Niles educator helping Katrina’s youngest victims
Published 2:13 am Wednesday, October 26, 2005
By By ERIN VER BERKMOES / Niles Daily Star
NILES - A former Niles administrator is working to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana.
Tom Topash was the principal at Niles Eastside School until his retirement five years ago. He recently returned from a month in Baton Rouge, La.
He is heading back to the area and will be the principal of a charter school for evacuee children there.
Topash was also the assistant principal at Ring Lardner. Before that, he was an elementary principal in Berrien Springs for 20 years and also spent a few years teaching in Alaska and starting a charter school for Native Americans in Sault Ste. Marie. Topash was also tribal chairman or administrator for the Pokagon Band of Indians for a short time.
The roots of the Baton Rouge charter school at which Topash is working, were put down when hundreds of New Orleans evacuees entered the shelter at the River Center Convention Complex.
Days later a recreation program was started for these children with the help of Big Brothers, Big Sisters.
After two weeks, the recreation evolved into an academic program when Children's Charter School of Louisiana offered their assistance, Topash said.
With their partnership, the American Red Cross created its first school.
The first task which Topash took on at the fledgling Red Cross Learning Center was to create a pamphlet.
Topash wanted to familiarize parents and Red Cross leadership with the design, mission, goals and special features of the unique school program.
Topash said in the end his pamphlet didn't really make a difference. It was the caring, attentive adults who were the real magic for the school.
Topash added the children attending the school have lost all of their toys, pets, secure bedrooms, daily rhythms and routines. Some of them have even lost relatives.
The key to the new school Topash figured out was to keep the student-to-teacher ratio low. And he was able to do this as he was able to locate or have great people assigned to the school, Topash said.
The bus was to take her to a special school where Topash knew she would receive speech and other therapeutical services.
She wanted our school with the many, many adults, all of whom had flown to Baton Rouge to offer their humanity and caring, Topash added.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were, when they happened and remain even now, beyond capacity to comprehend in environmental, economic and psychological devastation, Topash said. “However, we do know the caring people intuitively comprehend the needs of children when disaster occurs. What has happened here was beautiful,” Topash added.