Picking Up the Pieces

I headed to our Dallas office, ready to spring into action.?I knew that the team there would be a good support, and I needed a place to work where I felt productive and surrounded by familiar faces.?I also knew it would take all our combined resources to begin to pick up the pieces.?Our immediate goal was to ensure our families' safety, health, and wellness and ascertain where they were at that moment in time.?Staff was still moving many of them from one temporary location to a more permanent one with water and hydro. They could ride out the next few weeks until services were restored in New Orleans.?We figured it was a safe bet that if staff were in transition, so were our families.

We set about reaching out to our families via email with a survey to see where they were and if they had internet access.?Connectivity was an issue because many cell towers were also damaged, and there was limited access to service.?We were able to check in with most families and were pleased to discover that all were safe.?The damage to many of our families' homes was extensive. Several of them left the state to places where they could count on the support and comfort of their families.?

Everyone on our leadership team was reaching out to families in need to see how we could help.?Our counselor checked in with those at risk and who indicated in our survey that they were struggling.?Beyond the initial contact, we knew we needed to develop a plan for return to learning that we could share with our parents.?We had a bit of time but knew that once the water and power were restored, families would need to return to work and set about cleaning up their own homes and businesses. They needed their children to return to school.?We also knew that could not happen on our campus because the damage was so severe.

Displaced, my lower school principal with three children couch-surfed from family to a family member with her three little girls. Her husband worked to assess damage at their home and plan for repair, and return to work at his job.?My upper school principal and her four children, unable to return to their home, were bouncing from place to place until they decided to go to their vacation spot in Florida.?She knew that would be very short term and that her husband would be required to return to work as soon as possible.?I was new to the area and had no idea where to start looking for temporary locations.?My upper school principal became a woman with a mission reaching out to EVERYONE in the community that she knew for leads on places.?She enlisted the help of one of our alumni and current parents, who was very connected in the community.?I was limited but reached out to the former owner who connected in the community for his help.?Our goal was always to find one location that could hold all our students from 8 weeks to grade 7.?We soon realized that would not be an option.?

While we worked to find a place, the other leadership team members began to reimagine what learning might look like and plan accordingly.?We began to prepare for the possibility of going online, hybrid, and in-person with limited resources.?We were unsure of the options but needed to prepare for all three.?We asked teachers to do a community meeting with their students to see a familiar face and connect with their peers.?

Even this required a high level of coordination because many staff was still without internet and unable to access it in their area.?Those who stayed in the New Orleans area still had no power or water and were surviving in the extreme heat.?Specialists and assistants were able to cover. We could host community check-ins with our families, which were well received.

As we waited for the restoration of power and water, we kept hunting for learning spaces.?We called churches, community centers, other schools, universities, daycares, performing arts venues, hotels, commercial properties, realtors, etc.?You name it; we followed up on it!?Many of the places we contacted were unable to take us.?The damage to their facilities or the need to house or support members of their community came first.?It was heartbreaking and stressful.?Where could we go??We also knew we needed to find a space that the state would license for our childcare center, which was no easy feat.?We road quite the emotional rollercoaster for about a week.?Optimistic and filled with hope and possibility one day and despair and disappointment the next day.?

Through connections from parents and staff, we found two immediate possibilities to house some of our students.?We felt strongly as a team that our 5th-7th graders needed something asap and our early years because their parents relied on us for childcare and had to return to work. Unlike Covid, parents were not at home with their children.?They had to return to work, many of them using all their holidays, paid time off, and the grace and mercy of family members to care for their children.?Online schooling was not going to work long term because children needed someone at home with them.?We also knew that we would have to do things in phases.

Our first phase was 5th-7th grades.?One of our parents connected us with the Head of School at Holy Cross to discuss using space on their campus.?Holy Cross was a 5th-12th grade all-boys Catholic School.?We were an infant- 7th-grade elementary school, so how might we work together? The Holy Cross staff set about finding us as many spaces as possible to use on their campus.?We were able to use their library and a few accompanying classrooms. We got our 5th-7th grade students back to school as soon as there was power at Holy Cross, and they opened.?We worked on the logistics and were able to stagger our start and dismissal times to accommodate.?Spaces were tight, and teachers and students would have to be accommodating and flexible, but it was doable.

While the 5th through 7th was up and running, we solidified some online classes for our Early Years and Lower Elementary.?Not ideal but temporary until we could find more permanent solutions.?

We had been in school for seven days before the hurricane, so there was minimal time to dive into the curriculum.?We were in the process of reviewing and setting routines and expectations.?We decided to focus our online efforts on two things:?review and a school-wide unit of inquiry, "Where we are in Place and Time."?The unit would be a service unit that delved into the seen and unseen effects of the hurricane and how the community rallied around others in a time of need.?Timely and relevant.?Teachers in person and online would focus on both while we found a more permanent solution.

As we settled into life on the Holy Cross campus and the team there saw our needs, they invited us to use their spaces in the evening from 4-7 pm for our 1st-4th graders.?Again, not ideal but a way for us to bring students and teachers back together for in-person learning.?During this second phase, we decided for 1st-4th to have the option to be online or do evening school.?Our Kindy and Early years students would remain online as we had found a space for our Early Years but were at the mercy of the state for licensing it to open our doors.

We felt pretty good at this point.?We were able to accommodate our 1st-7th in person, our early years online, until our childcare center was able to open.?We knew that these solutions were only temporary, so we continued to explore longer-term options.?Since we had been looking into every possibility, we honestly had no idea what to expect next; all we knew was that we had a short window of time to make it happen!

So, what next??Stayed tuned!