For the first time since Hurricane Katrina the Loyola University Student Sociology Organization is active and looking for ways to improve the community.

The organization is comprised of sociology professor Warren Waren and about 20 students focusing on ways to improve the public school system in New Orleans.

President Max Ciolino, sociology senior, said he saw a need to revive the club due to the troubled state of public school education in the city.

In 2003 Louisiana created the Recovery School District to take over under-performing public schools and improve students’ educational experience. In the last four years they have continued to create more charter schools in Orleans Parish, and these are the schools LUSSO is focusing on.

LUSSO has been reviewing the effectiveness of charter schools by interviewing teachers to see what changes need to be made.

“We can’t study every single element of schools,” Ciolino said. “But what we want to get is a teacher’s perspective of what is going on in schools.” 

LUSSO members hope to eventually publish the information they gather through teacher interviews and offer some insight into the reform’s effectiveness.

LUSSO is also exploring the efficiency with which students are transported to and from school. Since Katrina, many more students have had to go to school outside their neighborhoods.

They’re also working on completing a map of the routes school buses take to see how far students are traveling in order to get to school. 

“If students are getting picked up at 6:30 a.m. and getting back at 6:30 p.m. that’s a really long day,” said Alex Hancock, sociology junior and treasurer.

LUSSO members said they hope the map will be published and put online in order to draw attention to those students with unreasonably long commutes.

Despite the complexity of the issues they are studying, Ciolino remains positive.

“I’m pretty optimistic with our abilities to meet our goals,” he said.

His ultimate goal is to assist in the revitalization of the New Orleans school board, a goal they hope to reach with the publication of their research projects.

Hasani Grayson can be reached at [email protected]