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Alum Helping Give Hope to Post-Katrina New Orleans

Monday Marks 5th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

August 27, 2010

A charter school in New Orleans known as “KIPP McDonogh 15” represents a silver lining in the dark cloud that was Hurricane Katrina.

Brad Burgel, a Wilmington College and Wilmington High School graduate, is teaching fifth and sixth grade inner-city children at the school and instilling in their minds the dream of going to college.

Monday (Aug. 29) is fifth anniversary of the hurricane slamming into the northern Gulf Cost region, resulting in — at $81 billion — the costliest natural disaster in the nation’s history. Some 1,500 lives were lost and thousands of residents were displaced.

From that catastrophe emerged a school in the heart of the city’s famous French Quarter that is literally changing lives and giving its students hope for a brighter future.

“If you survey around my homeroom, students will tell you that they want to be doctors, lawyers and veterinarians,” Burgel said. “Not a single student would tell you they are not going to college.”

These are children that were five-to-seven years old when Katrina hit New Orleans as a Category Three hurricane causing a catastrophic failure of the city’s extensive system of levees.

“Some students lost family members and some were stuck on roof tops when the flooding occurred,” he said. “One student told me about how he and his siblings were on CNN because they ended up in Houston with their grandma and could not find their mother for weeks.

“I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have been six and not know for weeks where your mom was — or even if she were alive.”

Sometimes the post traumatic stress of having lived through such an ordeal — and the aftermath of living an often transient existence during the subsequent five years — bubbles to the surface.

“They all remember the storm but most do not talk about it,” he said, noting that simple, everyday thunderstorms often evoke flashbacks to Katrina. “Occasionally a student will bring it up and want to talk about it one-on-one.”

McDonogh 15 is part of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) Network of non-profit charter schools that accepts its students from throughout the city free-of-charge and with no admission requirements.

Burgel’s school has instituted longer than normal school days (7:40 a.m. to 5 p.m.), homework each night and Saturday school once a month. Also, teachers give students their personal phone numbers in order to answer academic questions as late as 9 p.m.

“I average about 10 calls a night,” he said, noting college is on the students’ radar as early as kindergarten. “We make a commitment to parents that we will get their kids into college.”

Also, the school has taken students out of their often-insular existence on out-of-state field trips to visit colleges and cities like Atlanta and Chicago, as well as camping trips in Virginia and adventures in Mexico.

The first KIPP school in New Orleans opened in 2005 a week before the hurricane. Many students and their families were evacuated to the Houston Astrodome, which eventually led to a temporary school set up in the sports facility until students began relocating.

Burgel’s road to New Orleans started when, upon his graduation from Wilmington College in 2002, he was unsure what direction he wished to take, but “I knew I wanted to make a difference,” he said.

After earning a master’s degree in communications from Morehead State University in Kentucky, Barbara Kaplan, director of WC’s Career Center, assisted him in landing a management position with Kroger. His transfer to the Mt. Washington store in Cincinnati was an eye-opener.

“It was the first time that I had a lot of exposure to a low income neighborhood,” he recalled. “While there were many fantastic employees, I had several employees at that location that were illiterate, lacked fundamental math skills or lacked the basic skills to be marketable.

“I often felt helpless and wondered how our education system let so many people down.”

In 2008, although they both had good jobs, he and his wife decided they needed a change.

“We talked about our life, the future and what we wanted to give back to the world,” he said.

They looked into opportunities in New Orleans and he enrolled in TeachNOLA’s “highly selective” program in which he underwent intensive education training and professional development, and ended up with Louisiana’s equivalent to a four-year college degree in teacher education.

Burgel joined KIPP McDonogh 15 in 2009.

While the school’s location in the French Quarter was not severely flooded, signs of Hurricane Katrina remain readily evident less than a half-mile away.

He said the rebuilding continues throughout New Orleans and “you will see boarded up houses and buildings with the X spray-painted on them showing it had been checked for bodies.”

KIPP McDonogh 15 is predominantly comprised of African-American students, 90 percent of whose families live under the federal poverty level. Burgel said that, despite often challenging home environments that some endure, the children have developed a hunger to learn and succeed.

“Some kids have moved six-seven times since the storm, but, despite this, they are at school and ready to learn each day,” he said. “What is amazing and inspiring is that there are some kids that you know are going home to drugs and violence, but continue to come to school every day with the goal of climbing the mountain to college.”

While the New Orleans school is only recently established, the 100 or so KIPP schools nationwide can boast that an average of 80 percent of their students have gone on to college. Burgel noted that, currently, the Orleans School District’s rate is 7 percent.

KIPP’s success has been lauded by Forbes magazine and other national publications.

“Kids as young as five will tell you what year they are going to college,” he said. “Many will even tell you what college they want to go to.”

Each of the McDonogh 15’s homerooms is named after a college or university and features artifacts secured from those institutions. Burgel started school last week with a Wilmington College poster, pennants and other artifacts on his wall.

“Our school’s total end goal focus is in getting to college,” Burgel said. “The kids are absolutely fantastic! They are very hopeful about their future and more than willing to work hard toward making it a reality.”