New Orleans is known as a unique city. It is the birthplace of jazz, delicious food, and a "gumbo" of warm friendly people. On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, leaving death and destruction in her wake. New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin recognized that rebuilding the city of New Orleans would be a daunting task; one that he believed would require commitment from every level of government as well as contributions from the private sector. In the weeks and months following Katrina, Nagin invited civic leaders, businessmen, philanthropists, and educators to become part of the rebuilding effort called Bring New Orleans Back (BNOB) and created the BNOB Commission. Its charge was to develop ideas and plans to restore and rebuild the city. From the Commission members, Nagin appointed an overall steering committee and designated subcommittees for education, urban planning, land use, culture, economic development, government effectiveness and health and social services. Clearly the concerns of these sub committees overlapped and Commission members were appointed to multiple sub committees in order to develop continuity in planning. This paper examines the work of the education group with particular attention to its plan, "Rebuilding and Transforming: a Plan for Improving Public Education in New Orleans". In order to address this report, this paper adapted the methods of critical policy analysis (Ball, 1994; Edmondson, 2004; Prunty, 1985)--an approach to policy studies that assumes that policy is historically and socially situated and ripe with the values of its authors. Such analyses pose questions that examine the social, political, historical, and economic realities that define and shape policy in particular contexts (Edmondson, p. 8). In order to identify the values and assumptions within the dominant discourses within the final report, the study is organized around Edmondson's four basic questions: (1) What is the policy?; (2) Who are the policy makers?; (3) What are the major tenets of the policy?; and (4) What are the likely consequences of the policy? Toward that end, this paper sets a brief historical context for the Committee's work, provides a close reading of the report, identifying seven themes, discusses an invited response to the report, and then comments on the possible outcomes for New Orleans and the United States.