Loyola is learning center for displaced Lusher students

New Orleans CityBusiness, Nov 26, 2005 by City Business Staff Report

The fourth floor of the communications building on Loyola University's Uptown campus is usually bustling with broadcast journalism students editing tapes or producing footage.It's rare to see anyone young enough to idolize Dora the Explorer wandering these hallways - until now.Since Nov. 7, a group of 50 pre-kindergarten through seventh-grade students, mostly from Lusher School in New Orleans, are temporarily using Loyola's vacant classrooms to continue their academic careers.

We had the space. It was clean and non-flooded and we thought someone should use it, said Mary Blue, an associate professor of communication at Loyola where students are scheduled to return Jan. 9.Blue, along with Lusher parents Kiki Huston and Cathy Rogers, also a communications professor at Loyola, were instrumental in bringing the young students to campus.But it wasn't easy.

During Hurricane Katrina, Huston and three other families evacuated to New Iberia. They thought they would be there for a few days and then come home.When it became apparent we'd be there for awhile, we started trying to find a place to teach our kids, said Huston. In New Iberia, they taught them in an empty building formerly housing an accounting firm. The students call their school the Sugarcane Academy, a name thought of by Huston's 9-year-old daughter, Olivia.

We were in sugarcane fields, said the fourth-grader. I thought it would be a good name.

By the end of October, they were ready to come home.We made the decision to move back together, said Huston. The parents contacted some of the Lusher teachers who needed a job until Lusher reopens as a charter school Jan. 17 (Teachers must return by Jan. 3).Rogers talked to co-workers at Loyola and the Rev. Kevin Wildes, president of Loyola University, agreed to let the students in.

Sugarcane Academy began its classes Nov. 7. The students spend 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Monday through Friday at the school. Ten teachers are employed at Sugarcane Academy through a $50 weekly stipend each parent pays per child.The kids from the very beginning thought this was the greatest adventure of their lives, said Paul Reynaud, a first-grade teacher at Lusher, who now teaches kindergarteners and first-graders at Sugarcane Academy. The parents need a little bit of tender loving care but the kids have been extremely adaptable.

Each day is different for the students.They've walked the neighborhoods near Loyola University and taken trips to the French Quarter to see the rebuilding progress. The older students have been keeping a daily journal of their experiences since the hurricane I tell them that they're living history right now, said Michele Barbier, a Loyola graduate and fourth-grade teacher at Lusher, who is now in charge of the 12 fourth- through seventh-grade students housed in one classroom. This is important for them. We're trying to get them to see the importance of what is going on right now.

Back in the classrooms, the younger students prepare dioramas while the older students compare hurricanes Betsy and Katrina and work on their plans to rebuild the city and design homes to withstand hurricanes.Sixth-graders Claire Franklin and Mina Walker designed a home raised on 10-foot metal poles, complete with an escalator and brick walls painted to look like metal with a layered roof.

The roof should be layered with wood because if one layer blows off there will be another one underneath, said Franklin.While Franklin and Walker say they miss their friends the most, they like the smaller class size and meeting friends they normally wouldn't have known.Olivia Huston said she likes the elevator the best.It's big here and they have an elevator and we get to ride the elevator, said Huston. I always asked the teachers (at Lusher), if we could have an elevator but we never got one.

The last day of the Sugarcane Academy will offer a bittersweet ending for the students who have enjoyed eating lunch across the street at Audubon Park and filling the shoes of their much-older student counterparts. But they do miss their teachers and friends. And for the parents, it's one step closer to normalcy.We close our doors Dec. 20, said Kiki Huston. And hopefully we won't have to reopen them next year.