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Rough Start for Effort to Remake Faltering New Orleans Schools |
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From New York Times: On Debra Smith's third attempt to enroll her younger sister in a public high school here last week, patience evaporated. For the student, disappointment turned into tears. Smith said the school her sister, now a 10th grader, attended before Hurricane Katrina --- one of just five the city is still operating --- turned her away because of poor grades. "Why am I still sitting here begging to get a child into school?" Many saw their schools disappear with the storm, replaced by a small but labyrinthine system of state, city and charter-operated schools, each with its own rules, applications and starting dates. The storm offered one of the worst school districts in the nation an opportunity for rebirth in the Recovery School District, state officials said. The Louisiana Department of Education had already considered the city school district to be in "academic crisis," but after the hurricane, the district neared collapse. Well into the summer, it was still unclear how many schools would be chartered and how many teachers and classrooms would be needed. It has about 60 percent of the teachers it will need on Sept. 7, when 8,000 students are expected for the first day of school.
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