I know there are a lot of people on this blog that will start to yell and scream that City Hall is destroying the school district but the facts are IT IS ABOUT DAMN TIME THAT WE TRY TO FIX OUR SCHOOLS! I am ashamed of the old school board. They have continued to fail our kids and they did NOTHING but BICKER like children.

I am not happy it is taking so long to fix our schools but it took Conway, Schoemmel, Bosley and Harmon for the schools to get so bad…it’ll likely to take longer than Slay to get where they should be. But, it’s a start.
Finally.

It is high time that we try to do something about the schools, but I have two kids in the system, and we’re pretty involved parents … and there is not one visible accomplishment of the SAB yet. Yes, there was the whole summit but we’ve been *talking* for years and years with no real effect. We need REVOLUTION (in the sense of dramatic, thoughtful, and creative change) and we need it fast. 2011 is not that far away.

I gave you the solution a few weeks ago. Chop the city schools into segments and merge them into adjacent county districts. Quality would improve overnight.

I am not happy it is taking so long to fix our schools but it took Conway, Schoemmel, Bosley and Harmon for the schools to get so bad….

That is an oft-stated mantra–and it is about 15 percent true. the 85 percent dates from 2003, and Mayor Slay’s maniacal dedication to his agenda of charter and voucher schools. The dramatic decline in assessment points dates from when Roberti was brought in at huge cost, with terrible results for st. louis taxpayers—but not necessarily for mayor Slay. His underlying attitude, was “we will have to destroy the schools in order to save them”. Roberti was an excellent start in achieving that.

Then a funny thing happened. The people he had maneuvered onto the school board began to be thrown off the board by a very sinister force–voters. People were chosen–not perfect people–but people whose attitude was “what the hell is going on, here?” It reached a crisis point in the summer of 2006—when they dared to do something about the abuses of Floyd irons—which led to his buddy, superintendent Creg Williams being replaced–some argue he welcomed the opportunity to leave town. Bourisaw began trying to fix some things—she improved teacher morale to some extent—actually a bad sign, given the mayor’s agenda. The well-executed public relations project of recruiting governor Blunt and the increasingly right-wing nutjobs on the state board of education to strip st. louis voters of their having a say was successfully executed.

The handling of the texasCan academy fiasco was about as brilliant a public relations job as the state board could have hoped for.

Before the state takeover, when Bourisaw was naive enough to think the state might pay attention to anything she had to say, she wrote a letter to Kent King, dated May 11, 2007, advising him THREE TIMES to not deal with the texas Can people. They essentially told her to stfu about it, and established their own charter school. Some of us asked reporters to keep an eye on it—-but to no real avail.

When the inevitable failure came over the ap wire out of Baton Rouge, ten days ago, St. Louis heard nothing about it. Day after day, we got other things to talk about–such as the non-story garbage about one student at gateway written by Giegerich for last Sunday’s paper. (ask any school administrator you know, if there was anything remotely newsworthy in that story). Finally, with the TexasCan article by David Hunn yesterday (kind of using the same timing principle as McCain releasing his medical records on the holiday weekend), the shocking details were released a few hours before the state board bozos awarded thmselves three more years of control. Public relations crisis over Can, successfully avoided. Soon forgotten.

Kipps charter school will be the big story next year—with adversaries like Bourisaw eliminated, and the elected board severely squelched (they do send out a wealth of news releases on a daily basis–I hope that continues) it will be full steam ahead on the charter and voucher agenda. Kipps should be successful for a one or two hundred or so of the 25,000 or whatever it will be of slps students. It is an excellent program—but difficult to duplicate on a large basis. Essentially it is a bait and switch—it will help sell a lot of shoddy products, not as bad as can—but not very good.

It is not the end of the world—but I think it serves as one way of getting a perspective on the level of media manipulation which goes on in st. louis on behalf of the powers that be.

too late to edit–The well-executed public relations project of recruiting governor Blunt and the increasingly right-wing nutjobs on the state board of education to strip st. louis voters of their having a say was successfully ……..carried out. I

It’s a start,

I ask you to please explain what the SAB has done that leads you to believe they are trying to fix SLPS. We have no superintendent, principals and staff are leaving in droves, and we’ve lost two more accreditation points in the year they have been here. It’s not fair to my kids and their peers to continue this trend.

I’d also like you to tell me how the current Elected Board has continued to fail the children of the SLPS. We were elected to represent these children and the residents of the city, so your input is of interest to me.

Hunn follows up—

Charter school fires 5 of its 7 teachers
By David Hunn
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
05/24/2008

ST. LOUIS — Most of the faculty of a troubled St. Louis charter school were dismissed Friday afternoon after one of the charter network’s national leaders flew in and took over school operations.

Staff at the Can! Academies of St. Louis, a charter school for high school dropouts, had just publicly revealed a year of chaotic, violent hallways and disorganized management at 4300 Goodfellow Boulevard, just south of Interstate 70.

Thursday, the Missouri State Board of Education voted to suspend the school for one year, in effect closing Can next month.

Then on Friday, teachers were released with pay through July, so they could look for jobs elsewhere, said Cheryl Rios, spokeswoman for America Can! President Richard Marquez. Some — not all — were given the opportunity to stay through the school’s June graduation, she said, and help remaining students get their GEDs.

“A few had very negative attitudes,” she said of the teachers. “Kids pick up on that. What we want right now is the teachers who want to be there for those kids.”

Staffers contacted Friday evening said they weren’t comfortable speaking publicly, but they all said they were pulled into a hasty meeting called Friday afternoon by Yolanda Cruz, superintendent of the Dallas-based network of charter schools, known as America Can!

Cruz gave letters to the principal, staffers and five of the charter school’s seven teachers, saying their last day of work would be Friday, but that they would be paid through July 31.

Students will continue to have class and “learning activities,” the letter said.

Staffers said two teachers and two secretaries were not fired.

The secretaries, they said, would be needed to organize and compile paperwork. The two teachers would instruct math and government classes. EARLIER STORY
Can! Academies can’t make a go of it here

Rios said the Can network was bringing two administrators and two special instructors from Texas to run the school through graduation at the end of June.

Some parents were surprised Friday after hearing the news, and said that teachers had been working hard to help their children.

“They fired everybody?” said Larry Bastain, father of a student there. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” The program, he said, could have been good.

But student Nyquesha Thomas, 18, said she wasn’t surprised.

“It’s not like we were learning anything any way,” she said. “All the students do all day is play cards and watch movies.”

Kjoe, thanks for your postings. I gain so much insight from you. Although I didn’t comment when I first read about the Can! Academy being suspended, I can’t help but chime in now.

I was in Jeff City on the last day of session. I observed my senator, Jeff Smith, on the senate floor fighting for the Can! Academy to be allowed to take in county drop outs. He argued to change the law to benefit this one entity! Smith said that Can! specialized in helping dropouts, that they had a record of significant success and was one of the “best” charter schools in St. Louis. Thank God some other senators beat him down and kept this from happening.

Now, just a week later this school has been suspended by the State Board of Education. What is his problem? Is he so controlled by the Mayor and the money in charter schools that nothing else matters to him? He willfully fought for this terrible excuse of a school that was so bad that damn near everyone employed there was fired. Is he just stupid or what? If he would put this much energy into the students that attend our public schools, maybe he would garner some respect. He sure doesn’t get it from it from his colleagues and I don’t think he deserves any.

I hope Jeff Smith NEVER runs for public office again. If he does, I’ll vote against him. I won’t be fooled again.

Isn’t Smith the one who got arrested at a casino and had the movie made about him? So, why are you surprised? Maybe he loved the program at CAN! which according to the paper today was playing cards and watching movies.

flyover … so far as your “improvement” proposal … considering that the good bordering school districts are 85-90% white and have a reciprocal number of FRL students, I don’t think they’d want the adjacent areas of the City. Even the Central Corridor, the CWE/midtown/downtown, is about 50% minority and similarly poor. You may think that the intolerant people have moved to St. Charles, but I don’t you’re right. The out-state legislators will take one look at the situations in their own districts and refuse to go there.

I still think the old fashioned solution of throw the rascals out can work sometimes. It is a tragedy that the people who were smart enough to choose david jackson and Katherine Wessling over a year ago—the voters of st. louis—not longer have a say. That much maligned board was laying groundwork to accomplish a lot of good—and so was Bourisaw. I hope one of them runs against Mayor Slay.

Here is a nice essay by someone who has better writing skills than i do:

When an Appointed Board Appoints Others,

Democracy Loses Its Voice

In a recent decision, the appointed Missouri State Board of Education voted to extend the term of the State Appointed Board over the Saint Louis Public Schools. The ramifications of this decision are without a doubt foreboding.

Perhaps the most evident ramification is that democracy is taking a big hit in Missouri . Political appointees are appointing other political appointees. Is anything further from the democratic process?

Ironically, as a member of the League of Women Voters-St. Louis, I, along with many others, recently heard a talk entitled, “Do We Have Too Much Democracy?” In essence, the theme proposed the possibility that we have too many elections that are costly, and appointments to certain offices might be more appropriate and efficient. Needless to say, the speaker met no uncertain challenges from the audience. For too many, the struggle for and the winning of the right to vote and to have a voice in government was also too costly. A gentleman sitting at my table was greatly disturbed and reminded me and others of how this was exactly what took place in Nazi Germany.

It is difficult to imagine that the action taken by the appointed Missouri State Board of Education would ever be directed at public school districts such as Clayton, Ladue, Parkway, or Rockwood. There is, of course, more than a nuance implicated here; the hint almost shouts to the world around us that such actions are feasible – no, not just feasible, but more than possible when the district population involves a large portion of non-Caucasian, below middle-class status students. The citizens of those other school districts would, in opposing such action, receive a greater degree of respect. Unfortunately, for the citizens and families of urban St. Louis City , this is not true.

To think that a term of office and power would be extended without some indication of success is also troubling. Those given the responsibility to monitor or audit the State Appointed Board have not even been allowed to proffer their report or findings.

Furthermore, in a political climate both heavy and dripping with privatization of public services for profit and personal gain by hawkers standing by to get a piece of the pie, who can miss the implications of an agenda that does not bode well for public service. The push for charter schools and vouchers is strong, amply financed, sophisticated in spinning words and philosophies, unabated, and unrelenting.

Finally, when the appointed Missouri State Board of Education voted to extend the term of the State Appointed Board over the Saint Louis Public Schools at the expense of the elected Board of Education members and the elected of the people of St. Louis , democracy diminished another notch. The issue presented is not just one of Saving our Schools; it is in reality an issue of Saving our Democracy.

The thoughts presented in this article represent my own personal thoughts and not those of any group or organization.

Helen Louise Herndon

May 24, 2008

I didn’t say they would like it. I’m sure they would scream bloody murder, but do they want to live two miles from a city full of kids that can’t read or do basic math? Here’s a simple question. Are the poor kids in the adjacent districts doing better than the poor kids in the City schools? If the answer is yes, then the problem is with the city district and instead of bussing kids to distant schools, why not bring the good districts to the kids own neighborhoods? I think the district administrations would love it as it would expand their empires. The state would have to continue to subsidize them, so it wouldn’t cost them anything. The notion that the city has to have a single district is simply political. I live in the Ladue district which covers five cities. Guess what, the city governments stay out of school politics. This would be a way to keep the cronyism out of the schools and divert the crony money to the kids. I know people would scream, but so what. I think the rural state legislators would love to stick it to the metro area. They hate us anyway. And the side benefit is that it opens up areas of the city and removes the biggest reason people don’t want to live there. I ask again, if the CWE was in the Clayton district, how many more people would flock there? Its a great idea.

If the communities of which you speak, especially those with ties to the schools, have paid any attention to what has happened in the last two years to the slps, I would think they would be leery of subjecting themselves to the possibility of a state takeover by the incredibly dumbassed rightwing idiots on Kent King’s state board of education.

Those people have menacing, arbitrary power, but less so in districts not in st. louis and kansas city.

school districts are established by the dumbass State Legislature, not dumbass committees. City schools could be redistricted by State Law and that would be that. My proposal is not to bus the students to the oher districts, but to have the districts operate the schools in the city.

flyover,
I believe your entire premise (that the surrounding suburban districts would do a better job of running small parts of the SLPS) is faulty. Administrators in most surrounding districts have little experience or desire to deal with the problems the SLPS faces every day. They would simply abandon those districts and move further out, expanding the sprawl. (If they wanted to deal with these problems they would have chosen to work in an urban district in the first place)

I understand your theory of “spread out the pain” but I honestly believe it would only result in dragging down the surrounding districts as well. Be honest, how many of the parents who currently send their kids to Ladue would keep them there if Horton Watkins suddenly looked more like Soldan or Beaumont?

Your “solution” is simply the same denial of tired taxpayers who won’t accept (not that I blame them) the fact that the cost of “fixing” the SLPS (and any urban school district suffering from the same problems) is STAGGERING. As of yet, no urban district in the country has been willing to take on the task. My dream is that St. Louis would become the first to commit itself to such a task…but when I wake up I know it is never going to happen.

By the way, charter schools are simply the latest pipe-dream of those (mostly politiicians) who know in their hearts that they will never get the money they really need to change things, so they choose to open charter schools to make it look like they “have a plan” and are “doing something”.

It is really difficult to make a chart of accoutability. Who establishes school districts–is it the state legislature, as Flyover says? Who elects people like the apparently clueless jeff Smith? (I hope to hear more of where his naive championing of Can came from–surely it was not charter advocates, who had to know already how bad Can was).

The governor appoints the state board on a rotating basis—they serve 8 years—that is so there will be no political basis. I guess a now lame duck governor appointing people like the former Alan keyes delegate who builds Churches for Christ is about as apolitical as you can get, not to mention the multimillionaire from Branson who has given over 25 million dollars to the republican party. Legislators kept Donayle whitmore smith and gambaro from being appointed. The “non-political” state board, appointed the “non-political” sab, but Sullivan had a lot of trouble getting the approval of Joan Bray—-and he fired Bourisaw as soon as he finally got it.

The voters get to replace Blunt this year, and, if they choose, they can replace Slay next year.

The key to using this smorgasboard of non-accountability to the best advantage is a lazy, compliant press, driven by corporate profits rather than journalistic principles.

Continue the sprawl? How would Clayton or U City sprawl anywhere? They are fixed by state law and otherwise landlocked. If you required Clayton or U City to annex small slivers of the City, they would be taking on only bite-sized parts of a huge trouble pie. Fixing the entire mess is hopeless as you have interloping city politicians who see the schools as a political tool. You have competing North South issues. By dividing the city into smaller districts, you would make solving the problem easier. Your assumption is that city children are unmanageable and unteachable and I do not accept that. I can show you city children in private schools and good country districts who thrive. Do you believe they thrive because the school is in Ladue geographically, or because the schools are better run? I guarantee you David Benson, the Supt of Ladue Schools would fix any schools you gave him in very short order. Sure there are a lot of issues in the City: poverty, fatherless children, etc. but those also exist in the County and those kids seem to do better. This could be handled by a law that simply redrew the boundries of six or eight districts into the City, ignoring the city limits. Then, city residents would have every right to expect their schools in their new districts to be run exactly the same as schools in the original part of the district or they’ve got a great lawsuit. I am past caring what people think about what their schools look like, I care about saving this country from a future of large percentages of the then population being uneducated and thus unemployable. Its time for the xenophobic City political machine to look beyond the schools as a place to get job for their cronies and otherwise unemployable relatives and care about kids.

I will play along..

If you redrew these districts—would the black white ratio be pretty much the same in all of them? If not, would it even matter?

Flyover,

I can also show you city children in the SLPS who are thriving. My own are two of them. I ask you to look at DESE’s website. Note the county “good” districts that didn’t make AYP because the minority and poor subsets did not meet their goals. The districts still look “good” because these are a small part of their student body. A district that has a large portion of these students of course looks bad by comparison. Your idea to slice up the city will allow the “good” county districts to envelop a tiny portion of the hardest to teach children in their larger population, and the advantaged population will keep the district scores looking “good,” but won’t necessarily lead to the most challenging children doing any better.

I agree with you completely that city children can learn. The issue is finding the best way to teach the children who come to us with the fewest advantages, because not even “good” school districts are doing very well at that. Until we make that our priority, these kids won’t succeed no matter what entity runs things. Take a look at the stats on state-run Wellston while you are on the DESE website and see why city parents are not at all reassured to have the state meddling with our kids’ education.

I agree as well that the schools are not a job bank. I have no relatives employed by SLPS. I’ve been told that Mayor Slay’s brother in law is.

Thank you for caring about city children and their education. They need adults who care, and I appreciate that you would like to see the district in the hands of educators rather than politicians and their appointees. I wish more people would recognize that.

some weeks back, I wrote a very long description of my idea. If your child is thriving in a city school, your child would attend the same school with the same teachers, except that school would be part of a county district. The teachers would be employees of that district. Clearly, I mentioned in my original post weeks ago, that Wellston, Riverveiw, etc. would not be able to be included in this concept as they are basically no better, or worse. I think you are under estimating the capacity these districts have for kids with different learning skills. The notion that only city schools can teach city kids is simply wrong. My concept is to erase the boundries between city and county and just have “kids”. My concept is to bring better management to the limited resources we have. All of these districts have administrators. Sure, they might need a few more, but we could eliminate the entire bureacracy of the current SLPS and use those dollars in the classroom. Its sort of like the idea of a unifying the balkanized fire districts in the County. How many chiefs do we need? Two times two is the same whether it is taught in north st. louis or ladue. The efficiencies of merging the one monolith into seven or eight smaller districts would be accretive to the educational process in both, make the city attractive to new residents again and ensure these kids are productive in the future. This is a winner. We need a State leader with guts to stand up and embrace it. Peter Kinder is my choice.

Again, flyover, I invite you to check the data. Neither Clayton nor Ladue makes AYP with regard to African American or poor children, or kids with IEPs. I’m not estimating anything, I’m looking at the data. I invite you to do so as well–it is easily accessible on http://www.dese.mo.gov.

I am more interested in ABC’s than AYP’s. Even if it is a wash, its a better situation as it will stabilize and grow the City. Policemen will stay in the City instead of sneaking out. The schools are the number one reason the city is dying. I’d rather try this than go back to the bickering, ineffective system we’ve seen. The only alternative is allowing kids to choose private schools, which seem to be able to do what public schools cannot with a small percent of the funds.

Well, I guess this is the end of our discussion then. I don’t see it as a wash to sacrifice kids’ educational opportunity simply so adults can deceive themselves into believing all is now well because the damage is being hidden more effectively. But if you prefer perception over facts, then I will refrain from further comment.

I started a thread stltoday titled “how clueless is state senator Jeff smith” based on what Justine had described. Hard to keep an education thread going over there—but it produced this exchange after a few posts:

thirdgoaround—

Post subject: Re: How clueless is state senator jeff smith?
Posted: 25 May 2008 14:48 pm
For any fans of The Wire, does Smith’s story seem remarkably similar to Tommy Carcetti?

kjoe—-

I don’t get hbo, so I have only heard about the wire. I looked up Carcetti’s character in wikipedia—-I guess it is possible—but the Carcetti character seemed to be able to discern more “clues” about what was going on.

So far, Jeff Smith has shown a high level of cluelessness.

We need a State leader with guts to stand up and embrace it. Peter Kinder is my choice.

flyover—Kinder was one of the few republicans ever endorsed by the Post Dispatch—in 2004.

The Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Rebecca McDowell (Bekki) Cook, is far more aligned with most views of this page. She says that the most important state issue is “public education,” adding that Mr. Kinder “consistently cut public education and pushed solutions from vouchers to charter schools.”

She is correct. Mr. Kinder did become personally involved in pushing a less than successful charter school project in St. Louis. And he presided over the Senate at a time of tight funding for public education. But education is not a constitutional duty of the lieutenant governor.

They endorsed him, anyway.

Kind of gave me a laugh–wonder what less than successful charter school project he fell for back then. Probably not anything as stupid as Kent King and TexasCan.

To re-enforce what Katherine was saying—I think it is worth considering just what Bourisaw had in mind to do instead of bringing in TexasCan. You want some business expertise—consider Bill and Melinda Gates track record….from the letter from May 11, 2007 to Kent King from Bourisaw:

Please consider our plans to plans for the 2007-2008 school year, including:

1) An expansion of alternative programming for students with chronically disruptive behavior. Beginning in August the district will open three alternative programs - one elementary, one middle, and one high school – to serve approximately 450 students. We are working with the Big Picture Company, http://www.bigpicture.org, to help us in establishing and staffing these schools. Big Picture is the convener of the Gates Alternative Education initiative. Big Picture has over 40 schools throughout the country including Detroit and Memphis. They have a strong track record of success in both attendance and achievement.

2) Increasing our contract with Alternative Unlimited by 100 seats which will include middle school students. Alternatives Unlimited is an alternative provider for our students who have committed the most serious offenses. A total of 400 seats will be available next school year.

3) Renewal of our agreement with ACE, a credit retrieval provider that graduates our students. ACE will receive a contract for 300 slots. ACE has a strong history of offering credit recovery in St. Louis.

Specific to MoCAN, we have requested from their parent company information on their track record in the areas of attendance and student performance. Thus far, we have only received marketing materials.

flyover,
Sorry it took me so long to respond…kinda busy right now.

The sprawl would continue when people of Ladue and Clayton decided they no longer wanted their children to attend the schools that used to be doing so well, but now test scores have begun to drop. I am sure you understand the effect of “one bad apple”. This effect is perhaps more applicable in a school/classroom than in any other setting. It only takes a few at-risk or high needs children to strain a system. We (the SLPS) have plenty to go around. I bet Mr. David Benson, Supt. of Ladue Schools is well aware of this. I would like to hear him invite more SLPS students to come to Ladue. In fact, I don’t recall Ladue, or any other “affluent” district volunteer to take SLPS students a couple of years ago when we lost our accreditation and the courts were going to allow neighboring districts to take them (and the accompanying money). Maybe we should allow him to speak for himself.

Also, you said “the xenophobic City political machine to look beyond the schools as a place to get job for their cronies and otherwise unemployable relatives and care about kids”. That is a load of crap. The SLPS isn’t hiring anyone as a perk, they are hiring anyone who is willing to put up with the lousy working conditions.

Another false statement you make is “we could eliminate the entire bureacracy of the current SLPS and use those dollars in the classroom”. The SLPS has cut MANY jobs in the last few years. Any employee who tries to get something done can tell you that this “bureacracy” people are so fond of blaming things on, doesn’t exist. Perhaps it did at one time, but not anymore. In fact, we are very SHORT of needed personnel.

Like I said, I understand your theory but your assumptions about the SLPS and the premise of your argument are false.

Oh…Yes, every child can learn. Some, however, take a lot more time, money, resources, and intervention…this is the heart of the problem.

I should make a correction…I said “The SLPS isn’t hiring anyone as a perk”. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that someone with connections at City Hall was hired by the SLPS…but not teachers, paraprofessionals, etc.