Teacher learns a lesson from hurricanes
Published: September 23, 2005
Going back to the Big Easy would be too hard for one displaced New Orleans resident.
Unlike other homeowners in his neighborhood, Wil Navarre has no desire to return to his flood-damaged home. The elementary school teacher is content to stay in Arkansas, where he went job hunting Wednesday.
Navarre, who visited a job fair hosted by the Arkansas Department of Education, actually hopes his home is beyond repair from flooding in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. That would make it easier for him to get on with his life.
Navarre and his family rebuilt after Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and know what a difficult task awaits returning evacuees now. He is living with family in Marion until he can find a teaching job.
“I pretty much know what I’m going back to and I don’t want to do that again,” he said. “We’re going to settle in Arkansas or (northern) Louisiana. It’s far enough from the Gulf of Mexico.”
Navarre, 56, said he would stay in Arkansas unless it is easier to relocate to Shreveport so that he can maintain his Louisiana teacher retirement benefits.
He started the process of becoming certified as a teacher in Arkansas at the job fair in Little Rock on Wednesday. The education department sponsored the fair to attract Louisiana and Mississippi teachers displaced by the storm.
According to the department, many schools have vacancies in perennial shortage areas like special education, math and science.
In addition, some schools may be hiring new teachers in response to the influx of about 2,000 school-aged Hurricane evacuees into the state’s school system.
The state is helping other evacuees find jobs too, in part because of a $3 million federal grant awarded to the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services.
The grant will be used to provide job search assistance, training and temporary jobs to evacuees. Arkansas had previously asked for $30 million.
Julie Thompson, communications director of the Department of Education, said more than 40 Louisiana or Mississippi teachers attended the event.
Navarre, who passed out resumes to about a dozen schools or educational cooperatives represented, is an elementary school teacher specializing in reading. He, like others, applied for Arkansas teaching credentials and underwent criminal background checks in a process streamlined for hurricane evacuees.
He left New Orleans before Katrina made landfall already prepared for the worst, bringing along vital documents to further expedite certification here.
Those documents are among few things salvaged from a house that Navarre has been told has been in between five and 12 feet of water.
“I really would like it to be a total loss because I really don’t want to renovate,” he said.
If he is hired by an Arkansas school, he will likely fill a slot already vacant before Katrina, Thompson said.
She was surprised that many school districts have had openings since before the disaster.
One of those districts, Fort Smith, has openings for special education and English-as-a-second-language teachers. Other schools, at least in western Arkansas, have little to offer the displaced educators.
“Out of 22 schools in our cooperative, Fort Smith was the only school to have needs,” said Patsy Smith of the Western Arkansas Educational Co-op. “The needs are not there at this time.”
Still, Navarre expects to move to wherever the teaching needs are. He needs the money, having only received one paycheck this school year.
A steady job is more important than the culture and the food of the Crescent City, he said. Anyway, he hopes to recreate some of the culture of New Orleans wherever he lands.
“I may be instrumental in relocating enough culture up here that it will be good for everybody,” he said.
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