[...] he visited a school rebuilt with support from former first lady Laura Bush's foundation, then flew to Gulfport, Mississippi, to honor police and firefighters who saved lives after Katrina's towering storm surge swamped the coast. The storm set off a "confluence of blunders," and Bush's approval ratings never recovered, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University who wrote "The Great Deluge," a detailed account of the first days after Katrina. Bush didn't help his image by initially flying over the flooded city in Air Force One without touching down, then saying "Heckuva job, Brownie" to praise his ill-prepared Federal Emergency Management Agency director, Michael Brown, who resigned shortly thereafter. In New Orleans, most city schools had been foundering before Katrina, suffering from pervasive corruption, broken buildings and failing grades. Louisiana eventually turned all 57 schools under its control into independently run charters, publicly funded and accountable to education officials for results, but with autonomy in daily operations. Bush also visited Warren Easton a year after the storm, when the school was newly reopened and nearly all its students remained homeless, living in FEMA trailers or sleeping on couches. Civil rights lawyer Tracie Washington, who directs the Louisiana Justice Institute, said Bush failed to live up to his promise to tackle historic injustices, a vow he made in Jackson Square shortly after Katrina.