Interview With the Principal

Central Elementary School Principal Stephanie Yeager gave me some background on Central's story.

"For three years prior to Hurricane Katrina we have been raising money to buy new playground equipment. Our biggest fundraising activity had been scheduled for the day after Hurricane Katrina hit. Needless to say, that did not happen." 

"When we saw the first KaBOOM! build in Bay St. Louis, we called and emailed and told KaBOOM! what had happened and what we were doing and we wound up being selected for Anniversary Week. This news was a dream come true for us. KaBOOM!, The Home Depot, Playworld Systems have made dreams come true for 375 children."

"The kids are just excited as I am! This morning, I came to the school and what got me going, was hearing this chanting outside. I looked out my window and realized that it was the Mesa Verde sailors on their morning run who were coming here to build our playground."

"One of the big things about Katrina is that it's been so devastating and has affected everyone in such negative ways. Part of recovery is looking at 'what can be," not 'what has been' or 'what is.' This is important because looking at the future and looking at the positive will show people that there is something good that's going to come out of something so terrible. It gives kids hope to see something coming back bigger and better than they every thought. This is an older school and the children deserve something new –not just something fixed to the point where it will work for right now. This playground is not just for the kids; it's for the teachers and the city, too. Today we had kids, teachers, staff, high schoolers, parents, the community and professional all come out to help us build this playground because it's so rewarding and offers a sense of accomplishment that we have done something to better our community."

After the Storms: The Affect on the Children

This morning I spoke with a Beach Elementary first grade teacher, Mrs. Verrett, who is teaching her first graders out of a classroom at Central Elementary until Beach reopens in August of 2007. Almost 100 percent of the students from Beach Elementary lost their homes in the storms. A year later, the families who haven't moved away are still living in FEMA trailers or with friends. Overall, she feels that her students have adjusted as well as they can to life after the storms, but their lives are far from being back to normal. 

She hopes that a playground will restore a little normalcy to their lives and says that the kids are incredibly excited. The current play area at Central Elementary consists of a few sets of swings and some monkey bars and just isn't big enough to accommodate kids from both Central and Beach.   

Far-Reaching Effects of the Storm

This morning I talked to a nurse from the Pascagoula hospital who is running the First Aid Station about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on Gulf Coast children. She told me about her granddaughter lives in Houston and goes to school with 15 children from New Orleans who decided to live there after the storms. "When I told my granddaughter that I was going help build a playground for kids who had lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina, she started to cry." 

Community Involvement

One of the major volunteer forces here today is the Mesa Verde Command LPD-19, which has adopted Central Elementary School. Every Tuesday for the past year, the command has been volunteering at Central Elementary, mainly tutoring students, but also helping with improvement projects. Today, the entire command took the day off to help build the playground, which included running three and a half miles from the Navy barracks as part of their morning exercise.  Chief Select Dion Rodriguez commented that "Playgrounds are particularly important for kids in the Gulf because they help take their minds off everything that's happened.  It's nice to see new construction and structures actually being built. These kids are young so they can probably barely remember what happened last year aside from the destruction so it's nice to see something being built rather than focusing on the negative aspects." 

Excitement Building

It's obvious that the kids are so excited for the playground! Throughout the day, teachers have been taking turns leading their classrooms outside to observe the building process, but also to help volunteers in small ways.  Mrs. Verrett's first graders were each given an item to carry from the kitchen to the volunteer food table. And another group of kids came out with plastic garbage bags to collect trash from volunteers. 


Read the rest of Megan's blogs here: Monday | Tuesday