Bureaucrats to the rescue — no, really
Published: September 28, 2005
Public school bureaucrats are not the most celebrated members of society.
On the stereotype scale, they rank somewhere above us media mongrels and below telemarketers.
So with school back in post-Rita session today, it’s good that you know what some of your school administrators were doing during the impromptu holiday that began when school let out last Wednesday.
Schools throughout the region opened their doors to people in need last week.
These stories are from the Houston Independent School District, which was part of an effort organized by the city of Houston to collect the homeless, the stranded without gasoline, the people who showed up at Ben Taub General Hospital thinking it was a shelter, and others.
Steve Siebenaler, principal of HISD’s Waltrip High School in northwest Houston, received the call Thursday afternoon.
Adriana Tamez, his regional superintendent, wanted to know if his plant operator would be available to set up and run the school as an emergency shelter the next day in anticipation of Rita’s projected pre-dawn Saturday arrival.
Waltrip would be one of 10 HISD facilities opened quietly for shelters at the request of Mayor Bill White. Altogether they would take in 4,700 guests.
Long-term thinking
Siebenaler didn’t hesitate. Of course plant operator Jerry Johnson would be available. So would Siebenaler and business manager Tony D’Angelo. Joining them would be Anne McLennan, who is principal at Challenge High School and lives in the neighborhood.
“It was no big deal,” said Siebenaler. “This is as safe as any place, and I’d rather be doing something helpful than sitting at home listening to the wind.”
His wife and 9-year-old son joined him, sleeping in his office.
It’s important to remember that Thursday afternoon Rita had not taken her right turn. Houstonians were being told to prepare for as much as two weeks without electricity.
So preparations at Waltrip included putting liners in trash cans and filling them with water.
“We were thinking five days down the line with no electricity and, if it’s like New Orleans, the water supply is contaminated,” said Siebenaler. “All you have is the water in the trash can liners, and you’ll drink it.”
Guests started showing up at 3 p.m. Friday, and within two hours, 300 had arrived.
They included folks from New Orleans, La Porte, Beaumont, Pasadena and all over Houston, spread out in the school’s two gymnasiums.
Sticking together
Sure enough, at 10:30 p.m. the power went out.
In the middle of the night, as many of their guests slept, Siebenaler, D’Angelo and Johnson went to the cafeteria and set breakfast places for 300 by flashlight: Plastic bowls, spoons with paper napkins folded neatly under them, single-serving boxes of cereal arrayed on the tables.
Every couple of hours, Siebenaler would take part in a conference call with state Rep. Rick Noriega, who was coordinating the effort at White’s request.
Each school would give an accounting of its situation and its needs and receive the latest news on the hurricane and what kind of help they could expect.
Afterwards, Siebenaler would brief his guests on any news.
Meanwhile, at Sam Houston High School in north Houston, principal Aida Tello was playing host to 628 guests.
Somehow rumors had spread earlier in the week that her school would be a shelter, so with the help of Councilman Adrian Garcia she made it one.
Among her troops were a teacher, a female custodian, an assistant principal and an associate principal and the plant operator. As with Waltrip, both school district and HPD officers helped with security.
One difference: Though her guests included evacuees from Galveston to East Texas, a majority were neighborhood families.
Some of her students took shelter at the school and pitched in to help.
“Councilman Garcia came by repeatedly, even in the middle of the storm, to check on us,” Tello said. “Mr. Noriega called regularly. Everyone was watching out for us.”
Worried that windows in the gym might be shattered in the wind, Tello had families make pallets in the first- and second-story hallways. She kept the third floor in reserve in case of flooding.
But she opened the gym Friday night, before the winds rose, to let the children tire themselves out.
It worked. At both Waltrip and Sam Houston, there were fewer incidents than an assistant principal would expect to handle on an average school day.
By Saturday afternoon the storm had passed and the guests were gone, many taken to their destinations by HISD school buses, well-organized by yet other school bureaucrats.
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