And that is our story - a simple one of ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances. When John Kennedy, during his presidential campaign, was asked by a young boy, "how did you become a war hero?" he replied, "it was involuntary; they sank my boat." I have a similar reaction. Certainly, none of this was voluntary. Katrina and those engineers who were responsible for the faulty design of our levees destroyed my schools, drowned some of my neighbors, and devastated my entire community.

On August 29, 2005, every home, every school, every church and every business in our community suffered massive damage, and Katrina forever changed the lives of a very close-knit, hard working, middle class community of 68,000 people...

We were forced by rising water to lead or carry over 250 people, many in wheelchairs, on oxygen, on ventilators, in need of dialysis, in various stages of dementia, to the second floor of our building...and then we watched in horror as we found ourselves surrounded by a lake, hearing cries for help all around us echoing from neighborhood roof tops. Thankfully, the water leveled at about 8 feet, but, by then, we had lost most of our provisions to the murky waters.

Then the boats came. I wish I could say it was the military or the guard or some such agency that had responded to our devastation, but it was our own people. Those hearty people of St. Bernard who live off the land began a rescue operation of unfathomable proportions... There were no riots; there were no disruptions; there were just hundreds of people just like you and the person sitting next to you who, in the blink of an eye, lost everything they had worked for over their entire lifetimes, who now looked to us for rescue. And we accepted that responsibility... because that's what school people do.

By late Wednesday, we marched over 1200 people through thigh-deep water about a mile and a half to a staging area on the Mississippi River levee, where we hoped state and federal government agencies would eventually come to our rescue with a means of evacuation... And by Thursday, after escaping in a crew boat on the Mississippi River with 25 other people, I was en route to Baton Rouge to begin the process of rebuilding our school system.

And there, I believe, our story and our purpose here really begins. Within one week, in temporary offices in Baton Rouge, we were operating with a borrowed computer, preparing to issue a payroll, contacting employees through donated internet space, begging our legislators for immediate funding since our entire local tax base had been wiped out, trying to secure a community disaster loan and providing student academic and immunization records to parents who were scattered throughout the United States. Admittedly, we were in a state of professional and personal shock, but our focus remained clear -- the reopening of the St. Bernard Parish Public Schools.

It soon became obvious that our first responders and essential parish personnel who had never left, and our returning oil and sugar refinery workers who were living in river barges and travel trailers wanted to bring their families home. My promise, my pledge to them was to provide educational services to the first child who returned to St. Bernard Parish. We had to open school or our families could not return -- we had to open school or our community would die -- we had to open school because that's what school people do.

In September, we had begun discussions with FEMA about the cleaning and recovery of our buildings and the need for temporary housing for our school's essential staff. We were, at first, comforted to know that the full resources of the most powerful nation in the world were at our disposal. But, as our discussions progressed, it became more than clear that we were on our own. Our government had failed us. Promises of portable classroom buildings within 90 days, secured through a "mission assignment" to the army corps of engineers, were broken. No housing for our teachers could be quickly secured by FEMA, and cleaning the muck, debris, and marsh remnants from our buildings was a task that would be ours.

So we forged ahead without help from the state or federal governments, locating our own portable classrooms and housing trailers, sealing deals with a hand-shake in parking lots of uninhabitable buildings, securing our own national disaster clean-up team, and relying on our own people – Bev Lawrason, my associate superintendent, who worked at my side; Ronnie Alonzo, who was my scavenger, my man in the field; Albert Carey, a trusted friend and architect who I called out of retirement; and our principals and administrators who salvaged the very few instructional materials that were undamaged on second-floor buildings. We had no patience for excuses, for bureaucracy, or for any obstacles that would delay our reopening.

And reopen we did. On November 14, 2005, just 11 weeks after the storm and only 3 and a half weeks after we took matters into our own hands, we welcomed 334 students in portable classroom trailers on the football field parking lot, and our teachers lived across the street in 240 square foot travel trailers on the grounds of an abandoned elementary school. By December we had doubled in enrollment. By January, we were the only normalcy for 1500 students, and we ended the school year with 2460. We cooked hot food with makeshift equipment, fed children in tents, ran after school programs until dark, and transported children home each day to sleep in tents, 8' x 29' travel trailers, concrete floors of houses with no electricity and sometimes in the backs of pick-up trucks. This past August we opened two sites to 3400 students, and next school year we will open five schools to a projected enrollment in excess of 4000. We have worked very hard and very long to honor our commitment of rebuilding with pride.

Ladies and gentlemen, I, alone stand before you to accept this award; but the educators of the St. Bernard Parish Public School System merit the significance of this moment.

In August, we will open the new school year with the theme, "the courage to lead." As we rebuild our homes in St. Bernard, as we put our hard-earned dollars back into our community's struggling businesses, as we rebuild state-of-the art true community learning centers with not only education but daycare, after school programs, meeting rooms for community groups, a school-based health care center for our children, a library that is accessible to our entire community, and a commitment from Exxon Mobil to assist us in this endeavor -- we are proud to take the lead in rebuilding because we are determined that our community will not die; because we are determined that our community will again be the typical, vibrant, safe community in which to raise a family; and because St. Bernard is and will always be our home...

Ms. Kennedy, Senator, your father and brother once pointed out to us that the Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word "crisis." One brush stroke stands for danger, the other for opportunity. John Kennedy encouraged us all that we should, in a crisis, be aware of the danger -- but recognize the opportunity.