Posted on 09/05/2005 9:33:02 PM PDT by JRios1968
As devastating as Hurricane Katrina has been, it now presents New Orleans officials with an opportunity. The city's 60,000 public school students have been trapped in a failing system for decades. There is no reason why the public education bureaucracy and other obstacles to real reform should now follow them as they move temporarily to Texas and elsewhere.
In many respects New Orleans was a failing city long before the levees gave way. Even while other major cities got a handle on crime in the 1990s--most notably New York under Rudy Giuliani--New Orleans remained somewhat lawless. It's worth noting that many of those who've been raping and pillaging over the past week might have been safely behind bars if the city had successfully cracked down on crime over the past decade. That's one lesson to be learned from New York's experience on Sept. 11, 2001 and during the 2003 blackout. New Orleans's poverty rate is also an astounding 24%.
Public schools are another area of government failure in New Orleans. Education is the only ticket into the middle class for most kids who grow up impoverished. Yet the city has some of the worst-performing schools in the state, and this year they suffered two embarrassments. New Orleans led the state in students cheating on the state's standardized tests; indeed, more than half of all of those caught in the state were enrolled in New Orleans public schools. And the school system's finances were in such disarray the state nearly took control.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Not absorb more money - study.
I'll bet that 1/2 of NO citizens never comes back. They will be better off after the event with their new situations. As with most any event, it will have both positive and negative effects. Hopefully, the poverty hole known as New Orleans will have been washed away by the storm, never to return.
We can only hope.
My personal hope is that, in a new location, the children of New Orleans can actually get something in the form of an actual education, that actually justifies the money our government is throwing down the money pit called the Dept of Education.
Don't hold your breath.
Money is power and there will be dump trucks of cash flowing to the area from the government (employed Americans). Those in power in N.O. and other areas will do everything possible to control the flow and allocation of funds (and likely cut a little slice for themselves). I expect the people (and school age children) of N.O. will be right back where they were 2 weeks ago - when this is all over. I also expect that we will hear stories of record setting corruption/ kickbacks /skimming in the coming years even with the best possible oversight from Washington.
I hate to admit it, but you're more likely to be right than I am.
Why bother when all of your basic needs are provided by taxpayers, and your soul enjoyment in life is lounging around and maybe having babies that others will pay for.
I heard on the news tha the money raised by Clinton and Bush I will be given to the affected Govenors to use as they wish. That seems like a poor idea. It almost makes the Red Cross look good.
I'm hoping and praying I get one or more in my class. Some are being housed just down the road.
But all things aside, we should just focus on what happened for now. I'm getting tired of all the politicizing--especially from the New Orleans mayor.
It could be rebuilt to be like Venice, Italy.
We will have this over and over again with new disasters. The Country was willing to pony up after 9-11 but we are not the United States of Insurance. People will have to deal with the loss and move on.
We will save them and support them, but not make them whole.
Luckily, unlike NY, NO and Louisiana do not have good representation. The Country should not cater to their every desire to rebuild, but set the terms and conditions, so they benefit the National Interest.
I guess we'll get to see how good it is to have friends in high places. It would be a good time to pretend to be a Democrat, head to N.O. and start a general contracting business. I wonder if I can get a SBA loan from the government to use for bribes to get big reconstruction projects?? Hmmmm?
Rather than saying NY had good representation, I should have just said NO, and LA's sucked. NY was a different case, as it was an attack on our Country. Anyway...
And the school system's finances were in such disarray the state nearly took control. Instead financial control was handed off to Alvarez & Marsal, a New York firm, which recently cleaned up St. Louis's school system by shuttering schools, laying off staff and otherwise cutting waste. In New Orleans the waste wouldn't be hard to find. One problem was retired and even deceased teachers still on the payroll.
I bet they were still on the voter rolls too.
"This fund will serve as an umbrella organization for the three special funds established by Governors of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi and will focus on collecting donations to assist in the long-term recovery plan for the states affected by this terrible tragedy. "
http://www.bushclintonkatrinafund.org/
Looks to be the case.
What they really need to do is bring in a lot of landfill and raise the level of the city 20-25 feet, plus build dikes and levees with the same stringent standards the Dutch applied when the dikes were built the 1960's and 1970's to prevent a repeat of the storms of 1953 that killed several thousand Dutch from storm surges through the Zuider Zee.
Every time I read that this happens, it kills me. I have run businesses, hired and fired personnel. I can't for the life of me understand how persons are paid after quiting or dying. It is the grossest of incompetence.
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