Martha Rial, Post-Gazette photos Mud and debris caused by the massive flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina has yet to be removed from the Louis Armstrong Elementary School in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward. The school's students are now scattered across the country.

By Bill Toland, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

NEW ORLEANS -- For one school in the maligned New Orleans public education system, it was to be a fresh start.

What had been known as Hardin Elementary in the Lower Ninth Ward would be reborn in the summer of 2005, its pupils merged with those from another school across the neighborhood. In the cafeteria, on the wall above the stage, a sign welcomed the young students to the "New Louis Armstrong Elementary School."

The rebirth lasted less than a month.

Among the things leveled by Hurricane Katrina one year ago was the school's sprawling campus in the heart of New Orleans' poorest neighborhood. Just blocks from where the Industrial Canal levee broke, it now is a mud-caked apocalypse of overturned desks, crumbling walls, broken windows, rusting kitchen equipment, and the stench of mold and rot.

Bobby Newsom, 74, in a village of FEMA trailers in Plaquemines Parish that he has called home for the last seven months -- "It's like a different damn world. My friends [are gone]. People I knew. So few of them have come back. If I had any sense, I wouldn't have come back either." Click photo for larger image. Katrina: One year after Graphic: New Orleans' struggle to recover from Katrina, in .pdf format Most say nation not ready for another major disaster From yesterday: Brave face hides big hurt in Big Easy

The Louis Armstrong Elementary School stands today as a gloomy symbol of the work left to be done in this city, and across the Gulf Coast. For every sign of progress -- the Louisiana Superdome soon will return to service, for instance -- there is an ugly reminder that this city, and the region that depends on it, may never be the same.

This isn't entirely a bad thing. Hopeful public officials, from the mayor's office to the Louisiana Recovery Authority, want to believe that Katrina's destruction has churned up a creative energy that will someday lead to a new and improved metro area.

"We paid the price, we might as well get the goods," said David Voelker, a member of the recovery authority board.

It's a popular, and perhaps psychologically necessary, point of view: that Katrina, tragic though she was, has provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a safer, more prosperous city. In the near term, the city can showcase its fortitude by complementing the slow reconstruction with muscular displays of industrial vitality.

The Superdome is one such display.

One year ago today the Superdome was opened as a "refuge of last resort" for poor New Orleanians and a handful of tourists who couldn't evacuate ahead of Katrina. By the next day, the hurricane had made landfall, tearing a gash in the Superdome's roof. When flooding marooned the city, cutting off escape routes, those stranded inside for three more days trashed the place.

	A Taco Bell on St. Bernard Highway sits untouched since the massive flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina destroyed most businesses and homes in St. Bernard Parish one year ago. Click photo for larger image.

Since then, $185 million was spent fixing the roof, building new concession areas, replacing the artificial football field and hauling away 4,000 tons of debris. Although finishing touches will be added for months, the stadium will be ready for the New Orleans Saints' season opener on Sept. 25.

It's been an impressive, and unprecedented, display of remediation and reconstruction. But while the Superdome serves as the symbol of New Orleans' rebirth for the city and the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District, it has become a symbol of misplaced priorities for others.

How could government agencies find money and time to rebuild a football field when so much of New Orleans remains littered with empty schools, mangled houses and abandoned cars?

The only progress I see is the progress they're making for tourists," who come to football games and the French Quarter, said Donna Polk, whose home on the city's West Bank was flooded. She now lives in a white FEMA trailer while her house is being repaired. "I just find it amazing that you can put millions of dollars into the Superdome."

On the other hand, said William Hines, former chairman of the business organization Greater New Orleans Inc., it would be imprudent to spread Louisiana's federal recovery funds evenly among all city neighborhoods. Only $26 billion has been allocated directly for reconstruction, while $18 billion went to immediate disaster relief and $14.7 billion for national flood insurance payouts.

The places with the least damage should be the immediate priority, Mr. Hines believes.

"You could have all of the neighborhoods at 70 percent right now, but what good would that do you?" he said. "Or you can bring some along faster than others."

That means the Lower Ninth Ward, the neighborhood in greatest need of help, will be the last to receive it. And it means, that the Louis Armstrong Elementary School, one of 50 public schools in the city devastated by the storm, won't be fixed any time soon, if ever.

About half of the school system's 120 or so buildings will open this month or next, and that should be enough to accommodate the city's shrunken footprint and population. At the end of the 2005-2006 school year, only 12,500 of the district's 65,000 students had returned.

But the school district remains on shaky financial footing, with its reduced tax base and enormous capital needs over the next several years. This year, the district was bailed out by millions in FEMA and state funds, and that money won't necessarily be available down the road.

The fact that the city schools are open at all is remarkable, said Andy Kopplin, head of the recovery authority. "It's nice to see that sign of life," he said.

All around the region, there are other signs of life, coupled with signs of distress. The New Orleans business community, for instance, is a tale of two cities.

Big professional service firms are thriving, profits from Gulf Coast oil refineries are better than expected, and the Port of New Orleans has bounced back nicely, actually exceeding pre-Katrina cargo tonnage.

But while big companies, with multi-state client bases, have rebounded, small businesses are disappearing all over the city. Gas stations, restaurants, food marts, laundromats, souvenir shops -- pretty much any business that relies on the patronage of tourists and New Orleans natives -- are dead or dying, said Suzanne Mestayer, the south Louisiana head of AmSouth Banks.

"It's really rough right now," she said. "It's been a difficult summer.... We are desperate to get employees back."

Some shop owners, especially those who own property and have some capital, will be able to hang on until next year's tourist season. But many will succumb to a thinning of the business herd that would be expected of a city that's lost half of its population.

Of course, many businesses were simply destroyed. In places like East New Orleans, a middle-class neighborhood with some ritzier homes at its eastern end, and St. Bernard Parish, which lies between swampland and the Mississippi River, entire shopping malls and strip plazas have been abandoned. Restaurants, ravaged a year ago by high winds and floods, remain gutted.

The emptied malls and plazas are the most obvious landmarks in Louisiana's many new ghost towns, which couldn't support shops or other businesses even if they had been repaired and reopened. St. Bernard Parish, for example, lost at least 90 percent of its businesses and, as of this spring, hadn't regained even 10 percent of its pre-Katrina population.

It gets worse as you travel south, out of the city and into the fingertips of Plaquemines Parish, which is sliced in half by the Mississippi River and buffeted on each side by sea. If you live at the parish's southern tip, near the oil fields of Venice, you have to drive 70 minutes to get to a decent restaurant or a supermarket. Where orange groves once stood are rows and rows of FEMA trailers. Husks of homes line the roadside, waiting for a date with a bulldozer.

The floodwater in this area, topped by a coat of oil, sat for weeks and left black smudges on utility poles and now-dying oak trees. The broken levee has been patched, but the federal government still has not certified the repair job. The town elders feel neglected, in New Orleans' shadow.

Bobby Newsom, a retired mechanic and part-time shrimp boat deckhand, has lived in this decimated parish since the early 1970s. Katrina annihilated his old mobile home, and now he finds himself in a new one issued by FEMA, residing in a crowded trailer park along the Gulf side of the parish.

"No, it will never be the same again," he said, drawing on a Marlboro. "It's like a different damn world. My friends [are gone]. People I knew. So few of them have come back.

"If I had any sense, I wouldn't have come back either."