplies. The report found that as many as 15,000 K-12 public-school students and 35,000 college students in Louisiana and Mississippi missed school last year because of lingering problems associated with Katrina.
Nearly one of every six students in Louisiana’s public colleges and universities dropped out for the 2005-06 school year. In 2006-07, more than 26,000 students from Louisiana public colleges and almost 9,000 Mississippi college students remained out of school.
The U.S. Department of Education disputed the report, saying it failed to accurately depict the agency’s role in the recovery of students and families.
“These federal funds are intended to supplement significant other resources such as private insurance and state funding,” said Hudson La Force, senior counselor to the U.S. education secretary.
