Some rants emitted by me on this blog in recent (and not so recent) days have led me down the path to...New Orleans East.

The East is one area that has largely been neglected by the voluntourism sweeping the city. It's not as pretty as some of the older areas of New Orleans, it doesn't have as much historical cachet as all the ruined shotgun houses and Creole cottages, and, overall, its population isn't as white as it is in Lakeview, Lake Vista, Lake Terrace, and the other inundated neighborhoods further west and closer to Jefferson Parish. This Old House hasn't been rushing in to gut, remediate, and restore any homes in the 'hoods off Morrison Avenue, or Chef Menteur Highway, or even close to the Lakefront Airport, which is back in full operational mode.

People have been coming back to the East, however, because it's home. For some, it's harder than others, like 'most anyplace in the city these days that was sitting in floodwaters for over a month. I have in front of me right now a copy of Issue #2 of ArtVoices magazine, opened to an advertisement for an upcoming photography show at Terrence Sanders gallery. It shows a man standing on a diving board suspended over a backyard pool filled with black, brackish water. Behind him is a ruined house reduced to cinder block walls and plywood, with debris lining the edges of the swimming pool. The caption reads:

Chef Menteur Highway plunges eastward over the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet into a succession of 60's era housing chiseled from reclaimed wetlands. Here amid a grid of streets with names like Robin Hood and Nottingham rests John Moore's childhood home. An energy rater for a post-Katrina rebuilding firm, he's well aware of the risks of building on land that more or less floats. "We all knew it was risky," he ventured, "but where else could you find an affordable two-story with a pool?" Reduced to a shell of lumber and facades, the house has been sold to a real estate speculator from New Jersey. "This pool was my favorite place to play growing up," John mused, staring for a long moment into the sordid rectangle of dank water. "These East New Orleans developments were sold as millionaire dream homes for workin' folks."*

For too many people out east, their dream homes became nightmares. And it ain't over for them yet. John Moore's former home is not far from the Sherwood Forest Elementary School, one of the schools slated for demolition by the RSD. The facility sits in ruins, surrounded by a fence that has some large, wide open gates. Tire tracks have made deep ruts in the wide open schoolyard. Several of the doors into the buildings on the site are unlocked; it is very easy to get into these buildings with little effort. I had to watch where I was walking, however, as there is still some debris in these buildings as well as outside of them.

















What makes Sherwood Forest in particular a bit sad is that it looked like it was on the verge of being adopted by the University of New Orleans as a "Professional Development" school. The banner still hangs proudly on the outside wall, a symbol of hope that is dying on the vine:


If UNO had come through on this, Sherwood Forest would be the only RSD school operating in the middle of New Orleans East in its own building. The entire physical plant of Sherwood Forest is not that large, and it really wouldn't take very much to rip out what hasn't been ripped out yet, remediate the whole thing, and put in all new walls, fixtures, and wiring. Instead, the facility is left unguarded, unsecured, and susceptible to the elements, both natural and unnatural. And it is not the only one like this.

The first building I visited was Little Woods Elementary. I could drive right onto the parking area in front of the main building and walk around on the grounds. The main building had pieces of plywood bolted over every opening, which wasn't that difficult to do - it is a building of fairly recent vintage (okay, 1972. Architect: Edward M.Y. Tsoi) with few windows and a good number of doors that had at one time opened into each classroom. The one casualty to this security measure was the door handles and doorknobs, which had had to be ripped out so that the plywood would lie flat against each door.

I learned the drill at Little Woods. It might look like a secured fortress discouraging visitors, but there was always a wide open gate to the grounds, and there was always an open door or a knocked-out window somewhere that gave me easy access to the ruined insides. Before I learned about the open door, however, I drove around to the back of the school grounds, which could be viewed from a cul-de-sac behind the school. A lady opened the door to her recently restored home, and her mop of a dog said hello, running towards my feet and wriggling with delight at the attention I was giving him. She asked me why I was there, and I told her I was taking pictures of the school, that there was a planning meeting about what was to be done with the facility that night at the Village De L'Est school not far from Michoud Boulevard.

"Well, they took out all the portables and the furniture, and ripped out the A/C units," she told me, pointing to the empty shells on the roof that once housed the units. "I put three children through school there, and one grandchild as well. It's very quiet now," she said wistfully. It must have been especially lonely where she was situated - she was in one of the few fully restored houses in the area, though a lot of work was being done on others and a set of apartments across from the school on Curran had reopened... but the occupancy level there was still low.

"I'm working with some folks who want to see what can be done about this," I said, knowing deep down that unless many, many more people such as herself stood up and hollered that they didn't want their neighborhood school to be left behind, it would be demolished, and who knows if anything would be put back in its place right away?

"Well...you can't fight City Hall," she said with sad resignation, in a voice that hinted at hard-won knowledge in that regard.

Yes, it may be difficult to fight it - but at least one can speak up.

I've got many, many more pictures of the abandoned schools of RSD Planning District H to download that scream for themselves. What will ultimately be done with the schools? The neighborhoods in which they sit are coming back, so why is the process of community consultation being treated as a complete joke? In terms of education, the children of this area have been down so long that any kind of consideration is gonna seem like a way up and out. Their parents need to speak out, and if they can't do so because, most likely, they are working their tails off just to try to keep up with the rising costs of living where they are, they need to have people advocating for their rights in the process. To give you an idea of what that might look like (with some reservations - the TCA board that built the preschool has some nefarious local characters listed on it, such as Oliver Thomas and Ellenese Brooks-Simms), I give you a look at a Head Start facility for preschoolers located directly across from the abandoned Jordan Elementary:




I can't put my finger on what exactly the RSD is going to do once it has gotten rid of the facilities that it has scavenged some portable classrooms, furniture, and A/C units from, but if these returning homeowners don't start speaking up, chances are there will be nothing to replace those buildings for a long time. Once again, the same syndrome that has hit the housing developments is hitting the school buildings under the RSD umbrella, except we're having a hard time seeing the demolition contracts, let alone the redevelopment contracts - if those exist. Keep an eye out for Parsons, everybody, because they have now come to the 'hoods to supposedly help with the redevelopment of the RSD's master plan.

And whatever you do - don't stay silent and shut this out. This is happening all over the city, not just the (not so far) East.


*from an upcoming exhibit (March 29th - April 10th) of photographer Stewart Harvey's New Orleans Sketches