HOUSTON — Since Hurricane Ike knocked out power at their elementary school two weeks ago, Jakin and Jared Cordova have been playing a lot of video games.
For the 9- and 6-year-old brothers, it’s awesome. For their mother, not so much.
“We try to give them stuff to do reading-wise, do outside stuff, make them go to the park,” Natalie Cordova said. “They’re still just playing video games a lot.”
Like more than half a million children in the nation’s fourth-largest city and on the Texas Gulf Coast, the boys have been out of school since the Sept. 13 storm brought life to a standstill.
“As a working parent, I can’t provide what they need, the same stimulation they get at school,” said the Cordova boys’ mother, a Houston chiropractor.
About 20 percent of schools in Houston — the biggest school district in Texas — and all of the Galveston schools remained closed Friday.
Most Houston schools will reopen Monday. Officials have been drying soggy carpets and wall maps and airing out moldy library books. Fallen trees are being removed and the fences around schoolyards repaired.
While a few Galveston schools will open next week, many are serving as shelters for people made homeless by the storm, while others are too damaged to use anytime soon.
