Teen Tension Trails Hurricane Evacuees Into Houston School

This is really sad to see (but not hugely surprising)...

In the chaotic weeks after Hurricane Katrina, the Houston school district won praise for enrolling more than 5,000 Louisiana students. "We're going to treat them like our own kids," Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra told school board trustees shortly after the storm.

But goodwill has proven difficult to foster between some of Houston's students and the new arrivals from New Orleans. Members of the two groups have been feuding ever since the evacuees began enrolling in September. At Scarborough in northwest Houston, fights between the two groups have disrupted the academic year, administrators say.

In the middle is Lucy Anderson, Scarborough's principal, who is struggling to defuse the complex tensions unleashed by the arrival of the Louisiana teens. Her post-Katrina days have involved counseling troubled kids, calming concerned parents, and in one case, wading into a scrum of battling students.

"I don't know how to control it short of locking down the school," said Ms. Anderson in a moment of frustration following the Nov. 17 fracas. A 41-year-old self-styled reformer in her second year at the school, she had high hopes for Scarborough this year. But the tension has "blown up a lot of what we were going to do," she said.

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Teen Tension Trails Hurricane Evacuees Into Houston School

With Influx of New Students
Come Insults, Brawls;
Parents Protest the Cuffs

By THADDEUS HERRICK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 2, 2005; Page A1

HOUSTON -- When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, 15-year-old Makeisha Mack fled here. More than two months later, when a Houston girl confronted her in her new high school, Ms. Mack stood her ground.

"She hit me," says Ms. Mack. "I hit her. And somebody hit my friend."

What ensued that Nov. 17 at Scarborough High School was a brawl between local students and New Orleans evacuees. When it was over, Ms. Mack was face down in the dirt, in handcuffs. Nine students were suspended, Ms. Mack among them, two were temporarily jailed, and a third was dispatched to a juvenile detention center....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113349151947412113-search.html?KEYWORDS=teen+tension&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month