Katrina recovery

CAMP WILLIAMS — When Melissa Stewart thinks about where she was two days ago, she can only shake her head and utter two words.

"Sad ... hurt," whispered 12-year-old Stewart as she sat outside the barracks at Utah's Camp Williams on Monday.

"We was dying there, people was raping kids. I was so hurt and so mad because I thought I would die," she said of five days spent stranded in New Orleans. "I didn't know that my life was going to be that way."

But Stewart is also ready to move on, taking the first step toward normalcy Monday as she signed up for school in the Jordan School District. Stewart had started 7th grade just a week before Hurricane Katrina ripped through her hometown of New Orleans, destroying her school and sending her fleeing to the New Orleans Convention Center.

"I love school and I miss school," she said. "I need to learn and get to college."

Stewart signed up to head back to school along with 29 other children now lodged at Camp Williams. Of those, 22 will be going to elementary school, five to middle school and two will start taking high school classes as early as Wednesday.

Pamela Atkinson, community advocate in the governor's office, said getting the displaced children back on a schedule with some semblance of normalcy is the best recovery service Utah can offer the youngest survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

"For many of these children, school was a safe environment, and their lives have been anything but safe," she said. "For them to know that no matter where you are, education is available adds a little bit of security to their rehabilitation."

Atkinson is working to add another layer of security to the back-to-school plan so students do not have to be bused out of Camp Williams to attend classes. Although a federal law prohibits school districts from segregating homeless students, Atkinson sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education to get an exception to the rule.

No final word has come back yet from the federal government, but Atkinson is hopeful the students will be allowed to stay near their parents while they learn. Since sending her letter, Atkinson noted several other states have made similar requests.

"It became very clear that some of them have been separated from other loved ones. We don't want the children getting on a bus and going to a different school and thinking when they come back their parents wouldn't be there," said Atkinson, who expects to know today if an exception has been granted.