NATCHEZ &045; When the Mississippi Board of Education meets today at Biloxi High School, Natchez officials will be there to tell how just how Katrina affected local schools.

The Natchez-Adams School District has absorbed more than 500 evacuee students, given up building space to house the area’s largest shelter and cooked, at one point, 1,320 evacuee meals a day in the wake of Katrina.

Superintendent Anthony Morris will tell the state board that at current count, the district has spent $30,000, including federal dollars designated for homeless children and private donations.

Now the district needs to hire additional teachers to ease classroom overcrowding in several schools.

&uot;The greatest need for us is to get cleared from them on hiring additional personnel,&uot; Morris said.

&uot;And the assurance that there will be money coming to reimburse us.&uot;

The Natchez district has one of the state’s highest evacuee enrollment numbers, second and only trailing by a few hundred to Jackson Public Schools, a district almost eight times bigger than Natchez schools.

If uniforms weren’t donated in the right size, school officials bought three sets for each evacuee. Supplies were also purchased when needed.

The Natchez High School band and football team have been displaced from the Steckler Multipurpose Center, where they normally practice and workout.

At the peak of things, school food service workers prepared food for 10 shelters &045; breakfast, lunch and dinner. Those costs haven’t been calculated yet, Morris said.

Maintenance workers have done extra hours at Steckler.

The school hired an evacuee to work security and serve as a liaison between the Steckler shelter and NHS.

But there’s been no definite word that full reimbursement will come, or when it will come.

&uot;We have received FEMA paperwork,&uot; Morris said. &uot;We’re trying to get it compiled. I feel like it’s probably going to be some time before we find out what we’ll be getting.&uot;

Morris is also anxious to find out whether his schools will have to make up the week of class time they lost when Katrina hit.

&uot;There has been some discussion about some of those days being waived,&uot; he said. &uot;That’s a request we did submit. Some are thinking they’ll waive some but not all.&uot;

The board will meet in Biloxi at 2:30 p.m. today.