| By DREW BROACH | Deputy metro editor |
SUFFERING SO YOUNG: Fourteen hours after his workday began, Devance Ball’s phone rang. It was 10 p.m. A mother having a mental breakdown had abandoned her toddler in a dangerous New Orleans neighborhood. Ball, a supervisor in Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, found a toddler bed, set it up in his office, stayed by the child’s side until daybreak - then drove home for a shower and breakfast and headed right back to work. Such efforts underscore how severe, chronic staffing shortages are engulfing Louisiana’s child welfare agency and leaving the state’s most vulnerable children in peril. (Want more stories like this? Sign up for our free Louisiana Investigative Journalism newsletter.) FEES FOR FOOTBALL: Division I college football at the University of New Orleans? It could happen. Students will vote Nov. 9 on whether to increase their fees to add football, women’s golf, women’s soccer and marching band at the lakefront university, and athletics boosters are already circulating architectural renderings of a 20,000-seat, open-air stadium on the campus. SHAKESPEARE AND CIVIL RIGHTS: On the west bank of Jefferson Parish, Stanley Crosby is a household name. A beloved English teacher, he spent more than a half century educating generations of high school students and, during the era of state-sponsored segregation, repeatedly risking his job to stand up for Black students’ right to an equal education. Now the School Board has decided to honor him. Thanks for starting your Sunday with Morning Headlines. Catch the latest news all day on NOLA.com. D.B. | 