TRANSFER STUDENT.(The Talk of the Town)(shool enrollment)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 19-SEP-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Last week's coverage of Hurricane Katrina

Continuing coverage of Hurricane Katrina

Jon Lee Anderson on rescue and recovery in New Orleans

The process of enrolling in public school in New York City can be onerous enough to deter anyone but a future hall monitor. Yet, whether by decree of law or out of a will to learn, thousands of students showed up last week at the city's fourteen registration centers. One of these newcomers was Jahia Montana-Forbes, who had been living in Bedford-Stuyvesant for exactly four days. Jahia was looking for a place to finish twelfth grade, which she had begun on August 18th, at Marion Abramson Senior High School, in New Orleans.

When Jahia and her mother, Gina Montana, arrived, early Wednesday morning, at the former Family Court Building in downtown Brooklyn, they came equipped with none of the required...

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