Schools reopen in Houston, buoying hope for recovery [washingtonpost.com]

Houston, TX

“Tens of thousands of schoolchildren returned to school Monday, two weeks after Hurricane Harvey battered the city, flooding homes, sweeping away uniforms and school supplies, and shuttering one of the nation’s largest school districts…

But while educators celebrated the return of students, they braced for the myriad challenges students face in the storm’s aftermath: missing school days, lost school supplies and uniforms, psychological trauma and transience. There were teachers, too, who lost everything, and about 270 were unable to return to work Monday...

There was also the financial toll: Superintendent Richard A. Carranza estimates the storm will cost the district roughly $700 million, a third of the annual budget…

Carranza said the district was preparing teachers for the possibility that many children may arrive with psychological damage from the storm and its aftermath. The district planned to train all teachers in “trauma-informed pedagogy” and to dispatch crisis counselors to schools.

“This is going to be a year of incredible academic growth, but it’s also going to be a year of recovery,” Carranza said.”

[For more on this story by Moriah Balingit, go to  https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.445b5d0779ff]

Photo: Terra Black, 11, fills out a worksheet about herself in a 6th grade class at Gregory-Lincoln Education Center in Houston on Sept. 11. (Tamir Kalifa for The Washington Post)