La. schools get $2.4 million to restore records.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: UP FRONT - Los Angeles - Brief article

When Hurricane Katrina deluged the Jefferson Parish school system's administration building in Harvey, Louisiana, it also damaged some 14 million documents, including personnel files, student records, medical information, and minutes.

Three years later, the school system is getting help to restore those records. Officials recently announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would give the system a $2.4 million grant to recover the damaged records.

The recovery process has been tedious so far, beginning almost immediately after the storm when employees retrieved, boxed, and stored the records at the system's warehouse.

"I bet it covered 50,000 square feet of space," said Jason Watkins, the school system's director of emergency management. He said there were so many records...