Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Ex-New Orleans teacher at home in LV

In a car crammed with hastily packed bags, their two young children and the family dog, Charlotte and Charles LaRocca fled Hurricane Katrina's fury and left their home and its six large live oak trees in the Algiers district of New Orleans.

Charlotte LaRocca, the first of that city's teachers to be hired by the Clark County School District in the wake of the hurricane, said Thursday she has no way of knowing how much, if anything, remains of the lives they left behind.

"Nobody's allowed to go in (to Algiers)," said LaRocca, 42. "From what other people told me we didn't get any flooding. But some trees are knocked down, I don't know if they're on my house or not. I don't know what's going on."

The LaRoccas left New Orleans on Aug. 29, the day before the hurricane hit. After a 22-hour drive they arrived in Houston, only to be told all motels and hotels were already full. The family, including Belgian sheepdog Caesar, spent the night parked at a truck stop in their Toyota Sequoia SUV.

Cellular phones were useless. LaRocca couldn't reach her son, Rafael, in Baton Rouge, where he is a freshman at Louisiana State University. The car radio was their only source of news about the swirling winds and driving rain pounding their hometown.

The reports in the early hours after Hurricane Katrina made landfall were "a rude awakening that we weren't going to go home," LaRocca said.

Unable to get in touch with their neighbors or friends and knowing the roads leading home might be closed for weeks, the LaRoccas decided to push on to Las Vegas. Charles LaRocca's brother and sister-in-law are teachers in the Clark County School District, and his mother also owns a home in Las Vegas, splitting her time between Southern Nevada and New Orleans.

While she was registering 5-year-old Rachel and 11-year-old Charles for classes at Gehring Elementary School last week, LaRocca struck up a conversation with Assistant Principal Ron Schroeder. When he discovered she was a special education teacher with 10 years' experience, he urged her to consider applying for a job.

Having volunteered as a recruiter for the district in the past, including a trip to Buffalo, N.Y., Schroeder was well aware of the high number of vacancies that remained for the current school year.

"As soon as she started telling me about herself, the idea (that LaRocca should apply) was in my head," Schroeder told the Sun in a telephone interview Thursday."She's going to be an excellent teacher for us."

A day after meeting Schroeder, LaRocca had submitted her online application and was back at Gehring being interviewed by a member of the district's human resources staff.

"I'm grateful, because I knew I had to get a job eventually," LaRocca said. "I don't feel comfortable just living off of people. I had an income, I had a job. We had our own house."

After she was welcomed by Interim Superintendent Walt Rulffes and School Board President Larry Mason at a press conference Thursday at the district's Greer Education Center on Flamingo Road, LaRocca thanked Clark County for its hospitality to her family.

"I'm so grateful to y'all and looking forward to working with y'all," LaRocca said.

Then, seeming to remember she was in a different town now, LaRocca offered a translation.

"With YOU all," she over-enunciated, drawing laughter from the audience of district staff, administrators and media.

George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources for the district, said she hopes LaRocca is just the first of many teachers who decide to give Clark County a try.

Recruiters will be in Jackson, Miss., Shreveport, La., as well Dallas and Arlington, Texas, in the coming weeks in search of qualified applicants.

Rice planned to send out the teams after the interim superintendent of New Orleans Public Schools urged teachers to look for other work rather than wait to be recalled to the swamped city.

"As soon as we heard that, we sprang into action," Rice said.

The district has about 300 teacher vacancies to fill, with most of the openings in special education and secondary math and science. Nevada's Department of Education is working with education officials in other states to help teachers locate missing credentials, records and references, Rice said.

Law enforcement officials are also working to shorten the turnaround time for fingerprint background checks for applicants, which typically can take up to three months, Rice said.

The Clark County Education Association has set up several programs to assist teachers coming from the hurricane-affected areas, said John Jasonek, executive director of the teachers' union.

The Silver State Schools Credit Union will advance teachers up to $1,500 interest-free against the $2,000 signing bonus authorized for all new hires by the 2005 Legislature, Jasonek said. By law the signing bonus funds are not made available until a teacher has completed the first 30 days of employment.

LaRocca said the $1,500 advance was a welcome surprise. She plans to use some of the money to buy clothing for herself.

"I grabbed just a couple of little outfits when we left," LaRocca said. "I don't have anything to wear to teach school."

The union also hopes to help the newcomers find housing. Already 10 people have offered space in their homes, Jasonek said.

"This is not a sprint but a marathon," Jasonek said. "It's going to take a long time to get these new teachers here and established. We'll be asking people to open their hearts and their homes to these disaster victims, these teachers and hopefully these new members of our family."

As for LaRocca, while she's grateful for the warmth of Clark County's welcome, she can still feel her hometown's pull. She's never been this far away from her eldest son, who remains in Baton Rouge, and she worries how he'll manage his first year of college without family nearby.

"I was born and raised in New Orleans, I graduated high school there, I got my degrees," LaRocca said, her smile trembling. "I can't say if this is temporary or permanent, it really depends on the state of the city. If they told me today that I could go home and just grab a few things, yes -- I would be appreciative of that. "

For more information about outreach efforts for teachers, contact the Clark County Education Association at 866-6150 or go online to www.ccea-nv.org.

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