Evacuees close gap on 'us' vs. 'them'

[TexasStooge]

HOUSTON, Texas (DallasNews.com/AP) – The badge dangling from Sabrina Hernandez's neck identifies her as a Hastings High senior. The oversized button with the smiling picture of Sabrina in her black-and-gold uniform tells you she's a member of the Bears cheerleading squad.

As she glides down the crowded concrete halls, nothing about the bubbly 18-year-old in the pink Barbie T-shirt and silver-sequined tennis shoes says "evacuee" or "refugee" or "victim."

That's not how the Kenner, La., girl sees herself. And that's not how she wants others to see her either.

"I'm just like them," Sabrina says in a soft, shy voice. "Some people have a problem with us, but I'm just like them."

"Us."

"Them."

In the more than half year since Hurricane Katrina turned the world upside down, thousands of students like Sabrina, and the schools that have taken them in, have had to walk a fine line.

Between fitting in here and loyalty to friends back home.

Between celebrating differences and seeking common ground.

Between asking too many questions – and not enough.

Between "us" and "them."

"For the most part they have pretty much settled in," says Bronwyn Lucas, support counselor at sprawling Elsik High School, which, along with Hastings, is part of the Alief Independent School District.

"For so many of them it's, 'I can't go back.' There isn't anything to go back to. This is it. You have to play the hand you've been given – ugly hand that it is.

"And they're playing it."

The Houston Independent School District received more displaced Gulf Coast students than any school system in the country. But the Alief district, a largely working-class district on the city's west side, has absorbed about 3,000 evacuee students, proportionally higher than even HISD.

Alief is an impoverished, multicultural area where many of the business and street signs are in both English and one of several Asian languages. The district's 47,000 students speak nearly 70 languages.

With the arrival of evacuees, the number of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch in Alief jumped nearly 8 percentage points overnight, to more than 70 percent. Alief has hired more of everything, from teachers to hall monitors, at a cost so far of more than $12 million – none of which has been reimbursed, as promised, by the federal government.

Despite the hardship, the district has gone out of its way to help the displaced students blend in.

A clothing pantry provided the khaki pants and solid-color polo shirts required at the district's elementary and middle schools. It avoided missteps such as the Houston district's early decision to issue the evacuees brightly colored wristbands, which were immediately equated with gang colors.

Teachers and other staff in Alief were asked to refer to these new students as "survivors," not evacuees or refugees. "We're not putting a big label on your forehead," says Dr. Jamey Cheek, the district's counseling coordinator.

Although a cafeteria shoving match at Elsik in September – the day before Hurricane Rita forced the school's evacuation – sent 25 kids to the district's alternative school, Dr. Cheek credits this approach with helping Alief avoid the all-out battles between evacuees and locals that have plagued Houston and other districts around Texas.

Still, there was a gulf between "us" and "them" that had to be bridged.

An evacuee, in a poem titled "Ask New Orleans," implores his Elsik classmates to imagine what it is like to be ripped from their families and friends.

At Elsik, which now counts around 200 evacuees among its 3,200 students, the staff also has seen evidence of that healing.

Where once New Orleans kids despaired that they'd never have friends, now they're dating.

And, for some kids, it's a chance to start over. Sabrina Hernandez said she's doing her best to make Hastings her school. She made the Hastings cheer squad after the school agreed to hold a second tryout to accommodate the new students. And she's on the yearbook staff.

Sabrina forfeited her chance for a special Louisiana college scholarship so she could take the classes she needed for the Texas diploma. She's already got her eyes set on the sports training program at the University of Houston.