Nine years after Katrina, schools are still being renovated and rebuilt. John Dibert Community School moved into a brand new building this fall. The school held an open house over the weekend, to show off the new facility and recruit families.
The open house started with a second line and closed out with a special performance: first graders singing "What a Wonderful World."
In between, students led tours of the new building. They showed of all the features. A music studio with a high end sound system. Not one but two science labs. And, in the words of seventh grader Paris Dorsey, "big, humongous classrooms."
Dorsey's been at Dibert since third grade. She says when she first walked into the new building, "it was beautiful, amazing. I'm like 'oh my God!' When I touched the floor, it's just brand new."
That floor is carefully designed, with lines built in to direct students — a trend common in new New Orleans schools, to keep students literally in line.
Dibert isn't just getting a new building. It's getting a new name. Next year it will be the Phillis Wheatley Community School. The new building sits on the former site of Phillis Wheatley Elementary School, named for the first African American woman to publish a book of poems.
Angela Daliet, Dibert's business and operations manager, says the school wants to honor Wheatley's legacy.
"Most schools in the city, as we're coming back online — especially with these new school buildings — they're continuing to operate with their former program name inside of a facility name," she says. "But we really wanted to embrace the story of Phillis Wheatley."
Wheatley Elementary didn't flood during Katrina but sat vacant after the storm. It was torn down, amid protest, in 2011. Daliet hopes the new building will draw more families from Tremé.
Support for education reporting on WWNO comes from Baptist Community Ministries and Entergy Corporation.