Introducing 'Where the Schools Went'

20 years ago, our nation watched a city drown. New Orleans is getting hit very hard. A lot of objects flying through the air here, including things like siding. Incredible, incredible amount of water coming in with this. When you've been gusting 100, 100 to 20 miles an hour, it's like it's just a howling screeching. We'll also fix your ears, pop a little bit. Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest storm in American history. The wake up that next morning in the year that you see this just goon, it was a shock. I lost everything. Everybody in my family lost everything. There was military helicopters overhead. All the street lights were still out. My name's Erie. It just was kind of this like odd post-apocalyptic kind of feel. So I turn on my little 13 inch black and white TV. I heard Bob Brick say something to the effect that like if people don't leave, there won't be enough body bags. [MUSIC PLAYING] The storm drowned homes, neighborhoods, entire communities. It swept away the city schools. Gone to were the rituals and traditions that connected generations. How do you rebuild the city without its schools? Where the schools went is a new podcast from the branch in partnership with the '74 and Midas Tush. It's the story of what happens when an entire school system disappears in a city as forced to start over. We were constantly updating addresses because our kids were constantly moving from a shelter to a hotel to maybe a church and then maybe to an apartment. The littlest kids were tied into the desk. The older kids, they were too cool to do things like hiding in the desk, but they were flinched. We could not occupy the first floor because of the standing water. You're being shot out of a cannon every morning and you wake up. [MUSIC PLAYING] What followed was the most dramatic school makeover our country has ever seen. Some call it a tragedy. If your goal was to break up the black community, break up the black power structure, take wealth from an already poor community, then yes, it was a beautiful success. Others are miracle. This community has actually used the crisis as an opportunity to start rebuilding and try to experiment with new ways of learning. Over the course of this series, we'll trace the story from chaos to reinvention. We'll meet the educators, families, students, and critics who lived it. And we'll ask, what do we owe each other when everything falls apart? [MUSIC PLAYING] Where the school is running, available wherever you get your podcasts. Episode one drops August 12th. [MUSIC PLAYING]