Canadian rescue worker Kevin Sullivan from Vancouver holds the two rescued dogs of a Hurricane Katrina survivor in Chalmette, 11km (7 miles) east of New Orleans, Louisiana September 3, 2005. U.S. President George W. Bush ordered more troops to secure New Orleans on Saturday as rescuers evacuated thousands of desperate refugees and closed two huge shelters plagued by murder, rape and chaos. Rescuers are scouring the community for the first time Saturday for survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
Rescue workers from Vancouver, Canada, try to convince a resident of Chalmette, a community 7 miles (11 km) east of New Orleans, to evacuate his home, September 3, 2005. Rescuers from Canada are scouring the community for the first time Saturday for survivors of Hurricane Katrina which devastated the New Orleans area August 29.
Right now, the WWL feed we get via an Alexandria low-power cable channel is showing an interview with David Vitter that is irritating the hell out of me.
Vitter is talking about how he's got to get his children enrolled in another school. My ears perked up because although he's listed as being from Metairie, I read that he recently purchased a house in Alexandria. Then he started going on about how he wants to have his children go to school at the same school as their cousins so they won't feel so isolated in their new surroundings. Later in the broadcast was some discussion about the Catholic school system.
Wait a minute...this guy gets to CHOOSE what school his children will be going to? What's up with that? I don't mind that his children and their cousins are most likely going to be part of the 1,000+ kids absorbed by the Rapides Parish school system, but it does bother me that he feels he has a choice.
I can't imagine that if my daughter and I were evacuated on an emergency basis to some other parish that I would be allowed to choose which school my child attended. They'd look at the temporary address we had (shelter, motel, whatever) and assign us to whatever school corresponded to that location.
In Rapides Parish, your street address usually has nothing to do with the school you're zoned for. There's a long-standing desegregation problem here that has resulted in the kids being bused several miles out of their neighborhoods for the sole purpose of achieving racial balance. For example, there are some wonderful magnet and Montessori schools within the public school system. They're located in rough neighborhoods but what they have to offer is so good that parents send their children from other towns on what they call M-to-M (majority to minority) transfers.
I hope nobody tells Jesse Jackson about the desegregation thing during his journey to Alexandria; that's the last thing we need right now...
I have other gripes about David Vitter, but they're best saved for another thread where I can really rant about some things he said during his campaign. It's just that this interview made him seem like he's in a bit of an ivory tower during this crisis.
Awwww.... I was watching the video of the rescuer trying to rescue a spaniel-mix and it breaks my heart. One of our females is pretty skitzy and I worry about how she would react in an emergency,