Katrina's Surprise

A wonderful article in the latest Forbes about KIPP in New Orleans.  This story of rebounding after Katrina gives me goosebumps:

The journey to McDonogh 15 began with a  phone call. Robichaux, now 45 and a longtime Louisiana educator, had become  the principal of KIPP Phillips Preparatory, a new public charter school that  had opened for summer school in July 2005 in New Orleans' poverty-stricken  Seventh Ward. Five weeks later Katrina put the school under 6 feet of water.  Robichaux made it to Baton Rouge and then flew to Orlando to hole up in a  hotel.
 
A few days later Robichaux's cell phone  rang. A Phillips eighth-grader, Kariem Ramee, had been evacuated from the St.  Bernard Housing Project with his family and was camped out in the Houston  Astrodome. "He wanted to know if I could help him get into the KIPP school in  Houston," says Robichaux, who immediately called two other teachers and the  director of operations from KIPP Phillips.
 
All of them made their way to Houston in  search of their KIPP students, combing through shelters at the Astrodome, the  Reliant Center and the George R. Brown Convention Center. They found 25 of the  120 students and were able to get a few of them into a KIPP school in  Houston.
 
Working with KIPP cofounder Michael  Feinberg, who lives in Houston, Robichaux and his core staff created a  transitional KIPP school in Houston to serve the New Orleans evacuees until  they could return home. They put it together in all of two weeks.
 
New Orleans West (NOW) College Prep opened  its doors in central Houston on Oct. 3, 2005 (a week behind schedule due to  evacuations for Hurricane Rita). It began with 100 students spanning  kindergarten through eighth grade, but as more New Orleans families heard  about the school, enrollment ballooned to 400.
 
Feinberg worked with Teach For America to  round up 30 recruits who had already committed to spend two years working in  New Orleans schools, most of them fresh out of college with just two weeks'  experience. Robichaux, meanwhile, mulled over how to get these students, and  himself, back home to New Orleans. He and his then ops director, Jonathan  Bertsch, began returning to the flooded city in November 2005 to hunt for a  school they could turn into a KIPP charter.
 
They decided on McDonogh 15, a 75-year-old  school in the French Quarter. Robichaux liked the fact that it was on higher  ground, 8 feet above sea level, compared with 4 feet below sea level at the  school he was supposed to run, KIPP Phillips. McDonogh 15 also could draw kids  from the nearby Iberville Housing Development, the only housing project in New  Orleans that was open at the time. That was important to Robichaux, to keep  with KIPP's focus on serving impoverished kids.
 
In April 2006 state officials cleared the  plan to form a KIPP charter school at McDonogh 15. To recruit students  Robichaux and his staff passed out fliers in the Iberville project. Most of  the teachers at NOW College Prep in Houston agreed to move back to New Orleans  to join McDonogh 15; 50 students returned as well...
 
The financial help could produce still more surprises at  McDonogh 15. "These guys are my heroes--the kids, the teachers," says KIPP  cofounder Feinberg. "What they did is the perfect example of what it takes to  be successful in education and why the public education mess can be  fixed."

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Katrina's Surprise
Kerry A. Dolan, Forbes, 8.13.07
http://members.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0813/096_print.html
In the hurricane's aftermath, a charter school in New Orleans defies the odds and thrives.
For the children of New Orleans the horrors of Hurricane Katrina are hard to erase, even two years later. Michelle Brooks, who finished eighth grade in June, vividly recalls the chaos of cops and helicopters as she, her family and a dozen neighbors fled to a couple of condos that belonged to her mother's employer. Eight days later they were evicted and ended up in Houston. Her classmate Brianne LaFargue tells of how she and her family made it to Columbia, Miss. and took over an abandoned house with no power; they survived for days on peanut butter sandwiches.