Bruno Paquot returned to work Thursday. He’d been gone three weeks but it might as well have been a lifetime ago.
The native of Belgium had his life turned upside down when his two family cars and house flooded, forcing his family to live elsewhere. Twelve of his coworkers at the school where he teaches, Baton Rouge Foreign Language Academic Immersion Magnet, also known as BR FLAIM, have similar stories. That’s nearly a third of the staff at this public foreign language immersion school located near downtown Baton Rouge.
Teachers throughout the Capital region are suffering.
The East Baton Rouge Parish school system reports that 817 teachers have been displaced by flooding — about 27 percent of its teaching staff — which is the second largest district in the state.
As he prepared for school to reopen Tuesday, Paquot was conflicted.
“I wish I was at the house detailing, getting the walls ready to be re-Sheetrocked,” he said.
But he was also glad to be back at the school he’s worked at for seven years and where he serves as a fifth-grade French language immersion teacher.
“It feels normal to be here,” he said, “but in the back of my mind I keep that running checklist of everything that still has to be done.”
April Fisher, a school counselor at BR FLAIM, is often mentally in two places at once these days. The house she was renting on Flannery Road was flooded, destroying most of her possessions, though she managed to save her car. She evacuated with her boyfriend and five-year-old daughter to her mom’s Prairieville house, which escaped the flooding.
The stress and confusion was especially bad during the two days, Aug. 22 and 23, she returned to work when the East Baton Rouge Parish school system planned to reopen Aug. 24. At the last minute, though, officials postponed the restart of school 13 more days.
“I was here in body, but I wasn’t here,” Fisher said of those two days in August. “I was still on the phone trying to get things done, thinking what do I need to do, when can I get to the house, when is the process going to get started? OK, you need to apply for FEMA. What else do I need to do?”
Paquot took off work those two days; however, the school system has since said employees who took those days off do not to have to count them as vacation days.
Paquot said his daughter did get back to school that week, so he understands as a parent the value of school as a source of stability. But as a homeowner, he still had too much going on.
“I was washing the walls, washing the doors, washing the floors, getting everything prepped for my wife’s boss to come and spray the disinfectant and mold killer,” he said. “I could not have come (back to work). If I wanted to save my house, there was still work to be done.”
Principal Cheryl Miller is the longtime principal of BR FLAIM. She said she has other staff members who have been through a lot but not all are ready to talk about it.
One of her fifth grade teachers was evacuated with her family from their flooded home and was devastated when she had to leave behind her three beloved dogs. A few days later the dogs were happily discovered alive and still at the flooded house. One of Miller’s paraprofessionals was flooded and is sleeping on an air mattress on her mother’s floor.
Miller said the stress is visible on their faces.
“You see this weight, this pressure that’s sitting on their shoulders,” she said.
One big stress reliever has been the support from BR FLAIM’s parents, led by its parent-teacher organization. The PTO organized help for several teachers like Paquot as well as another 10 BR FLAIM families who suffered flooding. The parents spent two weeks gutting houses and plan to return when it’s time to rebuild.
Paquot said the BR FLAIM members were at his house Aug. 16, the first day he was able to get back home. The PTO members and a range of other volunteers showed up that day and two days later, they had gutted the whole house.
“They were awesome,” Paquot said. “I have been teaching 20 years and I’ve never been in a school where the PTO was this active.”
Claire Pittman, PTO president, said she’s not handy, but has a background in communications. She ended up helping to keep people informed about who needed what and directed traffic. Volunteers were working at two or three houses a day for two weeks, but parents also supplied meals and provided a wide range of help, she said.
“The response was very quick and it was very surprising,” Pittman said. “I can’t tell you how many times I cried because of people’s selflessness.”
BR FLAIM, which earned an A from the state, has a small but avid following in Baton Rouge. Schools that will allow children to become bilingual in Spanish, French or Mandarin Chinese are rare.
Pittman said the awareness of the value of what they have drove some of the school’s quick response.
“We felt that it was a critical need to help people because most of our teachers are not from here so they don’t have family here,” Pittman said. “And we don’t have many choices if they can’t come back.”
The Paquots are still trying to decide what they are going to do with their flooded house.
“We didn’t have flood insurance,” he said. “There are a few options ranking from terrible to not-so-bad.”
The family has received some money already from FEMA as well as a range of other unsolicited help. A friend started a GoFundMe page for the Paquots that has raised nearly $18,000 so far. Another friend provided them with a house to stay in until they get back on their feet. A coworker loaned him a car she wasn’t using.
“We’ve been lucky,” he said. “The support of the community has just been fantastic.”
Life, however, is still far from normal.
As a counselor, Fisher is trying to prepare herself for the trauma she will see in the children who show up Tuesday. She recalled being a mental health counselor in Baton Rouge after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and treating displaced children who had experienced the storm.
“Til this day they are afraid when it rains, when it’s lightning, when a heavy wind comes,” Fisher said.
Paquot can relate: “A few days ago it rained and the sound of the rain is making my stomach turn.”
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