Nearly 15,000 teachers, school support staff and others represented by the AFT were affected by the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The AFT, many of its affiliates and individual members have stepped forward to help out with housing, money, school supplies and other expressions of support. Much remains to be done on behalf of the survivors, however, who now confront the slow, difficult process of putting their lives back together.

A survivor and her dog
Teacher believes schools and union will rise again

If it weren’t for her dog, Gwen Ridgley might not be around to tell her Hurricane Katrina story. Like many others, Ridgley remained in New Orleans to ride out the storm. After Katrina passed through, the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO) member thought everything was OK because her house had survived. She had just settled down to take a nap when she heard a sound familiar to all dog owners—her terrier was lapping at some water—but it wasn’t the usual toilet bowl drink. In fact, Galaxy was slurping up the floodwater that had started rushing into her house. Ridgley and two friends staying with her headed to the attic, along with the dog. Before long, the house was filled with nine feet of water.

Fortunately, Ridgley—like many other longtime New Orleans residents—had learned a lesson from Hurricane Betsy several years ago. During the terrible flooding that storm brought, many people died in their overheated attics because they had no way to get out. Ridgley brought hatchets, a hammer and a saw (standard hurricane emergency equipment for many there today) in case she had to break through the roof. She did, and the equipment helped save her life.

Ridgley admits that she could have avoided the harrowing situation altogether if she had evacuated to her mother’s house near Baton Rouge before the storm. “I decided to stay,” she says. “That was my choice, and it was a bad decision.”

Once on the roof, the three women thought they would be rescued. The Coast Guard, however, was focusing on those in the water who were in even more perilous situations. They ended up spending two days in the attic and on the roof before the water receded enough—to waist level—for them to get out. A good samaritan in a boat took them, and Galaxy, to higher ground, where Ridgley eventually made it to her mother’s house by bus. Her initial plan was to head toward the Superdome, which she later realized would not have been a good place to be.

Weeks later, Ridgley says she still has her good days and her bad days. “Thank God for my mother,” she adds.

A 31-year veteran and UTNO executive board member, Ridgley would like to teach a few more years. She wants to see what happens with tentative plans to reopen some schools in the less-damaged parts of New Orleans early next year.

Gregory Junior High School, where she taught special education, math and science, was already in need of some repairs before the storm, so she’s quite sure it’s in terrible shape. She suspects that her house will be a total loss.

Ridgley worries about how many New Orleans’ teachers and students will come back when schools do start reopening. “I’m wondering if people will be satisfied where they are and just stay,” she says. Some will want to continue to teach in Louisiana in order to reach important milestones related to their state pensions and retirement. As for UTNO, Ridgley believes the union will remain strong.

Ridgely also is hopeful about her own future. She has enough years of service that if she doesn’t teach again, she’ll be OK in retirement. But she isn’t ready to give up the classroom quite yet.

“Things happen for a reason,” she says. “Let’s hope something good comes out of all this.”

Althea Martin, a school nurse at Mildred Osborne Elementary in New Orleans, was in a thrift store in Arkansas when the far-reaching impact of Hurricane Katrina finally hit her.

“I heard a little voice say, ‘Hey, Ms. Martin,’ and I turned to see two of my students. We hugged and I cried for the first time,” she recalls, pausing for a moment to compose herself. With thousands of New Orleans families and workers dispersed all over the country, it seemed providential that she would bump into her own students hundreds of miles away, united by loss and homelessness.

Most days, she is “in somewhat of a daze. It’s just starting to become real,” says Martin, a member of the United Teachers of New Orleans who has been a school nurse for 16 years. 

Before returning to New Orleans in October to find her house still standing but badly damaged, she spent nearly a month in Sherwood, Ark.

When warnings about the hurricane first started coming in, Martin had no plans to leave home. The Louisiana native planned to ride out the storm just as she always had. The call for a mandatory evacuation forced the family, including her son, daughter-in-law, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild, to flee the city. 

“I didn’t take anything with me. I really thought we would be back in a couple of days,” says Martin.

When she learned that New Orleans had been flooded after the storm when the levees broke, she turned to a family friend who helped her find a temporary home in Sherwood, a small town near Little Rock. She managed to get in touch with several of her colleagues who found shelter in places like Atlanta and San Antonio, and even contacted Vi Parramore, president of the Jefferson County, Ala., AFT local in Birmingham, who raised several hundred dollars to help Martin and her family.

Staying in a hotel for now, Martin is determined not to leave New Orleans. She has turned down job offers in other states, even though her home and her school have suffered severe damage.

“I don’t want to run away. I’m not a quitter,” she says. Instead, she plans to look for a school nurse position closer to home in nearby Jefferson Parish. “Any job I take would be temporary because I want to go back to help rebuild my school.”

You would forgive Mary Green if she sounded a little clipped and drawn this Thursday morning in September. She had just gone through her fifth storm evacuation in the past 18 months. Hurricane Katrina had dumped three feet of water in her living room, and Green was stealing moments to visit her Jefferson Parish, La., home, where friends and relatives were cutting away the bottom four feet of wallboard and ripping out rugs and carpets in an effort to stem the stubborn advance of mold.

For Green, home was now the house of a friend and colleague from nearby Chateau Estates Elementary, where the 33-year classroom veteran teaches prekindergarten. It was not a roof she shared with her husband, a college professor who on this day was near Galveston, Texas, helping relatives navigate yet another evacuation—this one sparked by Hurricane Rita.

Anyone expecting to hear frustration or anger in Green’s voice would come away pleasantly surprised, and perhaps a little puzzled, this clear September morning. She was happy, upbeat and confident—a typical prekindergarten teacher. “People have been working on lesson plans, doing grade-level meetings, calling the children and finding them any way we can,” she reported. Rather than rehash the details of a grueling evacuation to Texas a few days earlier, Green steers the conversation to the Chateau Estates teacher who “went six for six that morning”—six successful contacts with families in Jefferson Parish to let them know the school was reopening on Oct. 3.

For Green and other teachers at the school, Oct. 3 isn’t a deadline but “an anchor,” she explained. “School is an important part of my life. Now I can get on to what’s supposed to happen with my life. This is my community and this is what I do.”

Green knows that many of the children who enter her classroom will still be reeling from the disaster, and it’s a challenge she, as an early childhood educator, is determined to meet. “There will be children who will be afraid when thunderstorms come. We’ll let them know that school is safe. It’s where they should be.”

The storms may have claimed their share of houses, businesses and cars, conceded Green, a member of the Jefferson Federation of Teachers. But she is quick to add that the community remains intact. Green ticks off examples of people and organizations that have stepped up to help in recent weeks. There was the husband of a teacher who brought over pots of red beans and rice for school staff. There was the staff of the state and local union who helped members find shelter.

“These are people who would do anything for you, that did not go away, and that’s why you stay,” she said, dismissing any suggestion that the recent series of battering storms would prompt a permanent family move.