wfn.org | [ENS] Out of Deep Waters: Evacuated students welcomed to Episcopal

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Friday, September 16, 2005

Evacuated students welcomed to Episcopal schools

by Mary Frances Schjonberg

ENS 091605-1

Editors note: Photos to accompany this article will be posted to the ENS
website as soon as they are received.

[Episcopal News Service]It was back to basics as Episcopal schools in
the
South and across the country began taking in students evacuated from the
destruction of Hurricane Katrina.

"I told the faculty that the number one goal is to make them feel safe,"
said the Rev. Deacon Frances "Boo" Kay, head of the Bishop Noland
Episcopal
Day School in Lake Charles, Louisiana. "The number two goal is just to
love
them and the number three goal behind all that is to teach them what you
know."

As many as 3,000 students were affected by the storm, according to the
Rev.
Peter Cheney, executive director of the National Association of
Episcopal
Schools.

Students from schools shut down by Katrina have spread all over the
country
as their parents sought shelter with family and friends. Southern
schools
that could still operate in Katrina's wake immediately began to get
inquiries from parents of students whose schools were destroyed or
closed.
Students often came with no records, no supplies, and often no clothes
beyond those they wore.

Each school dealt with the influx of displaced students in slightly
different ways but some common themes emerged. Faculty and staff
scrambled
to rearrange physical space and class sections. Parents and students
rallied
to welcome the newcomers. Questions about tuition arose. Prayer lives
deepened. Schools offered help to current families, staff, and newcomers
to
deal with the losses they'd suffered. The ministry of children and the
love
of God became obvious. And faculties and staffs, many of whom were
dealing
with their own losses and anxieties cause by Katrina, are exhausted.

"We already feel like it's May instead of September," said Ascension Day
School Head of School Patrick Dickens.

Many students are tired, too. They are living in unfamiliar
surroundings,
often with extended family in houses suddenly stretched to welcome them.
Seventy-five percent of the families of students at St. James Episcopal
Day
School in Baton Rouge have had someone move in with them. Children are
excited about having cousins and friends living with them, Kay said, but
sometimes it means "there's not much bedtime routine or quiet time."

Some schools hired new teachers, often displaced from other Episcopal
schools, and added new classes in each grade. Other schools blended the
new
students into their existing structures.

Ascension Day School, a pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade school in
Lafayette, Louisiana, (about 125 miles west of downtown New Orleans) has
taken in about 115 students. It hired six new teachers, made some
part-time
positions full-time and created new sections in every grade from its two
pre-kindergarten levels through fourth grade. Students in the fifth
through
eighth grade were absorbed into the various departments.

 "We were very creative with where we put new classrooms," including
using
the choir room and even the vestry portion of the sacristy, Dickens
said.

Enrollment at St. James in Baton Rouge, a school for pre-kindergarten
through fifth grade, went from 302 to just more than 400. There are new
classrooms in what used to be meeting rooms, part of the Sunday nursery
rooms, Catechesis of the Good Shepherd rooms, the choir room and even
the
bride's room.

In many cases where schools added new class sections those classes are
made
up entirely of evacuees, often taught by displaced teachers. Those
schools,
the heads said, found that keeping evacuees together often meant that
students knew each other from other schools or areas, and had had the
common
experience of evacuation. "They had a common sense of purpose," Dickens
said.

Parents of current students pitched in to help find clothes, uniforms,
and
school supplies, and to connect with evacuees' parents. For instance,
parents at Episcopal Day School in Lake Charles (located about one hour
from
Beaumont, Texas, in southwestern Louisiana) bought book bags and
supplies
for incoming students, and helped with a swim party for the displaced
families.

The number of students that could be taken in was a challenge to most
schools. Ascension admitted students "not due to ability to pay but due
to
the ability to take them," Dickens said.

Episcopal Day School's Kay said the administration had to balance
wanting to
admit all students who asked for a spot with the school's ability to
absorb
more students, and still "maintain the integrity of the program,"
especially
maintaining maximum class sizes. It's that integrity, in part, that
families
expect for their tuition dollars, Kay said. Before Katrina hit, 294
children
were enrolled in the school's two-year-old through eighth-grade program
before Katrina hit and the school took in 80 more students.

The issue of tuition arose early on. Most families had already paid
tuition
at schools that could no longer operate. Ascension waived all fees and
asked
families to pay fall tuition on a pro-rated basis if possible. Other
schools
are allowing parents to pay month to month. Some have waived all
tuition.
Schools made financial arrangements based on the pressing needs of the
parents, the school and the schools the students left.

"Buildings we can take care or and supplies we can always find," said
the
Rev. Dr. Michael Kuhn, head of the now-closed Trinity School in New
Orleans.
Kuhn's school had 408 students enrolled in pre-kindergarten through
eight
grade and another 150 children in the Les Enfants pre-school. The
question
of having enough money to continue to pay the staff looms large.

"Our most valuable resource in both the church and the school is
people," he
said. "I am concerned about retaining a good faculty."
 That concern comes in part from that fact that most faculty members are
middle-class people who do not always have the resources to wait out the
rebuilding the way some parents of their students might, Kuhn and others
said.

"I want to keep people employed," Kuhn said.

The displacement and losses faced by families, faculties and staffs have
changed the schools. Students continue to come and go each day as their
families find housing and jobs. Schools' populations change day by day
and,
some days, hour by hour. Administrations and teachers feel as if they
are
constantly restarting the school year, said Kay. Some of Kay's students
have
already returned to their New Orleans homes.

St. James' in Baton Rouge has had to face some facts about the "ministry
that is being offered to us," said the Rev. A.J. Heine, St. James'
chaplain.

"We really had to admit that Baton Rouge is a different place and that
the
disaster called us to be and do different things," he said.
Kuhn, working out of an office at Episcopal High School in Baton Rouge
where
his two daughters have been taken in, is already thinking about the
future
of Episcopal and other independent schools in New Orleans. He said
schools
may have to consolidate services while they rebuild.

Most schools have brought in counselors and posted material on their
websites to help people cope, a process that will go on for months and
years. "The layers of suffering in all of this just go on and on," said
Heine.

Chapel services have been well-attended, reflecting people's needs. The
students of St. James write the prayers of the people for the Friday
Holy
Eucharist. "There are decidedly more pressing prayer needs and the
prayers
that the kids have offered reflect that," said Heine.

In fact, Heine said, the children have often led the way at St. James.
They
have taken in the newcomers in a way that is a "wonderful example for
the
adults of Baton Rouge and elsewhere," he said. "To see these kids usher
one
another back into normalcy is to see God's grace working in us."

For more information:

The National Association of Episcopal Schools (NAES) is posting
information
on schools' status as it is received at
http://www.episcopalschools.org/dis_preview.cfm?ID=500.

NAES has also developed a prayer list which can be found at
http://www.episcopalschools.org/cmsUploads/public/NAESKatrinaPrayerList.pdf.

The Bishop Noland Episcopal Day School in Lake Charles, Louisiana, has
links
on its website (http://www.episcopaldayschool.org/) to information about
other Louisiana schools.

-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the
Episcopal News Service.

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