“We’re going to attempt to, if the city will allow us to,” said Danny Rogers, president and chief executive of the company, Southern Star Amusement, based in Baton Rouge, La.

Six Flags New Orleans has been closed since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

One of the world’s largest theme parks companies, with 19 parks across the country, Six Flags does not plan to reopen the park, claiming in a recent report that the park did not make money even before Katrina.

“That’s incorrect. We saw the books ourselves,” said Rogers. “The park has always made money.”

Rogers plans to expand the park, opening it year-round and offering more rides and a sports complex while combining a water park and amusement park.

“Six Flags is seasonal and we’re more year round,” Rogers said.

“It will basically be the first of its type in the nation, because it combines the water park literally within the comprising amusement park itself, instead of separate. We’re adding the water elements all the way around the internal park where you can ride the rides and stay wet all day if that’s what you like to do.”

Southern Star has also conducted research to see what local residents and tourists want.

Though the city is talking to more than one company about operating the theme park, Southern Star still expects to buy and rebuild the park soon, not wanting to lease.

“They’re still arguing with Six Flags,” Rogers said.

Six Flags, a New York-based company, signed a contract with the city of New Orleans in 2002 to lease the park. According to park officials, Six Flags New Orleans sustained approximately $150 million in damage from flooding.

Rogers said he believed the damage was closer to $35 million to $40 million, “which is still substantial,” he said.

The theme park was originally opened in 2000 under the name Jazzland and was owned by Alfa Smartparks, a company based in Jacksonville, Fla. It filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002.

That same year, Six Flags bought the theme park out of bankruptcy, investing approximately $30 million and operating it until Katrina struck.

As for Southern Star Amusement, Rogers is confident that the park will do well under the new management.

“We’re willing to risk $50 to $60 million,” Rogers said.

“The city has let people down,”  she said. “They told us to come back. But what have they done?”

On Thursday night, William attended a city-sponsored event aimed at improving New Orleans East’s image as a dilapidated and largely abandoned neighborhood. Dubbed the “State of New Orleans East,” the two-and-half-hour presentation at City Cathedral attracted more than 1,400 people and carried a message that New Orleans East residents want to rebuild.

Fourteen panelists representing several key industries in New Orleans East outlined detailed plans to help bring people, businesses and investors into the area. CNN reporter Tom Foreman moderated the event.

Audience members heard about strategies to reopen the area’s hospital, attract investors, fight crime, improve schools, reconnect  utilities and construct a new shopping center.

“This message is a national message: New Orleans East is thriving and doing well,” said Shermin Copelin, president of the New Orleans East Business Association (NOEBA) and a key organizer of the event.

Methodist Hospital, which was severely damaged during Hurricane Katrina, is set to  reopen by December 2011 at the earliest, and early 2012 at the latest, said Fred Young, president of Methodist Health System Foundation. He said the reopened hospital would employee 415 new staff members, who will make an average of $50,000 annually. While some whispers in the audience could be heard criticizing the project’s timeline, Young’s announcements were met with loud applause.

Melanie Hall, director of communication for Energy New Orleans, said power lines will be added to surrounding areas not currently fully serviced.

The city also plans to develop a recycling station in the area, said D’Juan Hernandez, a representative from Sun Energy Group. “We think we can bring recycling back to New Orleans.”

Alicia Plummer, vice president of NOEBA, summed up city officials’ messages. “East New Orleans is ready and open for business.”

The night’s agenda also included plans to decrease crime. “I’m not going to rest until we get our murder rates down to near zero,” said Leon Cannizzaro, Orleans Parish district attorney. Cannizzaro said he and his staff plan to work closely with the community to investigate crimes in the area as well as work on rehabilitating nonviolent offenders and juvenile offenders.

Officials also hope to work on maintaining local schools, said Woody Koppel, president from the Orleans Parish School Board.

A deal to build a shopping center on  the site of Lake Forest Plaza is also in the works. Cesar Burgos, a  lawyer  who serves on the mayor’s “Bring New Orleans Back” commission, said he hopes to replace the plaza with an outlet mall. The audience responded to his plan with shouts of “Yes!”

Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis summarized public sentiment at Thursday’s meeting saying, “We don’t want what we had in the past. We want better!”

Despite the optimism of city officials, residents admitted some skepticism after the meeting, Evelyn Bickham said, “We’re hoping – that’s all we can do is hope” that officials will fulfill their promises.

Ashlee Yates, the 2008-2009 Miss Dillard University, said she always knew she wanted to give back.

“In this economy, the last thing people have on their minds is investing, but as the saying goes, ‘to whom much is given much is required,’ and so I felt it was my responsibility to give back,” Yates said.

Chosen by fellow students, Miss Dillard is the “epitome of what a student should achieve in terms of academic, professional and civic engagement,” said Marvalene Hughes, Ph.D., president of the university.

Yates said she was contacted after her selection as Miss Dillard by the Carrier Corp., which heard about her community service work and said they wanted to give a $5,000 scholarship to Dillard in her name.   Yates’s grandmother has worked for the company’s executive office for 10 years, and the company was first introduced to Yates through her. Yates said she agreed without hesitation.

At the end of her coronation ceremony in November, Yates presented the scholarship to the university’s business department to benefit first-year students.

A week and a half after graduating in May, Yates came back to campus with another unexpected gift for Dillard University, a $2,000 scholarship check, also from the Carrier Corp. as a congratulatory gift on graduating. This second scholarship is meant to benefit campus leaders, and students will be able to apply for it this fall.

“I was totally shocked that I did not know what to say,” Hughes said, noting that the administration encourages alumni to become committed to the university “in a lasting way.”

Since Hurricane Katrina, more than $41 million has been donated toward the university’s $70 million campaign.

Hughes called Walter L. Strong, the school’s executive vice president, into her office shortly after Yates presented the second donation. “I told him, I just want you to know, our message is getting through.”

Yates, who majored in international business and Spanish studies at Dillard and currently works in New Orleans at a marketing firm, said she has plans to make more donations in the future.

“I would like to establish a scholarship that can be given annually and eventually have a building constructed that is geared toward international business and foreign languages,” she said. “I believe that you should always give back to your alma mater, in any way you can.”

So after a hurricane killed more than 1,000 people in Louisiana in 2005, it was natural that local and state authorities would turn to the Dutch for advice.

“We have some good technologies in the U.S.; we have some good technologies in the Netherlands.  Working together we are trying to provide the most appropriate technologies to the work that’s being done in New Orleans,” said Dennis Kamber, vice president of Arcadis, a multinational engineering company that was founded in the Netherlands.

“When Katrina hit New Orleans,  the Dutch had a lot to offer in a way of expertise and a long history of building structures and developing national programs that would reduce risk and protect people from those kinds of threats,” said Ed Link, senior research engineer with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland in College Park.

The Dutch have been part of many studies in New Orleans and have helped analyze what occurred during Katrina, making recommendations to assist in the development of new structures that are being built in New Orleans, according to Link.

Although the technologies used in the Netherlands and in New Orleans are similar, the biggest difference between the two is that New Orleans projects are financed individually while the Dutch have funded an entire system.

“One of the things the Netherlands have is a national commitment to make a long-term effort to reduce their flood risk,” Link said.

“We have incremental funding;  we’ll fund a piece of it and then we’ll fund another piece of it,” he said.

The Dutch “have a model for management that is integrated from the local community all the way up through their national government,” Link said.

“In our case, we sometimes have conflicting authorities and conflicting priorities between the national levels and the local level.”

Though the Netherlands is approximately 45 times the size of New Orleans,  both have  large percentages of their areas below sea level and both are threatened by coastal flooding.

New Orleans is primarily threatened by hurricanes, while the Netherlands is threatened by large storms.

“Well over 60 percent of the Netherlands is significantly below sea level, and in fact that’s pretty much the case in New Orleans. A very large percent of New Orleans is below sea level,” Link said.

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall as a Category 3  hurricane in southeast Louisiana. In more than 50 places, the flood protection system failed. Nearly 80 percent of the city was flooded and more than 1,300 lives were lost, making the hurricane the fifth-deadliest and sixth-strongest in the history of the United States.

In 1953 in the Netherlands, a storm surge from the North Sea created a catastrophe in Zealand and Holland in the Netherlands. Dutch officials said 1,835 people were killed and 5,000 buildings destroyed.

“A number of their levees breached and were overtopped and eroded,” Link said.  “It was much more extensive in area than Katrina, but roughly the same number of people, the same number of fatalities.”

Weeks later, the Dutch formulated a plan to prevent such a disaster from ever occurring again.

“The Dutch made a national commitment to strengthen their levee systems and coastal protection to reduce their risk. They decided they were not going to allow that to happen again,” Link said.

John Grieshaber, geotechnical engineer and execution support chief for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Hurricane Protection Office in New Orleans, said the Dutch “ended up turning a tremendous amount of their natural resources financially over to putting together a system to protect an entire country.”

The Netherlands spend, on average, $1.5 billion a year to maintain and improve the system that keeps the country from flooding. U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., toured the system as part of a congressional delegation in May.

According to Link, hurricane protection for the New Orleans area is still incomplete after initially being authorized as long ago as 1965.

“When Katrina hit, there was still areas where the levees had not been built, mostly and fortunately, on the West Bank, where the storm didn’t do a lot of damage,” Link said.

“We have been much more short term, much more into an election-cycle mode instead of a life-cycle mode – that’s the big difference,” between the Dutch and Americans, he said. “They are approaching it in a much more effective way.”

The Dutch flood-protection system provides the country with about a 10,000-a-year flood protection.

The Corps in New Orleans has produced the same design, but with only a 100-year system, because Congress authorized the construction of a system only up to that level.

The “years” represent “a statistical average,” said Kamber, of Arcadis. “What it means is that in New Orleans, at any given year there is about a 1 percent, or 1 in 100, probability of having a storm that would exceed that level of protection.”

But, Link said, “It doesn’t mean that once it occurs there’s 100 more years made available to wait for the next one. It really means that each and every year there’s a 1 percent chance of that storm occurring,” he said. “It indicates both how severe it might be and how often it might occur.”

“It is very rare for that to happen if it occurs this year it has an equal chance of occurring next year. Every time the calendar flips over, you’ve got a 1 percent chance of that size event occurring,” Link said. “The 100-year designation is just a measurement of severity and rarity.”

According to the Army Corps’ Grieshaber, “If you look at the United States of America there are areas that lie below sea level, so what we’re doing is we are trying to convince a country, United States of America, to expand its dollars on a flood control system.”

Dillard University's rows of live oaks trees is a signature of the campus, and graduates walk between them at every graduation (Kenneth Hawkins/NYT Institute)

Construction on Dillard's campus is constant as the university builds facilities both to improve the visual appeal of the campus and to increase the number of enrolled students. (Kenneth Hawkins/NYT Institute)

Four years after levees broke less than a mile from Dillard University’s campus, submerging it under six feet of water and causing nearly $350 million in damages, university officials said they are still trying to put all the pieces back together.

Revenue has dried up, student enrollment has plummeted and the university faces the possibility that it might lose its accreditation over concerns about  its financial recordkeeping.

While much of the physical damage has been repaired, the university has struggled to lift its enrollment to pre-Katrina numbers. And while the number of applications submitted has spiked from a year ago, the university said it has seen continued declines in student enrollment.

David Taylor, Dillard’s provost and vice president of academic affairs, cited various reasons for the limited enrollment. He said there is less financial aid available, limited housing and a perception that the Gentilly neighborhood, where the university is located, has yet to recover from the hurricane.

In fall 2003, some 2,092 students were enrolled at the school. But last year enrollment had slipped to 851, a decline of about 59 percent, university officials said.

Dillard University is excitedly awaiting the opening of the new science building in the fall. The new building is a way to enhance education and increase enrollment. (Kenneth Hawkins/NYT Institute)

Student retention is also dropping.

“Students will be advised on a regular basis in a process that is substantive to track academic progress,” Toya Barnes-Teamer, Ph.D., vice president for student success, said of efforts to combat student attrition.  The administration said it will focus on ensuring that students maintain appropriate grade-point averages, enroll in the required courses for graduation, and receive counseling.

Following the damages left by the hurricane and flooding, the university basically had to rebuild from scratch, Taylor said.

“All of our records and files were destroyed,” Taylor said. “There was a collective amnesia on campus and we had to put the procedures and policies back together.”

With less resources, the university had to lay off staff members and eliminate programs. The university’s revenues have been sliced in half, and it relies on gifts, grants and tuition to pay salaries, university officials said.

The number of students receiving substantial financial aid has decreased.

University officials said that a majority of students registered for the spring 2009 semester are paying the full tuition, and that the university provided no student with more than 15 percent of their  yearly costs. In previous years, students could receive aid upward of 30 percent.

In order to bring in revenue and make up for the losses in enrollment, the university is enhancing its evening and summer school programs and exploring distance learning and graduate programs.

Part of the recruitment effort includes rebuilding the campus. Every building on the campus, with the exception of two residence halls, has been restored, university officials said. A $168 million loan from the government has allowed the university to move forward with future renovations.

While flooding ravaged the campus, it also afforded the school an opportunity to rebuild and “fuse the historical buildings with 21^st-century facilities,” Taylor said. The renovations and new construction include a science and professional schools building and a new student union, recreation, health and wellness center.

The 55,000-square-foot  center  will house a movie theater, bowling alley, fitness center and a conference center. Officials said the facilities will be open to the public.

Amid the myriad struggles to rebuild its campus, Dillard is fighting to maintain its accreditation after the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools placed it on probation last year.

Dillard was cited in June 2008 because it failed to submit requested financial audits.

“The institution was required to submit an interim report because the commission was concerned with their finances,” said Tom Bernberg, the commission’s chief of staff. “The accreditation status is impacted by the university’s noncompliance with the standards.”

Dillard said it has taken steps to become compliant, including restructuring its business and finance department, and implementing systems and internal controls to rectify the deficiency in the management.

Taylor has said that the university has submitted its audits and the necessary documents to the commission, and is now awaiting the on-site visit from their team. A visit is scheduled for June. And depending on what the team finds, the university could be taken off probation, remain on probation or lose its accreditation.

Robert Swain's own health has begun to deteriorate since doing more home inspections. Swain has a recurring cough he still has yet to seek medical attention for. (Phillip Lucas/NYT Institute )

When Stephen Guerra checked the back side of drywall in his 72-year-old mother’s newly renovated home and found that it had been made in China, the mysterious smells and rusted metals in the house suddenly made sense to him.

Guerra’s discovery explained the periodic smell of rotten eggs in the home, the spots of rust covering the metal clock in the bathroom — and perhaps his mother’s illnesses, including a recurring rash that she and her other son, Paul, suffer from.

His mother, Darlyn Guerra, said she also has a corneal ulcer and that even her 5-year-old white Maltese dog, Itsy, has been suffering from a rash since moving into the home, in the Upper Lake Shore area of New Orleans.

Across Lake Pontchartrain in a quiet Covington, La., development, Raymond Hickey, 86, and his wife, Elizabeth, 85, are still waiting for results of home inspections done a month ago by several agencies, including the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

“They said they’ll contact us,” Mr. Hickey said. The interior walls of their 3-year-old home are now marred by 4-by-6-inch holes cut by the inspectors.

The Hickeys said they already know what the inspection will show.

Since moving into their home, completed in 2006, they have seen electrical cords short out, metal bathroom pipes split open and metal fixtures in the bathroom quickly tarnish and rust, and they’ve both suffered from sinus infections.

If the Hickeys’ suspicions prove right, their home, like Guerra’s, has drywall – the manufactured sheets of plaster used for ceilings and walls – that has been releasing sulfur dioxide gas.

State officials say that such drywall, manufactured in China, has sulfur levels approximately 10 times higher than what United States government standards allow in domestic products. According to court documents, the drywall is made in part from waste products collected from Chinese coal-fired power plants. Air and moisture interact with the sulfur, producing sulfur dioxide gas. The gas is so corrosive that it can turn a bright new penny black in a short time. At both homes, bright copper wires have been doing just that.

According to Patricia M. Williams, an associate professor of toxicology at the University of New Orleans, sulfur dioxide can cause respiratory illnesses, eye irritation and can enter the bloodstream through the lungs. Williams cited a study of volcanic gases, which contain sulfur dioxide, that showed that chronic exposure results in “increased prevalence of cough, phlegm, rhinorrhea, sore/dry throat, sinus congestion, wheezing, eye irritation and bronchitis.”

A number of Louisiana residents – and many other Americans who have done recent renovations – have discovered that the drywall from China that they used can emit high levels of sulfur dioxide. Many of the homeowners are concentrated in areas affected by hurricanes or floods in the Southeast.

“It could be any house anywhere in the United States that had any construction going on basically from 2002 to 2008,” said Robert Swain, a New Orleans home inspector. He said he had to come out of retirement to help his brother, George, president of a local home inspection company, deal with the rising numbers of inspection requests such as Guerra’s.

In Louisiana, most of the high-sulfur drywall is manufactured by Knauf Gips, a German-based company that has plants worldwide, including in China. The company owns a “substantial stake” in USG, America’s largest provider of drywall, according to court documents in a class-action lawsuit filed by the Becnel law firm in Reserve, La., on behalf of Jill M. Donaldson and John Oertling of Pearl River, La., and all other affected homeowners in the state.

Defendants in the case include Knauf Gips, the Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin Co., USG  and its subsidiary Seacoast, and Interior Exterior Building Supply, where drywall for both the Guerra and the Hickey’ homes came from.

Knauf and its affiliates are accused of negligence and knowingly distributing over 10 million square feet of faulty drywall in Louisiana alone through separate domestic distributors. (Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin is known to provide drywall to 50 countries,  the court documents say.)

In the fall of 2006, Guerra, moved into her home from a FEMA trailer parked on her front lawn, and she started noticing metal corrosion months later. She had rushed to move into her unfinished home because of the formaldehyde in the trailer.

Displaced by Hurricane Katrina after living in Chalmette, La., for 58 years, the Hickeys had decided to buy a new home in Covington and spent their life savings on it. The couple has no resources other than the value of their home. They now live on Social Security payments and are grappling with the possibility of having to leave their three-year-old home and move into one of their children’s homes.

The Hickeys said they filed a claim with their insurer, State Farm, and were visited by an agent. Two days later, they said, they received a letter from State Farm saying the company wouldn’t cover any of the damages since the material was installed and State Farm doesn’t cover materials used for construction, or corrosion or rust.

A State Farm representative was not available for comment before deadline.

Complaints over Chinese drywall in Louisiana began in March, and homeowners across the state and country continue to report bloody and runny noses, dry coughs, dry eyes and sinus infections that they attribute to high-sulfur drywall. The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals has received about 600 calls on a special hotline set up to deal with the issue, and Senator Mary Landrieu, D-La., has encouraged people to call the hotline to get help.

It is unclear how many separate homes contain high-sulfur drywall, but Senator Landrieu has said the material used in the state is equivalent the amount needed to complete 7,000 homes.

Swain said the number, which he believed could be seriously understated, is based on each house being roughly 2,000 square feet. It doesn’t account for cases like Guerra’s, where only portions of the home have the product installed, and houses much smaller than 2,000 square feet that leave leftover material available for use in additional homes.

“This is definitely the tip of the iceberg, it could get tremendously bigger,” Swain said. “Everything is so new about it, all these problems are all coming up now,” he said, “It’s the new asbestos.”

Not all Chinese drywall is toxic, said Aleis Tusa, director of communications for New Orleans Habitat for Humanity. The nonprofit organization bought 100,000 sheets of Chinese-made drywall in 2007 and once concerns arose, tested the material for 20 harmful compounds. No harmful compounds were detected, Tusa said.

A shortage of American-made drywall that began around 2004 left most domestic contractors looking to China for large amounts of the product. The rush to provide material to those desperate to rebuild in the Gulf Coast occurred federal agencies had no regulations for screening unsafe imported drywall.

“It was selling,” Guerra said of the Chinese-made drywall. “If you didn’t get to Home Depot or Lowes early in the morning, you didn’t get the sheetrock [drywall].”

In 2006, Guerra used her state relief benefits to buy 34 sheets of drywall from Interior Exterior Building Supply, headquartered on Cortez Avenue in New Orleans. She spent just under $600 on the material.

Lee Roy Jenkins, who built some of the homes in the Covington development, including the Hickeys’, bought his material from Poole Lumber, which he said bought its supply from Interior Exterior. He said his liability insurance doesn’t cover the damages to the homes he has built.

Interior Exterior is now involved in 31 lawsuits in Louisiana Federal District Court.

A representative of Interior Exterior Building Supply said he couldn’t comment because of the litigation.

Regulation of imported drywall falls under the jurisdiction of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is carrying out an investigation into the materials’ effects on homes and health. An aide to Landrieu said the agency should have prevented the high-sulfur drywall from entering the country. He said the senator has asked the agency to expedite an investigation. She has also asked for increased funding for the agency.

The agency said that as of May 27 it had received 365 reports from people “who believe their health symptoms or the corrosion of certain metal components in their homes are related to the presence of drywall produced in China.” The reports come from 18 states, with the majority from Florida.

“We have visited and spoken to homeowners in Louisiana, Florida, Virginia and other states and experienced the same symptoms they have, seen the blackened appliance coils, and taken reports about children suffering from health effects,” said Scott Wolfson, deputy director of the agency’s public affairs office. “We are committed to providing answers to families and homeowners as quickly as possible.”

Guerra and the Hickeys are waiting for those answers. They gutted their homes after Katrina, less than three years ago, and now say they must completely gut their homes again. The cost of re-renovating Guerra’s home could conservatively be $80,000,   Swain said. And now Paul Guerra wonders whether he was right to rip out the mold-covered drywall after Katrina

“The mold would have been much less toxic.”

Retired Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré cuts the ribbon of the new American Red Cross building on Canal Street on Thursday. The building was dedicated to Robert W. Merrick, to the right of the general, previous chairman of Southeast Louisiana Chapter of the Red Cross. (Kenneth Hawkins/NYT Institute)

After nearly four years of being displaced because of Hurricane Katrina, the Southeast Louisiana chapter of the Red Cross has returned home.

The agency’s Canal Street building, which had approximately five feet of water inside after the storm, was evacuated on Aug. 28, 2005, and the chapter was forced to relocate to the Northshore region office.

“Rebuilding the building was not a priority, it was more important to help the community heal,” said Kay Wilkins, chief executive officer for the chapter.

In January 2007, the chapter started focusing on renovating its building. Wilkins said the process involved much of the same red tape that residents had to go through in dealing with banks, insurers, and other entities involved in recovery. After nearly four years and approximately $2 million in renovations, the building is open for business once again.

On Thursday, with approximately 70 people in attendance, the chapter, which is a partner with the United Way, held a ribbon-cutting and naming ceremony.  The building is named for Robert W. Merrick, former chairman of Southeast Louisiana chapter, who Wilkins called the organization’s “heart and soul.”

Susan Hudlow, interim director of financial development, said the biggest improvement since the closing is that the chapter and the community have realized the importance of emergency preparedness. Wilkins estimates that the chapter responds to an emergency every 15 hours.

One of the agency’s roles is helping service members who are overseas and in crisis get in touch with their loved ones, as the Red Cross is the official communication link between armed forces and their families.

One retired serviceman, Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré said he was happy to help. Honoré led the joint task force that coordinated military relief efforts in the wake of Katrina’s devastation.

“I served in the armed forces for 37 years, after being in uniform for so long,” he said.   ”I wanted to do something to help the people.”

Hudlow said that the chapter is also more mindful of other communities that may have special needs during an emergency, such as those with limited transportation or with residents who speak English as a second language.

With hurricane season beginning June 1, the chapter is preparing its staff and planning training drills that include mock emergencies.

“We can’t stop weather, but we can prepare the community,” said Jerry DeFrancisco, president of humanitarian services for the national Red Cross.

The downtown facility features an emergency preparedness center, with an emergency line operated 24 hours a day, in addition to conference rooms for their partners. It is also equipped with  a radio room and a satellite-linked communications vehicle that was donated by the General Motors Foundation.

Julia Lewis, an Uptown resident, said she was helped by the chapter and decided to become a volunteer in January.

“The Red Cross gave me $365 and when I came back, they were giving out food to people in the community,” she said. “So the very least I could do is give my time.”

Honoré said the re-opening is a step in the right direction for the city.

“It should not go unnoticed what is going on in this city today,” Honoré said. “It’s another mark toward recovery.”

But despite the schools’  progress, a spirited debate continues over how to best run the city’s schools, which remain divided between two governing authorities, each promoting its own educational style.

The division began a few months before Katrina, when the state began taking over some New Orleans schools that it classified as  ”failing.”

“The system was in a crisis because schools were failing for years,” Paul Pastorek, the state’s superintendent of education, said last week.

After Katrina, which destroyed many of the city’s 128 schools, authority for the majority of New Orleans schools shifted from local control, under the Orleans Parish School Board, to the state, under a body called the Recovery School District (RSD). Today, the Recovery district runs 33 public schools, in addition to overseeing 33 charter schools, which are publicly financed but independently operated. The Orleans School Board now controls 5 public schools and oversees 12 charter schools.

On May 20,  the new scores were revealing that 6 percent more fourth- graders in the Orleans Parish schools passed the state’s LEAP exam than last year; in the Recovery district, there was a 4 percent jump in scores. For students in the eighth grade, Orleans Parish scores climbed 12 percent and the Recovery district gained 5 percent. The high schools in both district showed similar gains, with double-digit increases on the Graduate Exit Exam.

The release of the  scores was a cause for celebration, but Orleans Parish officials contend that  the competition between the districts for resources and control is distracting from the effort to help students.

“There are too many selfish competing interests in the system, causing things to be overlooked,” said Brett Bonin, a board member of the Orleans Parish board. “Each district tries to look better, but we are all educating children. Our ultimate goal is to improve education in New Orleans overall.”

One of the main concerns in the community is when or whether  the districts will recombine.

“There hasn’t been a statement of an exit strategy. If the strategy is to never return the schools, the R.S.D. needs to say that the schools will not be returned to the citizens of New Orleans,” said Woody Koppel, president of the Orleans Parish board. “If they do not trust the city to run the schools that needs to be said. Not saying anything doesn’t help the children.”

Pastorek has said that the state does not plan to return the Recovery district schools to local control for at least a year.

Paul Vallas, superintendent of the Recovery district, agreed that it was too soon to end state control. “It’s too early to consider if the New Orleans Parish School Board is prepared to lead these schools,” he said. “I don’t think that they are ready at this time.”

The Orleans Parish board said that it is carrying on an ongoing battle with the state and independently run charter schools to regain its place managing schools.

“There is not a lot of negotiating,” Koppel said. “It’s hard to know how to run schools when there is no equality, powerful charter lobbying and the R.S.D. having absolute control have put traditional schools at a disadvantage.”

Pastorek has dismissed claims that the Orleans Board will be eliminated. However he is adamant that the traditional school governance model, with one city school board and superintendent making all plans, does not work.

“The Orleans Parish School Board has one central office that controls hiring, spending and curriculum decisions,” Pastorek said. “The old days of command and control doesn’t work.”

He supports legislation that limits the power of school boards, imposing term limits and lowering board members’ salaries. In the Recovery district, he is trying to give  power to superintendents in decentralized and smaller districts, who he says are more accountable. “We’ve created strong leaders for our schools and give them the flexibility to organize and instruct, but they have to adhere to our standards,” Pastorek said.

Support for shifting from locally elected school boards to state government control has its critics in  the community.

Cheryl Jones, a parent in the Orleans Parish district, disagrees with the state’s model of governance. “The School Board runs in a way that there is a close eye kept on the district. The community has closer ties to the traditional school system and is more involved. Spreading the leadership is difficult to pinpoint who is responsible.”

The rift over state-versus-parish control is only part of the debate on the future of city schools.

Some members of the community are questioning what type of school works most effectively for  children – public or charter. Improving scores in both types of schools have blurred the line over which school is best for a particular student.

“There are more options available and parents need to be more informed of the different levels of academic achievement,” said Frank Williams, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates  reforming public schools. “The Recovery School District is making progress, and charter schools have consistently performed well. There lies the challenge for parents understanding the different opportunities and what school is better for their children.”

New Orleans has the highest percentage of charter schools in the country, with more than half of public school students attending.  Charter schools can be more selective with their admissions because they cap their enrollment, providing a more stable population to learn at the same pace. Public schools must accept all students, and since February; 1,000 students returning to New Orleans have been placed in the district, producing varying performance levels in classrooms.

But a growing fear of residents and educators who favor  public schools is that they will be handed over to charter operators.

“I am a supporter of charter schools; they should play a part in public education,” Koppel said. “My concern is that the R.S.D. is pushing off underperforming schools to someone else to deal with.”

Pastorek countered that the district does not favor either traditional or charter schools over the other, “We want to put the best system in place,” he said. “Charter schools have been effective across the country and we have to change what used to be the education system.”

The Recovery district announced plans last week to create a nonprofit charter-management organization to take over two more of its public schools, which it says are underperforming. The organization, called No Excuses, will take over the schools beginning next summer.

Regardless of the fate of city school leadership, emotions remain high.

“We are at war to save the lives of our children,” Vallas, the Recovery district superintendent, said as the test scores were released, “We all have to come together to provide a quality education system that will revitalize the city.”

“Shreveport was bad,” said Ali Shabazz, a New Orleans resident. “They weren’t ready for us. We have been to the Katrina hell in the dome, and we’ve been to the hell outside of shelters.”

At a New Orleans City Council meeting Tuesday, officials unveiled a plan designed to get residents out of harm’s way and into better shelters. Representatives from emergency services  offices outlined a comprehensive hurricane evacuation proposal, the City Assisted Evacuation Plan. 

Councilman Arnie Fielkow and Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis conducted the meeting with Kristy Nicholas, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Social Services; Jerry Sneed, director of the city’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness; and Kernels Cliff Oliver and Patrick Santos, coastguards.  

The meeting was a collective effort by officials to get residents’ input for this year’s hurricane plans. Residents such as Shabazz complained that last year shelters lacked adequate food, space and security. 

“The state has a lesson learned from Gustav,” Sneed said. “We have pulled together as a city to make sure problems are addressed.”

At the meeting, officials introduced a new system that will allow residents to register for evacuation and financial assistance online. Officials also released several concrete details, including Mayor Ray Nagin’s plan to call a mandatory city evacuation 60 hours before any category three or higher hurricane. According to the city, it is ready to shuttle more than 29,000 people to various states including Texas and Georgia.

Seventeen bus pick-up points will be set up in and around New Orleans to help residents leave the city, Sneed said.  The city also announced that it will use school buses as back-up transportation if chartered buses don’t arrive in time.

Sneed said that residents who need special assistance leaving the city should register with the city. Those who registered for special help last year remain in the system.

Oliver outlined how residents in need would receive Emergency Disaster Food Stamps. Applications for the stamps will be available online at the Louisiana Department of Social Services’ Web site, dss.state.la.us.

The city also introduced a new way for residents to trace their loved ones. Before boarding buses, people will fill out registration forms ensuring that a paper trail of individual destinations exists. “We want to make sure it goes orderly,” Oliver said. 

In response to horror stories of last year’s shelter conditions, Joshua Gill, a director from the department of social services, said residents will be guaranteed specific conditions such as: 30 feet of sleeping space, three meals a day and resources to communicate with their families. 

Kernel Oliver said a five-year shelter improvement plan is also in the works to ensure the efficient use of existing shelters, the creation of new shelters and the renovation of existing facilities.

“We want to make sure people can have the comfortable and sanitary conditions that they deserved,”  Willard-Lewis said.

Jason Fraud of South Coast Solar works on a Holy Cross housing project that seeks to reduce the cost of energy in New Orleans. (Kenneth Hawkins/NYT Institute)

A project that seeks to curb the city’s energy appetite is one step closer to helping residents return to the Lower Ninth Ward.

“This initiative is setting the standard for green initiatives in New Orleans,” said Belinda Little-Wood, from the Louisiana Office of Recovery.

The project, located in the Holy Cross neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward, consists of five single-family homes, a community center and an 18-unit apartment building.

Global Green USA, a company focused on renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction technology, began the project, along with financial assistance from actor Brad Pitt, as a design contest in 2006. More than 125 designers submitted proposals before the winning design was awarded to Matthew Berman and Andrew Kotchen of Workshop/APD from New York.

On Wednesday, organizers held a community event to celebrate the installation of solar panels. The event, attended by several dozen people, was held in conjunction with South Coast Solar, a local New Orleans company that provides panels and other solar-powered systems, and the Louisiana Clean Tech Network, a statewide nonprofit that provides job training.

With the installation of the solar panels, the exteriors of the first two homes are nearly complete.

“The addition of two solar energy systems will provide approximately 3,500 kilowatt hours a month and save residents approximately $50 a month on their bill,” said Troy A. Von Otnott, president of South Coast Solar.

In order to capture as much solar energy as they can, builders slanted the homes’ roofs towards the south and installed 12 panels on each home. The features should help residents use 75 percent less energy than other buildings, according to Global Green’s Web site.

In addition to helping residents, the installation also allowed students from the Louisiana Clean Tech Network the opportunity to participate.

“I am glad to participate because I know that I am contributing to the solar movement here in New Orleans,” said Julio Cardozaza, a trainee. Since January 2008, six classes have been completed by Louisiana CleanTech students.

Members of the community were also allowed to view the installation, 20 people at a time, by climbing scaffolding that was erected for the event.

The single-family houses are set to go on the market next month and will be available to residents of the Lower Ninth Ward who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina. Exact prices are not yet available, but an announcement will be made next month.

Little-Wood called New Orleans the testing ground, a laboratory to show how green projects can work.

“Global Green is really setting the standard and being one of the leaders in the greening of New Orleans,” she said. “This initiative will be the focus of economic development for the next 20 years.”

Raymond Breaux, a former Global Green USA worker who came to the event on Wednesday, seconded the idea.

“This is what we should have been doing all along,” he said.

“Alternative energies are more viable.  What we are doing now is the current, but green is the future. New Orleans is the epicenter of the green initiative.  It’s important that we keep the city alive in the right way.”