Following Hurricane Katrina, public schools in New Orleans were pulled together into the Recovery School District (RSD). Most of these schools were then separated into different charters and many of them struggled to succeed.
In 2011, after this redistricting, the Algiers school district consisted of 12 different schools. Today, there are only three schools left in the district and Harriet Tubman Charter School is one of them. After opening in 2011 in the original location, the school moved into a temporary location in 2013 so that their original building could be renovated as it was severely dilapidated. Five years later, they finally moved back onto their original campus last month after persevering through many frustrating delays related to completing the renovation of the school.
Over these five years they have grown their school from 150 kids to now over 1,000 kids in total and their programs are thriving. There are roughly 600 kids at the school where will be working and the remainder of the kids are still at the temporary location until they can afford to build an additional campus in Algiers.
The new school, while very nicely renovated, still had some areas of opportunity that the school leaders didn’t have the bandwidth to complete once the school year has started. This included both outdoor and indoor projects consisting of planting and mulching roughly 100 plants and shrubs, tree trimming, building vegetable gardens for edible schoolyard, building benches and seating in the outdoor vegetable garden, planting a fruit orchard and organizing various different rooms inside the school.
On Friday, October 19th, iSeatz closed the office and the entire staff completed the projects above, donating more than 500 community hours and all necessary supplies.
Related Blog: iHelpz at the Green Project
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