With the Presidential campaign dominating the national news and with Mardi Gras dominating the undergraduate existence, I thought it’d be a good time to reflect on an under-discussed topic vital to anyone at Loyola or in this city: the recovery of New Orleans.
The Brookings Institution, a generally independent think-tank, has been releasing “New Orleans Indexes” since March 2006 that track rebuilding indicators. I want to highlight two important points from their January 2008 report that have relevance for Loyola students: repopulation and education.
The most newsworthy statistic from the report was that population growth has slowed significantly. The number of households receiving mail in New Orleans in late November 2007 has barely changed from the number in September 2007. Residents other than the 70 percent who have already returned seem unlikely to return in significant numbers. Abandoned areas of devastated neighborhoods like Lakeview and New Orleans East seem unlikely to return without a significant change in policy or action by wealthy nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity. The consequences of this depressing situation will not be understood for many years.
One area of significant change is education. Positively, New Orleans has reached 74 percent of the pre-Katrina school capacity for students. For Wolfpack Nation members, this demographic representation means that public schools in New Orleans will need educated and social justice-minded teachers and administrators over the coming years to help serve a growing population.
Negatively, though, the school-age population seems to be getting more segregated according to race and economics.
The Recovery School District serves a disproportionate percentage of low-income students receiving free lunch, while the Orleans School Board charter schools serve a far greater proportion of white students. Loyola students should recognize how this segregation represents a return to the pre-Katrina pattern of schools with massively different levels of resources.
An educational development of unknown value thus far has been the increase of Spanish-speaking public school students, presumably in correlation with the increase of Spanish-speaking workers helping to rebuild the city. Unfortunately, this report fails to offer solutions to these problems.
The optimist in me points to that failure as the ultimate reason the report is relevant to us: it is the job of young, well-educated workers to create solutions.
There’s something to think about as you watch Obama on CNN and Hulk Hogan on St. Charles Avenue over the next two weeks.
