Letter From the Editor

Hurricane Preparation (Heaven Forbid)

Neighborhood Voices
Class, Color, Caste and Culture
NPN’s Neighborhood Liaison Program

Green Orleans
Speaking for the Trees

Lessons in Recovery from India
Introduction
Less Meeting, More Fighting!

People in Your Neighborhood
If You Build It…

Transient Blues
Transient Friends
Peeling Away the Layers

In the Spotlight
Treme: Neighborhood Associations and Schools Working Together

Poetry and Creative Writing
Storm Flowers
The Dawn
The Muse hits ya in d’face

Information
The Katrina Index

In this, our sixth issue, our submissions explore different relationships.

When things go together well here in New Orleans, we may say, “They go together like red beans and rice.” This Trumpet asks whether there are other combinations that can be as popular.

For example, in our “Neighborhoods Voices” section, Robért Sullivan wonders how much of a relationship the foursome of class, color, caste and culture will have with the plans for the future New Orleans. In the environmentally-friendly “Green Orleans” section, Uma Nagendra examines the relationship between development and healthy trees. Bill Quigley, in our new “Lessons in Recovery from India” section, lets us in on the things he has learned from his recently formed relationships with his tsunami recovery counterparts in India.

How does, “It goes together like schools and playgrounds,” sound? Or, “Like schools and neighborhood associations?” We have a story on the building of a new playground at the John Dibert School and another on Tremé schools and neighborhood associations coming together to improve the community.

While lamenting the loss of some good friends, the “Transient Blues” columnist Shana Dukes also welcomes a newfound friend in Mia Partlow, who has responded to her call for stories about life here in transient New Orleans. We also have a new pairing of poetry and creative writing on pages 18 and 19, which you’ll want to get to know.

Enjoy the latest issue of The Trumpet! It’s written by you for you. Keep the submissions coming.

Travis Leger
Editor-in-Chief, The Trumpet

Twenty-one months after Katrina, New Orleans continues to repopulate even as the advent of hurricane season triggers intensified evacuation planning and concern. Though local matching funds requirements for federal infrastructure aid have been dropped, substantial recovery obstacles remain, including the budget shortfall of the Road Home program, delayed city redevelopment plans, and skyrocketing insurance rates.

The Katrina Index is a joint publication of the Greater New Orleans Community
Data Center and The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program.
It is updated monthly at www.gnocdc.org

My friend called and said his girlfriend wanted me to write something about the French Quarter.And I’m thinking thanks but what do you mean and I live here and everyone writes about the French Quarter and I…And he says, “About before, during or after the storm.”Oh.We almost didn’t leave the Midwest for the first visit. An ice storm was painting the way down silver with ice. I gripped the wheel and looked over at Dan as we hit a highway lined with grey trees dripping Christmas and said, “Should we turn around?”“Maybe… Want to?”“Yes.”“Okay.” He picked up the guidebook and started to read, out loud. I kept driving.When we turned off the highway and eased into the pastel colors of the French Quarter where solid buildings squatted around the edge of the streets, plump happy buildings dressed as Easter eggs. Behind us, in the rear view mirror, rose stale downtown buildings from Anywhere Else.Ruthie still rode her skates and asked for a beer and a couple of cigarettes, one for later. Artists and Tarot readers unfolded their skills along the grey stones in front of St. Louis Cathedral. Gutter punks shed songs and black along the lower end of Decatur. Drag Queens winked and waved, bold, like the food and music that filled the streets and air.The air was different: coffee beans, sweat, sugar, a liquid blue light of sex and living just under your feet and in the sky going all funny above.Everything was different here colors, street names, shadows. A Bowie song in my mind rang out “boys, toys, ‘lectric irons and TV’s’ and Dan sang out loud, ‘My brain hurts a lot!’ We kissed. Dan patted my shoulder and quoted Joni Mitchell, “Well, ‘In France they kiss on Main Street.’”“We aren’t in France.”He sighed, “We’re in the French Quarter.”“Oh.”The storm came and tried to rip it all out. Every thing went black and hot and dry. No water. Trees and broken bits of history in the streets. Out side the wonderland of history and sorrow, was a wasteland of horror. Empty-eyed folk walked through the Quarter, shopping carts filled with belongings or kids on bikes doing the wrong thing, shoe boxes and desperate grasps at hope on their shoulders; mothers with tons of bags of potato chips and no water to drink.After it hit, some of us hung on in cracked Easter eggs with split sidewalks and heat eddies in our dark houses, prying our windows open wishing for wind.The Quarter had been a color draped film; it became a military movie – a week too late. Blushing boys from the Midwest with guns and tanks and bored: too late.A guy yelled at me as I walked down the sullen sad Chartres, past what was once La Madeline’s. It was hot. Day four.,Three gutter punks huddled near him, a girl and two guys. Each drinking and smoking and scared.“Hey!”I looked at them. “Got a cigarette, man?”“No.”“Hey, man?”“Yeah?” I could not stop my self. I hadn’t talked to anyone for days. Few of us had.“I love you.”I turned and looked at him, “I love you too.”I walked across the square. The pigeons were all settled at the other end, near the edge of the Barroness Pantalba’s masterpiece; in that dark corner of a restaurant that was shuttered, eating crumbs tossed from an androgynous black being, breast bare and low; I adverted my eyes: I’d seen too much already. I wonder, but don’t care, if that was a fat guy or a fat woman. It’s the Quarter. And I cry as I walk on.The damage in the Quarter was physic, artistic, historic. Other areas were bathed in death. There is no comparison. We know that.We wonder what happened to Ruthie, did she get out of the home she was sent to long before the storm, or did she vanish, wishing for a beer and a cigarette for latter? We wonder who in the world dyes Jim’s hair and why the Royal Street Grocery is empty. We wonder about the odd folk who live and float here, wanting to escape the Anywhere Else that surrounds all but Ruthie and Jim and most of us.— Mike Deer

Always with the Passion of the Dawn,Vibrant hues of amber, translucent amethyst.Shadows giving way to the Dawn.Refusing to be denied, driving of the darkness.With the gentle caress that only passion brings.Loving outstretched arms, embracing the horizon.Earth basking in her warmth.All aglow.Darkness yielding to the light.Darkness once the powers that be,now submissive to the Dawn.For her passion all afire will not be denied.Come, greet the new day,as earth is reborn.I am the Dawn.Cool, yet all aflame.Reaching out withloving arms.Embracing,touching,tasting the droplets of crystal that capture the sunlight.I give so freely,Love that is like a breath of morning air.I am the Dawn.— Priscilla Baca y Candelaria

What followed the clearing of rebukesand fallen pieces from the storm chutesafter the sun itself obscured in middayhid under a veil shroud of dust and air-born jettison.Waters receded leaving behind bordermapsover walls, tarmac, soaked dark trunksand a sudden brightness embodied the skyas if the air itself had liquefied to the very essence of light.Filled-silt crevasses of blue green mosses,small shoots heading out, purple dandelions parceled cleared lots.In the city, we only heard of destructions, decomposition,the innards of New Orleans turned inside out—stench,corpses, oil spreading over water—a Venice of nightmares,a paper described it, almost deserted, clammy,reverberating silence like the bottom sound of a gong—a reflected gleam—warmth of a copper raythe sun lingered slow like honey dripthe very color from a trumpetimplicit pulse beneath the silence.High on a balcony flowers still grew through the Spanish wrought ironschrysalides of orange hues under leavesphlox red blooms out of seasonsomething unseen before the hurricanenature tossing its clockgreat monarchs swirled free slow above windowspassing over our faces, lending us new eyes to see above,showing us lightness, the counter weight of gravity.— Jean-Mark Sens

By Tremé Community Schools
Planning Group

Tremé’s neighborhood associations and school leaders plan to create strategies and programs to maximize the use of schools and community facilities.

In Spring 2007 the Greater New Orleans Education Foundation (GNOEF) entrusted Concordia Planning & Architecture, coordinators of the Unified New Orleans Plan, along with the Historic Faubourg Tremé Association and Esplanade Ridge Tremé Association with the development of a Community Integrated Schools plan for Tremé.

Participation by the principals and leadership teams of four neighborhood schools, J.S Clark H.S., John McDonogh H.S., Mc 35 H.S. and Craig Elementary, provided a unique opportunity for parents, students, educators and the Tremé community to create strategies and programs to maximize the use of school and community facilities. The relationship, development and work between neighborhood associations and school leaders signifies a fundamental shift, re-establishing “community ownership” of public schools.The recommendations and strategies developed by the planning process and public meetings will help guide the Recovery School District (RSD) and the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) in providing post-Katrina integrated neighborhood-based educational opportunities. The Recovery School District was created in 2003 by the Louisiana Department of Education to allow the state to take over failing schools, those that fell into a certain “worst performing” metric. The RSD has responsibility for 112 public schools in Orleans Parish. The OPSB has 16 public schools under its authority and owns the school buildings and other assets of all the public schools in Orleans Parish. In a visioning process built upon the Unified New Orleans Plan recommendations for District Four, participants in the Tremé Community’s School Planning Process were led through a series of public meetings intended to offer new ideas about school facilities and the relationship to community development. Community members identify, catalogue, and map neighborhood assets and opportunities. They then develop potential scenarios for their learning community and achieve consensus on a final set of recommendations and a strategy for implementation. At this time in the planning process, seven out of the eleven schools in Tremé are in use. Of these active schools, three are elementary and four are high schools. The Tremé Community Center, Municipal Auditorium & Mahalia Jackson Theater, as well as other community facilities, need rehabilitation and facility renovation to provide expanded programming and performance centers. Renovations in these facilities would result in positive impacts on the community and reinforce Tremé’s history and traditions. A number of cultural institutions such as the New Orleans African American Museum of Art, Culture and History, the Backstreet Cultural Museum, and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation each play a vital role in the community’s identity and future. Taking these facilities and institutions into consideration, members of the Tremé community met at four planning meetings to discuss the use of schools as the center of the neighborhood. Through the process, a mission statement was developed emphasizing the community’s great support of Tremé’s public education by improving the relationship between schools, their community and the surrounding resources, ultimately creating schools as the center of community. To produce the desired results the following goals must be met: develop a liaison between the schools and the community, develop private community resources to support school programs, create a new image of the schools, strengthen parental involvement and decrease truancy, and create a strong core curriculum in all schools while encouraging each school to have specialized programs that would set it apart from others. In addressing their goals, the group focused on resolving the lack of resources for teachers and students, the absence of social services for students, the absence of support services, and the need to increase participation of parents. From the outset of the meetings, the community understood the assets a school provides to a neighborhood and how it can become a nucleus of activity. Potential was recognized in using the school facility for a health center, cultural activities and shared performance space, sports facilities, and for services such as vocational training, GED and adult education courses, financial assistance, and counseling. Community participants in the meetings identified ways to make connections and increase awareness of the project. Responses included improved communication with school leadership, engaging service providers, facilitating dialogue with the greater community through marketing, re-establish tourism opportunities, improve library access, and explore small learning communities. Additionally, an information campaign should be built through a network between the schools and neighborhood associations. Community members suggested Tremé schools re-design their curriculum to reflect and preserve the indigenous community culture, specifically by focusing on the historic significance of Tremé as the oldest African American Community in the U.S., founded before America became a country. Promotion of this history can be established through every educational opportunity and programs within institutions of higher learning. Historic arts such as sewing and design could be added to the curriculum using Mardi Gras costumes. Also along this theme of arts, the schools can be involved in the film industry, connecting to the new production studio in Lafitte. Courses in this field could teach both production and marketing. All of these connections to the community can be made by re-establishing student internships with local businesses. Establishing a new curriculum should enhance, but not override basic skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Students must still be able to pass the LEAP test and move forward educationally and eventually move into a global marketplace with experience and confidence. To this end, every student should have access to a computer, be involved in business courses, and have public speaking opportunities. Participants indicated the larger community issue of violence must be addressed in the schools by creating a relationship with police and creating programs in violence awareness and conflict resolution campaigns. This is particularly important in troubled schools. Other broad community needs, resulting in a boost to neighborhood quality of life, include increasing parental involvement and addressing the problem of truancy. There is hope that these social issues may be addressed by bringing intergenerational activities and neighborhood focus into the educational facility.The Recovery School District and Orleans Parish School Board recently announced a New Orleans Schools Master Planning initiative involving every school property throughout the city. Once again neighborhood organizations and citizen planners are positioned to lead the recovery effort!

By Mia Partlow

Mid City Writer

Three months ago, I came to New Orleans as a transient relief worker. I made the decision to go to New Orleans because of a strong desire to participate, to know more and gain an understanding of the situation by being here rather than sitting at home shaking my head at media reports of philanthropic “Katrina fatigue.”

I put my bike in the back of a pickup truck and rode down to New Orleans from Indiana, a state that one New Orleans native has described to me as “flyover country.” Rather than insult me, this remark was intended to cement my status as an outsider: if he didn’t understand the simple college town I was coming from, I certainly could not understand the complex social and political realities faced by native New Orleanians.

Through my work with the 7th Ward Family Shelter, I have been told I was crazy by a woman overwhelmed by toxic houses and crime; thanked profusely; eyed suspiciously; cried to; and made fun of for turning my own suspicious eyes on a plate of turkey necks and rice sitting in the fridge. Apparently, my native Kentucky is not as far South as I thought.

I came to New Orleans to understand the realities of the situation. I expected to find stalling, setbacks, backwards police and upside down politicians; I also expected to find straight-up good people working hard to rebuild the city. What I did not expect was the extent to which the long history of corruption, racism—and a powerful music and artistic tradition—affect the political and social culture in the city today. All I can understand now is that it will take me years to uncover all of these layers and truly participate.

Before I came to New Orleans, I ran into two articles about the rebuilding efforts that made me want to come here. One was a New York Times op-ed by Walter Isaacson in which it was reported that President Bush said, “If I were young and looking to make my mark or some money, I would move to New Orleans.”

The other article was by Naomi Klein in The Nation, in which she asserted, “Evacuees must be at the center of all decision-making.” Bush’s statement asserts the power of the market; Klein’s the power of being a native, a community member. I did not come to New Orleans to exploit the booming housing market; I came here to work with people who made the difficult and brave decision to return home to a city devoid of old friends, jobs, houses. Because it’s their home. Even if it isn’t mine

An exciting month for me and the Transient Blues column, as we’ve begun to receive some reader feedback. This month, a relief worker’s personal story is a welcome and touching addition to the page as I offer this column to the whole community. So, write to us about life in your transient New Orleans and express yourself here!

 -Shana Dukes

By Shana Dukes

Broadmoor Poet/WriterI returned to New Orleans from post-Katrina exile in New York over a year ago now. It doesn’t seem that long ago to me, though. They say that time flies when you’re having fun; but it also flies while you are swimming upstream.

And that it what it has been like to come home and try to maintain a static, or at least somewhat dependable, idea of home. Even the faces have changed. For my family, many of our trusted friends from before Katrina have yet to return to the areas in which they previously resided. The ones that came right back in the wake of Katrina have since become weary of red tape and overpriced rentals and so, they have moved away. Even as we miss the ones who have gone, we can look to the new arrivals and say, “Nice to meet you”.In doing so, we have opened a new door in our lives while keeping the true New Orleans spirit of friendship and family alive in our hearts. That is a positive, right?Sure, but what happens when our new friends move on or away? Considering our recent losses, the tax seems too great at times. The people who befriended me when I first returned to the city quickly transformed their roles in my life from strangers to the greatest sources of continued strength and renewable emotional energy. They have become much like a support group, though much less clinical. I cannot imagine what the past year might have been like without their collective presence.However, I must say goodbye to a few here and there. It happens. Maybe it is a healthy reminder that life is not static, but ever transient. I could close the door to my heart and refuse to attach myself to more new arrivals, but that would be cheating myself. Instead I will choose to keep the good memories and try to keep in touch while remembering that when one door closes, I must open another and allow the next friend to pass through.I can only hope that more New Orleanians will share this sentiment. If I know my city at all, they will.So, safe journey to my departing friends. I have learned a great deal from you, so there is no loss. (But I sure will miss those backyard BBQ’s!).  

By Travis Leger

Carrollton Writer

URG and Americorps volunteers cleared the playground for new equipment. “Mostly everything has been donated and volunteered,” said Dibert teacher Gina Dornan.

On Orleans Avenue, in early February, I found the John Dibert School, a white three-story building I’d driven past plenty of times before but never noticed. The school re-opened in September, 2006, for Pre-K to 8th grade students. Children are bussed in from pretty much everywhere, including N.O. East and across the river.I parked on a side street and entered through the front gate facing Orleans. Turned out I was a little early.The custodian lead me upstairs to Gina Dornan, a kindergarten teacher, now twenty years in the education business, who was on the committee to get new playground equipment.“Where are the guys?” she asked me.“I don’t know, I…I just showed up,” I said, a little confused.I explained I was with NPN, the Neighborhoods Partnership Network, and was there to cover the clean-up day for The Trumpet. As we walked outside she told me a group of juniors and seniors from The Dunham School, a small Christian school in Baton Rouge, were coming this morning to clean up the grounds – here she handed me a list of the things they would do – in preparation for Build Day, February 13, where a group of 250 volunteers made up of Fannie Mae employees, community members, church members, and parents would put together new playground equipment given to them through a grant from KaBOOM!.We stood before the school’s current playground. A dull slide stood alone. A cone-shaped ball basket sat atop a metal pole.“There’s a lot that has to be done,” she told me, “And a very short time to do it in.”A Few Good High School Students

KaBOOM! began its Operation Playground in December 2005. Their goal is to build 100 playgrounds in communities affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita along the Gulf coast. John Dibert School is one of six New Orleans schools that would see the installation of its new playground on February 13. The other five were Martin Behrman Elementary Charter School, McDonogh #32 Charter Elementary School, Benjamin Banneker School, Einstein Charter School and Benjamin Franklin Elementary School.

Gina then took me upstairs explaining that in December the school had a Design Day. Each class had selected two student representatives to meet with KaBOOM! leaders to design what they thought was the perfect playground. She showed me a wall display of the drawings done by those students.

They included space for a hundred yard dash, basketball court, playhouse and soccer field. Ultimately, the school chose the pieces that they felt would meet the kids’ needs, creating the final design, with colors chosen by the school. It included a rock climbing wall and a modern three-hoop, multi-level basketball goal.“I can’t wait for my little ones to get out there and get to play,” she said.A familiar voice came up from behind. It was Phil Costa, a member of the KaBOOM! Committee and also Board Chairman of NPN.“We got a whole bunch of little kids outside,” he said. We walked downstairs and outside. There was a chilly wind. But, Gina pointed out, at least it wasn’t raining. There were students exiting cars and busses. They came in wearing jeans and sweatshirts with “Dunham” on the front, filing past us into to the school. Whitney Alexander came up and introduced himself.Whitney is Associate Pastor of Youth Ministry at First Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge. He was one of the coordinators of this event with Principal Bartlett. He is himself a New Orleans native and has two children who attend the Dunham School.We followed Whitney into the noisy P.E. room where the students were gathered. He shouted over the din for the students to listen up. The roar faded out. He introduced Phil Costa.“You’re standing in an area that had water up to your knees probably,” he began. “The school was in pretty bad shape. You can see right now it’s back. Not back to where it was. The cafeteria is right behind you, it’s not working yet. That’s one thing they don’t have here yet.”“Hey,” Whitney called out, interrupting. “Guys in the back, I need y’all to come on up and quit talking.” They quieted and shuffled forward. Gina chimed in.“The kids have cold sandwiches everyday for lunch.”“Yeah, the kids here have cold sandwiches, but at least they have sandwiches,” Phil said.As Phil continued, Gina told me bottled water was brought in, sometimes, for the classrooms. The kindergarten classes had cups with their names on them to drink from and other classes drank from bottles. The bathrooms had poor water pressure. Thinking about the work the students from Dunham were going to do, I suddenly realized that I had forgotten my camera. Gina said she had one, a disposable camera she kept in her car to take pictures of the progress, or lack of progress, as she corrected herself, on her Lakeview home. She got it for me.After Phil finished Whitney called everyone together for a prayer. We formed a circle and held hands.“Every little window you clean in a few minutes,” he began, “Every ounce of dirt that you rake outside, whatever you do is for the glory of God, and it’s not for you.”The volunteers grabbed shovels and gloves, rags and window cleaner. A group of girls got to work cleaning the grimy windows of the P.E. room. I could hardly see the girls working on the outside. I could just make out their rags rubbing back and forth on the rectangular panes.I made my way outside and found two girls, Caroline Wise and Kate Chapman, squatting over a sparse butterfly garden. I asked them what brought them all out to New Orleans.“Our school does service days,” said Caroline. “We have to have service hours to graduate.”‘Have you done any gardening before?” I asked her.“A little bit with my dad,” she said. “I know which ones are weeds.”“That’s all you gotta know, I guess,” I replied.“My mother gardens a lot,” said Kate, “So I know what flowers these are, for the most part,” she said as she weeded.I found a picture of what the garden looked like in its prime. Behind posing, smiling students was a colorful, healthy garden. Hard to believe looking at it now, brown and empty.On the other side of the fence boys shoveled mud from the curb and collected it in wheelbarrows, filling the air with the sound of shovels scraping the street. When the barrows were full they dumped the contents in the low spots around the school, where puddles had formed from rain the day before. The boys joked and laughed as they worked.I stood beside to the largest puddle, which was next to the school’s basketball court. Under one of the hoops a student was perched on a wooden bench. He cut down the tattered net with a pair of scissors and replaced it with a new one. The lines on the court were faded, hardly distinguishable. Same for the four-square court nearby. Gina told me these lines were going to be repainted when the new playground was being built.

I took pictures with the borrowed disposable camera as I walked around, eager to capture good images of the school in its current state to compare with the pictures I was going to take in a week’s time. I met up with Gina and Phil again.

Little Maliyah Santee pauses for a photo before she takes a shot on the new basketball hooops where only months before the playground was as bare as it had been since Katrina.

“We had a church from Kansas, right before Christmas, donate a basketball for every boy in this building,” said Gina. “And all the girls got stuffed animals.”“Did some of the girls want basketballs?” asked Phil.“Some of them did, yeah. A couple of them did,” Gina answered. We watched the students hard at work, all around.“Mostly everything has been donated and volunteered,” said Gina. “We have not had to come out of our pockets for anything.”“That’s pretty phenomenal,” said Phil, “We didn’t have any money to come out of our pockets anyways.”Meeting the Designers

I returned to the school the following week to get some pictures of Hole Diggin’ Day. On this day, volunteers from URG and AmeriCorps were going to prepare the area for Build Day, which included the task of digging holes with an augur. Volunteers had pulled up the old equipment a few days before. Gina was organizing things again today. I mentioned I’d like to talk with some of the kids about how they felt about the new playground. A few minutes later I found myself at a kids’ size table in the cafeteria talking with a few bright young students rounded up by Gina.First there was the very impressive Lindsay, an eighth grader. She had poise and the confident, friendly smile of a leader. In fact, she was student council vice president this year, the first time she had ever run for a student council position. When I asked her why she ran , she said, “I wanted to be a good role model.” Lindsay was not a rookie when it came to interviews. She told me she was interviewed by Channel 6 when she was in the sixth grade here at John Dibert School, when it only taught K-6, for her efforts in the creation of the once thriving butterfly garden in the front of the school.She said when she was chosen from her class to participate in the KaBOOM! sponsored Design Day, at first she thought it was “babyish,” but since it benefited the school, she was game. In her design she included a slide, jungle gym, monkey bars, swings and a sitting area for the “babies.”“Nothing to get hurt on,” she said.Before she left I asked her what her plans were for the future. For high school, “35” or Easton High, then Xavier and Tulane on her way to becoming a pediatrician.Candace was a bright third grader who’s mother is a teacher at Clark High School.Candace told me everyone tells her she’s creative. She likes to draw pictures and give them to her friends. When I asked her what her future held she didn’t hesitate a second: she wants to be a librarian.“I love to read,” she explained.She went on to say she wanted to go to Stanford because, “It’s one of the top three colleges in the country.” When I asked her how she knew that she said she saw it on TV.Her design included the usual slides and swings, but that’s not all. She also wanted a tennis court and a climbing wall.“I like to climb,” she said.Fourth grader Eric Fontenot was animated when he talked, quiet when he listened. He wore a good luck football medal around his neck on a lanyard. It’s also where he keeps the key to his trailer.He told me he was a good running back.“I spin around and stuff,” he told me. He breaks tackles, too, but his weakness, he confessed, is his stiff-arm. “I’m scared to get my fingers stuck in a face mask.”He wants to either go to LSU, like his dad, or to USC. “To the Trojans,” he said. After college ball, when he’s, as he put it, “a legendary football player,” he’ll become a rapper, and when he gets enough money he’ll donate it to the hungry people of Africa. He got the idea from his old school, where they donated food to a program there. He would also donate to the city of Opelousas, one of the places he lived after Katrina. He’d buy football equipment for the teams there.Though he hadn’t thought of it, he was excited that there was a climbing wall in the playground’s final design. His included “swings and stuff” for the little kids and, of course, a football field.

A few days later, when I pulled up on the big day, Build Day, I came upon what looked like a small army camp. Volunteers were everywhere. The equipment lay in pieces ready to be assembled.

Students enjoy the new jungle gym (top, left) and scale the new climbing wall (right) thanks to the volunteers who cleaned up the school ground, pulled out the old equipment and installed the new.

Check Up

I visited the school recently to see how it was doing. Kids were all around, inside the fence, jumping rope, tossing a football, hanging out around the stone benches with checkerboards painted on them. As I walked to the front door a purple ball the size of a basketball flew threw the air overhead. I made my way to the office to see if I could talk to the principal. I wanted to ask him how the kids were liking the new playground and if perhaps there was a noticeable change in their behavior. But he couldn’t see me, he was in a conference. As I wrote my name and cell phone number on our generic NPN business cards, a woman came in and announced to the office that there was a food fight in the cafeteria and that she had caught some milk in her hair and on her shoulder as she tried to stop it. Maybe that was the answer to my question. Now, the kids were having lots and lots of fun.Mr. Bartlett called me a few hours later. He said the school is glad to give the students more variety, more opportunities to use their imaginations and more ways to release their energy. The neighbors think it’s an attractive addition to the area as well. He also mentioned that Tulane had done a project to determine how the new playground affected the students, talking with them before and after the installation, but he hadn’t heard what the project had concluded.

In my own opinion, the school definitely looks nicer, which certainly lifts the spirits of everyone who runs across it, especially those who see it every day. As for noticeable changes in the children, well, it’s just a playground, right? What did I

expect? It’s just one little change for the better in this brave, new post-K world. It was a little step forward. From Gina Dornan, to little Eric to Caroline Wise to the AmeriCorps and Fannie Mae volunteers, to the people at KaBOOM! to the neighbors to you, the reader, and me, the writer, there’s a little more hope. And a little less hopeless.The next day I went back to capture a few photos of students enjoying the new playground. It was the last day of school, Principal Bartlett had informed me, so it was my last chance.When I made it to the school at around 2pm, the playground was empty. I went to the office and asked the secretary when the next recess was going to let out. She said I was a little late, there were no more, but she could help. She gathered three little girls for me.They led me down the stairs and to the playground, which, they realized with excitement, they could have all to themselves for the next ten minutes. I asked them to show me how the new equipment worked, which they did with joy.“I’m gonna climb the wall!” one of them shouted running towards it. The other two alighted the colorful centerpiece of the playground, shouting, “Watch this! Watch this!” as they climbed up, beat the built-in plastic congo drums and jumped off again.The wall-climber scaled the nearly six-foot high wall, complete with hand grips , and climbed over the top and down the other side.The smallest of the three, Maliyah Santee, showed me how she sometimes tries to run up the slippery three-slide-wide slide. They showed me the three-hooped multi-leveled basketball goal but couldn’t find a ball to shoot with.“Is that one over there?” I asked and pointed ahead. All three girls ran over to fetch it and came back. The first shot was nothin’ but plastic net.Then, to my surprise, they ran over to the only remaining piece of what was once the old playground. It was a smaller version of the centerpiece a few yards away. Its plastic colors were all faded, quite dull in comparison to the bright new equipment. But they climbed up on it just the same and slide down the slide. They even crawled under the slide and huddled, all three of them, in what they called the “living room.” There was a picture of a campfire on one of the walls.“It’s not real,” Maliyah assured me.I was also pleasantly surprised to see what looked like an outdoor classroom under a tree. There were wooden benches arranged in a semi-circle and a blackboard. “Who teaches out here?” I asked.“We all do,” one of them said and they ran over to demonstrate, one of them at the board, pointing to imaginary writing with a crooked twig. The other two girls sat obediently.They also showed me a small basketball hoop almost hidden in a corner. They all took turns shooting. Little Maliyah was last. Before she shot she let us all know she was the best and then, from a good four feet away, threw a huge air-ball high and to the left.They went on to show me a hop-scotch grid that was almost completely worn away. It was not part of the plans for the new playground. Instead Alaska partially covered it; there was a giant map of the United States painted on the concrete, the states in different colors.Amid all the excited shouts and questions I asked them if they spent any time on the other side of the school, where the basketball court is. No, they agreed, not without a teacher.We headed back inside. I thanked everyone for their help. Maliyah’s mother, Cheryl Joseph, who works at the school, told me not to forget to bring her a copy of this article when it was printed. I told her I’d bring a bunch.On the way out the girls who showed me the playground waved from the basketball court.“I thought you girls said you don’t come over here,” I said.“We’re with a teacher,” they said. “Hey, look at this!” one of them shouted and ran over to the far side of the court. There they pointed to the name “John Dibert” painted along the sideline.

It was clear. They were quite proud of their new school.

Find out more about KaBOOM!

mail- KaBOOM!
4455 Connecticut Ave, NW
Suite B100
Washington, DC 20008phone- 202-659-0215
web- www.kaboom.org

To see the Dibert School’s new look, go to 4217 Orleans Ave, lakeside of Carrollton Ave.