Two Scott City counselors aid Miss. school

On Tuesday, Pass Christian School District in Pass Christian, Miss., had its first day of school since Hurricane Katrina devastated the region.

Pass Christian, a city of about 7,500, is across from the St. Louis Bay on the Gulf Coast.

The district is continually re-enrolling students because all of the files for all 2,000 of their students were lost during the hurricane.

"They believe that most of their kids will come back," said Scott City Elementary School counselor Dr. Debra Rau.

That's why Rau and Scott City High School counselor LaDonna Pratt left around 8 p.m. Wednesday and drove all night in a cramped camper with six other people to offer their services to help counsel and test students. They will also be extra sets of hands to help in the cleanup.

Pratt, her husband, Ron, and their daughter, Lauren; Rau, her daughter, Madison, and Rau's father, Fred Eggley; and two Scott City juniors, Tim Dabbs and Ryan Strauser, loaded the camper and a trailer full of book bags and other school supplies and will spend the next three nights in the camper they drove down in.

"There's no hotels, no buildings there," Ron Pratt said.

They say they expect to encounter closed roads and mountains of debris and have no real concept of what they are getting into.

"I don't know how we could, honestly, prepare ourselves or the students and children for what we're going to walk into," LaDonna Pratt said.

Rau went to the Southeast Missouri School Counselor Association, where local school counselors discussed what they could do to help hurricane-affected schools. Pass Christian posted a request for counseling help on the Mississippi Department of Education Web site.

"They lost everything in their school district," she said.

Classes are meeting in tents, outside and in mobile classrooms. The district is waiting for more mobile classrooms to arrive and their buildings to be rebuilt.

"They don't physically have the space for us to be in the school. There isn't a building," Rau said.

Today the items that were collected -- backpacks for the students, clothes, and other personal care items -- will be distributed.

The Rau family vacationed near Pass Christian three weeks before the hurricane hit.

"I knew of this town, and it really hit me that this small town has lost everything," Rau said.

Rau talked with school representatives by phone when they had phone connections available and by e-mail to arrange the trip.

It will take about $2,000 just in fuel costs for the three vehicles to make this trip. The funds have been donated from churches, anonymous donors and MidWest Truck as well as many others.

"It would be impossible to list all the donors," Ron Pratt said. "I've even got a contact in Green Bay that I deal with through work that gave $100."

ameyer@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127