BAY ST. LOUIS, MISS. - At a washed-out bridge, John and Heather Chaszar stood with their children Christopher, 8, and Nicolas, 6, looking out at what was once U.S. Highway 90.
Before Aug. 29, the boys were students at private schools, but those schools haven't reopened.
Although John Chaszar continues to live in the area and work at a local casino, Heather Chaszar and the children are living with relatives in New York.
Home for the holidays, the boys were spending time with both parents, a rarity since Hurricane Katrina destroyed their schools and separated their family by 1,400 miles.
At that same location, Michael Ogles watched as his girlfriend's daughter, 11-year-old Mcayla Spears, blithely leapt across the first leg of the bridge's ruins
Mcayla lives in Hancock county, the same county as the Chaszars, but attends a public school.
Since the hurricane, her school has been combined with two other elementary schools, classes are taught in portable buildings and lunchtime is held in the classroom.
Sometimes Mcayla's teacher will mix it up and take the class outside to eat on the back porch.
Ogles said he's not worried about Mcayla or the other kids in the town.
"For them it's not depressing. That's the thing about kids. Life goes on and they make the best of it," he said.
An estimated 372,000 students were displaced and unable to return to their home schools after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Often separated for months at a time, many children are living with relatives in other states with at least one parent staying behind.
Like Mcayla, students are often squeezed into unconventional settings or hastily organized schools.
Before Katrina hit, Christopher Johnson, 17, was attending Jesuit High School, an elite Catholic school in New Orleans. Evacuating the storm, Johnson stayed with a cousin at a Louisiana State University apartment in Baton Rouge with 13 other people.
After a few weeks, Johnson's schedule became more normal. His parents returned to the family home in Chalmette, and he moved to Houston to stay with an aunt and uncle. In October, his high school opened a satellite program at a another Jesuit school in Houston, and 400 student evacuees started taking classes from 3:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Johnson said he enjoyed sleeping until 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. and didn't mind missing prime-time television shows.
Orleans Jesuit High School is scheduled to reopen Jan. 23. But most other students didn't benefit from well-organized programs like Johnson's. Delores Assavedo's son and daughter-in-law evacuated with their four children from St. Bernard Parish the day before Katrina hit.
The children attended a Catholic school in the parish, but, like so many others displaced by Katrina, now attend a public school in another state. Now in Memphis, Tenn., Assavedo's family returned to spend Thanksgiving with her but headed back to Tennessee for school.
Prior to Katrina, Moria Coulonge says she pulled her 5-year old daughter, Jenna, out of the public school system in St. Bernard Parish because she was being held back by a class that was too slow for her.
But when the Coulonges returned to the area and couldn't find other children for Jenna to play with, Moria re-enrolled her daughter.
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