The Special Administrative Board of St. Louis Public Schools has selected a firm to head the search for district superintendent. At its regular board meeting Thursday night, the SAB approved the hiring of ProAct Search Inc., a Milwaukee-based company.
Back in February, the Special Administrative Board announced that it would conduct a search for a new superintendent of schools. The current superintendent, Diana Bourisaw, said she would not re-apply for her position, but will continue in her job during the search process.
April 18th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Will the teachers take an official position on this?
My feeling would be that is is hugely irresonsible to sign a long term committment with anyone until after a new governor replaces Blunt and starts replacing some of those bozos on the state board, and until Slay is either re-elected or replaced.
Why hire someone to carry out a potentially destructive agenda which was designed by a bunch of lame ducks? A long-term big money contract seems like it would be a foolish thing to offer.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Isn’t Milwaukee the home of the largest voucher system in the country? I think I heard this a few days ago on KMWU.
Kjoe, as a teacher, here is my official position:
“How about get us a frickin copy machine that works (my school has been without one for over 3 weeks now and we receive NO SUPPLIES OF ANY KIND) Quit wasting what little money we have on another search firm. We have done all of this so many times already it would be funny if it wasn’t so TRAGIC. It doesn’t matter who the superintendent is if there is no money to make improvements.”
The SAB is the worst thing that could have happened, but the teachers are so wrapped up in just trying to survive that they have no energy left to do anything about it. The SAB is doing exactly what was expected of them…finishing off the SLPS in order to usher in a huge voucher system.
Also, the teachers have no one to rally around and remain voiceless.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:17 pm
maybe someone will feel it necessary to shoot the messenger—but the fact is that there is a lot about the st. louis schools that the people who took over have no clue about.
thanks for the report—Nick.
Koster replied “What’s AYP?”
When Beffa pointed out to Gibbons that not one charter school had made AYP, Gibbons responded, “What’s AYP?” Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is the standard for measuring student success as set forth by the Republican initiated No child Left Behind law.
St. Louis Schools Watch
April 22, 2008
Senate Leaders Look for SAB Exit Strategy
by Nick Clement
What’s AYP?
Saturday, April 5, 2007–St. Louis–Republican Senate leader Mike Gibbons and Democratic Senate leader, Maida Coleman met with city residents on Saturday at one of their library joint appearances. The audience pushed the discussion to education and specifically the role of the SAB and past failure of the state leadership to address problems in the St. Louis Public Schools, which resulted in the stripping of power of the elected Board of Education and the imposition of an appointed board (SAB) by politicians.
Gibbons took a lot of heat from David Jackson, an elected board member who wanted to know, “Where was the leadership at DESE? I am completely disappointed in DESE for overthrowing the elected board and then allowing someone like Rick Sullivan to act as superintendent who has no educational background or experience. ” Gibbons responded the SLPS was failing for decades, that was what the law said it should do, and that the SLPS was a “big thing” and it needed someone like Sullivan who was used to running “big things.” According to Gibbons the SLPS was a $150 million organization and the biggest of Missouri’s 564 districts. The were groans from the audience, and then a pointed comment from a parent in the 16th Ward that Enron was a” big thing” and run into the ground by executives familiar with running big things, that the district had already had experience with ineffective so called “business” people who were supposedly competent in running “big things,” namely William Roberti, whose expertise in running “big things” ultimately resulted in the loss of accreditation of the SLPS.
This parent said he was sick of how the political leadership has disregarded the will of the people, and he was moving out of the city.
Chad Beffa, a SLPS parent and candidate for the 67th district representative seat in south St. Louis, corrected Gibbons that the SLPS was a $400 million operation, “and shrinking” and that there were 524 districts in the state of Missouri. He reminded Gibbons that according to the state law, the replacement of the elected board by the SAB was only one option available to the state, another option, according to the law, was to allow the appointees to serve in an advisory capacity and leave the elected representatives in place, especially because of the poor job done by the State Education Department, by their own admission, in helping the school district over a number of years.
David Jackson referred Gibbons to the admission at a public board meeting last year by State Education Commissioner Kent King that he, King, felt guilty for taking the most extreme action of removing the elected board from power in light of the State Education Department’s lack of assistance to the SLPS.
Gibbons seemed unfamiliar with the history of the SLPS and fuzzy on state education details. He admitted he had not read the Danforth Report. He was unclear about the terms of State Board of Education members for whom he had recently voted. Beffa corrected him that the State Board members serve for 8 years not ” 4 or 6 or a really long time” as Gibbons mentioned. Gibbons endorsed the opening of more charter schools as part of the solution to improving educational opportunities for children in St. Louis. When Beffa pointed out to Gibbons that not one charter school had made AYP, Gibbons responded, “What’s AYP?” Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is the standard for measuring student success as set forth by the Republican initiated No child Left Behind law.
(Gibbons told several people after the meeting that “You need an education person in the city delegation.”)
One SLPS teacher asked Gibbons if the state legislature had demanded any accountability from the State Board members whose responsibility it is to see to the improvement of struggling districts such as SLPS, notably Silver Dollar City owner, millionaire Republican Peter Herschend, who was president of the Missouri State Board of Education for 16 years including the 2003-2006 period when the district went from 2 points away from full accreditation to unaccredited status. “How could such a person (Herschend) be rewarded with another 8 year term for such poor performance? Did you vote for him, Mr. Gibbons?” Gibbons somewhat reluctantly admitted that he did. When it was proposed that perhaps it was Herschend’s large contributions to Matt Blunt and the state Republican party that persuaded Gibbons to override his duty to the children of the city of St. Louis and return an incompetent board member to office, Gibbons replied coldly that that would be up to the voters to straighten out. St. Louis voters will have an opportunity to straighten that out in November since Gibbons is the Republican candidate for Attorney General. (Herschend contributed $1,275 to Gibbons’ campaign)
Senator Maida Coleman recounted her attempt to defeat the nomination of Herschend, but was the only Senator out of 34 who opposed him.
Gibbons did say that he and Senator Coleman were committed to finding the quickest way possible of returning control of the school district back to elected representatives. Gibbons also said he would support Senator Coleman’s bill which deals with removing the penalties the state applies to the SLPS for busing students to Magnet Schools and her bill which would allow the A+ Schools scholarship program to include students from unaccredited districts. The A+ program provides scholarships for students who have high GPA’s. Presently it excludes students from Kansas City, St. Louis, Wellston, and Riverview Gardens, all majority African American districts. It was brought up that a student who overcomes poverty and other adverse circumstances and manages to perform well in high school, deserves a scholarship even more than someone who has every advantage and scores well.
Senator Coleman made a somewhat shocking announcement at the beginning of her presentation, saying she was open to charter schools, or vouchers, or whatever would help educate the children of St. Louis most.
She also had brochures promoting House Bill 1320 which allows Community Improvement Districts (CID) in the city of St. Louis to sponsor their own “Polytechnic Institutes for Science and Technology.” The sponsor is Republican Michael Brown of district 50 in the Kansas City area. The promotional material says it is not a “charter” or a “voucher,” but does not say how it is different from a charter. CID’s are special political districts within the city limits that may levy special taxes only for the benefit of that particular CID. There are 21 separate CID’s listed on the St. Louis Assessor’s website. If this bill passes, each one could open its own “polytechnic” school. State money would follow students attending such schools in the same way state money follows students who attend charter schools. The effect is to siphon money from the public school system. Is Maida Coleman really supporting this?
Many leaders had criticized the formation of CID’s because they further atomize an already polarized city population and lead to sacrificing the greater good of the city as a whole, for what individuals perceive as benefiting only their neighborhood.
Follow up:
At a candidate forum last Thursday, April 10, Chris Koster, the Republican turned Democrat running for Attorney General with $99,000 dollars of Rex Sinquefelds’s money, was asked what he would do for the public schools in St. Louis. He said he was in favor of forgiving the entire loan that was taken from the DESEG fund. Other than that, he wasn’t sure except to continue with the charter school experiment. After his speech he was told by Chad Beffa that none of the charter schools were making AYP. Koster replied “What’s AYP?” Beffa reported that he briefed Koster on the success of city magnet schools, and that the top high school in the state was Metro and the top middle school was McKinley. Koster didn’t know any of this and admitted he needed to learn more about education. Like Gibbons, Koster thought the city delegation needed a representative who was an education expert.