Katrina: Pupils back at school

2005-11-28 22:07

New Orleans - Greeted by welcome signs hung over the door and in the hallways, pupils begun returning on Monday to the first regular public school to re-open since Hurricane Katrina hit three months ago.

Tony Collins said: "The main thing is, the kids want to be home."

He said he would be dropping off James - who used to attend a different school - every day at Ben Franklin Elementary School as he travelled from Baton Rouge - where he had been staying since the storm hit.

After bringing James to school, Collins would head out to his eastern New Orleans home, which he was trying to salvage while on leave from his job.

Pupils began arriving at the three-story brick building shortly before 08:00.

Before Katrina, the school was a maths-science magnet school with 390 pupils from pre-school through eighth grade.

First to arrive were 12-year-old Kenneth and seven-year-old Branden Galeano, with their father, Jorge. Both boys were shy in the face of numerous television cameras waiting to greet them.

Kenneth said he'd been going to school in Tennessee since his family evacuated. Asked what he thought of that school, he said it was, "good, but not that much".

Orleans Parish School board member Heidi Daniels said: "This signals that school is up and running, and that's a good thing."

Some private schools in New Orleans began re-opening in October, but no public schools had opened, with the exception of a few charters that were outside the local board's control.

Daniels said: "I think parents will find comfort in being able to put their children in school.

"This will help people return to a sense of normalcy."

- AP