Homes in Waveland, Miss. (Laurie Todd) Click on photo for larger view.

Young children find normalcy in table activities at a FEMA station in Bay St. Louis. (Laurie Todd) Click on photo for larger view.

At Little Saints Academy in Hancock County, the roof was damaged, the playground was completely bare, and the front door was detached. (Laurie Todd) Click on photo for larger view.

Six weeks after Hurricane Katrina, the studs and remaining sheetrock are still damp at the Methodist Children’s Center in Bay St. Louis, and reconstruction must wait until fans have removed all of the moisture. (Laurie Todd) Click on photo for larger view.

In Bay St. Louis, some homeless residents live in tents on the playground of the Methodist Children’s Center …

… and others have found shelter in what appears to be a car wash, next door to the community’s public showers. (Laurie Todd) Click on photo for larger view.

The sign still leans and the structure next door still has a tarp over the damaged roof, but Hancock County Child Center reopened September 17, almost seven weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit Bay St. Louis, Miss. (Laurie Todd) Click on photo for larger view.

Report from Hancock County, Miss.: Most Early Care and Education Providers Still Closed

OCT. 18, 2005 | The colors are vivid in Hancock County, Miss.: Tarps covering ripped roofs exactly match the brilliant blue sky; plastic netting around a parking lot child care center is bright orange; a building, possibly a former car wash, where people live behind a door fashioned from blankets, is intensely pink—and at Hancock County Child Development Center in Bay St. Louis, the classroom walls are a freshly painted yellow.

The director, Lora Mederos, proudly showed visitors last week the center’s new playground fence. Stymied when she could not find a local fence contractor to replace the chain link fence torn apart by Hurricane Katrina Aug. 29, she had called the capital of Jackson, reaching JEFFCoat Fence Company. The owner drove south the next morning to rebuild the playground fence, charging Mederos nothing. With his help, Maderos reopened the center yesterday, once again ready for the 40 children who spend their days with her and her staff.

A team from the Mississippi State University Early Childhood Institute (ECI) last week toured Hancock County, where only two of 11 licensed centers have reopened and the Mississippi Department of Health had been unable to determine the status of two facilities. The ECI delegation found families living in tents on the playground of Methodist Children’s Center in Bay St. Louis. Inside the church center, fans blew around the clock to dry floors, studs and beams.

Families still searched the rubble of their homes to find any items they could salvage. Director Cindy Lowe of the Methodist center told ECI’s Laurie Todd of guarding her elderly mother during the hurricane. “When the chimney of my house was blown off, I really thought ‘this was the end.’ … The strangest thing was right after the eye of the storm passed the humming birds were trying to feed. Their little wings were working so hard.”

 But "Hey,” she added. “You just have to keep on going!" Restoring early care and education in these coastal communities will be essential to reviving the Gulf Coast economy.