Eve Abrams

If you own a dog in New Orleans, there are two places where your dog can legally run around off-leash: your yard and City Bark, the private dog park in City Park.

The New Orleans Recreation Development Commission wants to change that. NORD-C has selected two off-leash dog-runs for each district, but with city money tight there’s no telling when they’ll be built.

The Housing Authority of New Orleans received a Federal grant last year to redevelop the Iberville Housing Development, the city’s last traditional public housing complex, on the edge of the French Quarter. The plan was to keep about a third of the buildings, demolish the rest, and build new, mixed-income housing.

When teenagers look for a job, they often seek skills and training just as much as money. But for kids growing up without abundant resources, opportunities for developing confidence, humility, and a good work ethic can be hard to come by. Yet one New Orleans program, the Grow Dat Youth Farm, provides all of this and more in one fell swoop.

When a prisoner calls home to talk to his mother, son, or daughter, that call costs his family about 15 times more than it would if the same number were dialed outside the prison walls.  These costs vary from one jail to the next, but every Louisiana prison receives a hefty kickback from the collect phone calls inmates make simply to stay in touch with their friends and families.

When Hurricane Isaac blew through Louisiana, it caused an estimated $100 million worth of losses in agriculture. About 40% of the state’s citrus crop was destroyed, and in Plaquemines Parish, where most of our citrus comes from, nearly half the citrus acres were flooded.

Farmers in the worst hit areas are cleaning up. Meanwhile, the luckier farmers worry about the next time. All of them told Eve Abrams the future of Louisiana’s commercial citrus industry does not look good.

College and high school classes are different. And, surprisingly, what many high schools do in the interest of college prep is out of step with what liberal arts colleges actually want.

In New Orleans, where our successful future depends upon thinkers who can unravel complex problems, there’s one school actively selecting students based on their curiosity and drive, rather than their grades and test scores.  Eve Abrams steps inside the admissions process at Bard Early College in New Orleans.