Texas takes pride in being the lone star state. It likes to think it is so unique and very hospitable. In fact, that is what the evacuess told First Lady Barbara Bush:
Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we’re going to move to Houston. … What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.
No home. No job. No school. That’s the devastation hurricane Katrina wrought on the thousands of people in Louisiana. Now some 372,000 school-age kids from New Orleans and elsewhere have been displaced, and many of them are settling in Texas. The obvious question, where will they go to school?
In good ole fashion Texas hospitality, Texas Governor Rick Perry and the Texas Education Agency (TEA) have told the public schools to open the doors to hurricane evacuees coming to Texas, since it will be until next school year before their own schools will reopen.
“I want stranded families to know the doors of Texas’ public schools are immediately open to your school-aged children,” Perry said. “I also want school leaders to know that we realize this will put a strain on their capacity, so I have asked the Texas Education Agency to work them to make sure they have the textbooks they need, funding for transportation and the free-and-reduced lunch program and class size waivers as needed.”
Perry was even generous that the State will bear the financial burden for schooling the evacuees. However, there is one catch, the per-pupil federal dollars that would have gone to Louisiana schools will be diverted to Texas. Since this is so unprecedented, Texas will work out the details later. However, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is not so sure where exactly the money will come from. In the end, students have been integrated with the general population.
The question is, how are things going so far? Are Houston’s student body greeting their new classmate with open arms – overwhelming them as First Lady Barbara Bush claims.
Not exactly. Skirmishes between the Houston students and the New Orleans students began only days after the evacuees enrolled in local schools. On September, in Houston, 20 to 25 students started fighting after a student at a local high school threw his soft drink at some of the new kids from New Orleans. Naturally in adolescent behavior, the students fought back, sparking a brawl that sent three students to the hospital for facial and rib injuries. The police had to come in and ended up arresting five students, three from Houston and two from New Orleans.
In mid-November, after a student-faculty basketball game, a fight broke at Sharpstown High School, leading a school police officer to issue a frantic radio call for all available law enforcement.
In the city of Conroe, TX, school officials had to beef up security after friction involving 30 students erupted into a campus brawl. Students interviewed by the Houston Chronicle said:
The students said there has been tension between the two groups since the Katrina evacuees arrived in September. They also said many students did not show up at school Friday because of rumors about more fights and students bringing guns and knives to school.
The Chronicle also reported that other schools are also experiencing similar incidents involving local students and New Orleans students.
On Nov. 17 at Scarborough High School another brawl broke out between local students and New Orleans evacuees. Which lead to 9 students being suspended, 2 temporarily jailed, and 1 being dispatched to a juvenile detention center.
Scarborough has witnessed more than a dozen fights between New Orleans and Houston students, at least three of them melees, administrators say. Some social workers say the tension stems in part from the tight bonding among black New Orleans students in the face of adversity and the unknown. In their new surroundings, a melting-pot school comprised mostly of blacks and Hispanics, it doesn’t take much to upset the turf lines.
These incidents are not just in Houston, several fights broke out in other Texas cities. In Nov. a fight broke out at Lincoln High School in Dallas when the power went out temporarily.
Students from New Orleans said Dallas students ganged up on the New Orleans students when the lights went out, while others said the New Orleans students were to blame.
In San Antonio, TX, the principal from MacArthur High School was pulled into the fight as four students were fighting, which two of the students were Katrina Evacuees students. North East ISD spokesperson told the San Antonio Lightning Newspaper:
Two students had a physical fight which was broken up by North East Police (NEPD).
No administrator was involved in the physical fight. Following the fight, an administrator and two other students were involved in a verbal exchange.
Maybe those small fights was a sign to come because on Dec. 8, the brawl that took place at Westbury High School cafeteria and spilled outdoors resulted in the arrest of 27 students.
The brawl started out in the cafeteria between two groups of girls and evolved into several other fights throughout the school.
HISD spokesman Terry Abbott is reporting that only one student suffered a minor cut to the eye. According to the Houston Chronicle, 15 of the 27 of those arrested after the brawl were Katrina evacuees, and of the 27, 18 were considered to juveniles. The Chronicle further describes the tension that has been building up:
Graffiti scrawled on the door of a girls restroom seems to mark the built-up tensions.
On the door’s center, “New Orleans Takin’ Over,” is crossed out. Nearby, “H-town forever!” is scrawled. The phrase “Go home” is answered with a crude “no.” Profanities litter the door.
“They have fights all the time (at the school) but I never thought it would be my girls,” a parent told the Houston Chronicle.
After being released late Wednesday, the younger teen said the fight broke out when Houston students taunted a batch of students from New Orleans with gang symbols. The older sibling said she noticed the crowd of students and saw another girl hitting her sister so she rushed to help her from the ground. Then punches were thrown at her, she said.
“It was like the whole school was fighting,” the younger girl said.
The girls, who were suspended for three days, will not be returning to the school, their mother said. Instead, she will seek to enroll them in school in New Orleans.
Up till now, HISD is citing only 12 fights involving local students and Katrina evacuees since their arrival to the HISD schools. But that is just within Houston school districts, with more than 5,000 student spread throughout Houston and surrounding areas, the chances of other fights happening in other school districts are high, but are not being reported.
The sad truth, the school year is not even over. Even sadder, this is how Texans threat their guests who are in need.
Folks here in Texas do seem a bit schizophrenic. Welcome to Texas! Ya’ll can get the hell out now, ya hear! Hope you enjoyed your stay.
