By Antonio D. French
Filed Monday, May 8 at 6:00 AM
The St. Louis Board of Education will have its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, May 9, at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of Carr Lane School, 1004 N. Jefferson. Several hot topics will be on the agenda, including the closing of a high school and more than $9.5 million in spending.
As the Watch reported earlier, Superintendent Creg Williams has proposed closing Cleveland NJROTC High School. In an administrative meeting last week, Williams suggested moving the students to Madison School. Many have wondered just how the superintendent plans to squeeze Cleveland's nearly 800 students into Madison's building.
There are also question about what will happen to Cleveland's ROTC program. There are rumors of it being moved to McKinley Classical Jr. Academy. If that's true, what happens to the successful academic program at McKinley? No doubt many people attending Tuesday's meeting will be looking for answers to these questions.
Also on the agenda is a proposal to spend up to $325,000 to build out offices and cubicles on the second and third floors of the district's administrative building located at 801 N. 11th Street. The superintendent told board members that it is a necessary part of his plan to consolidate several district services downtown.
In addition to moving special education counseling services, which require a certain measure of privacy, Williams also plans to move employees of building maintenance contractor Sodexho and several food service personnel. Some question the longterm effects of the latter two moves.
Some board members have recently expressed a desire to move away from subcontracted services back toward in-house maintenance and food service. Moving these divisions downtown may clear the way for reassigning, or even selling, their current bases of operation. That would make it more difficult to go back to the old way of doing things.
Other big ticket items on the agenda include: an amended $2.5 million contract with Kwame Building Group to manage several contruction contracts for the district. The Board voted down a similar contract last month. This version of the contract is basically identical except it is for half the term (only one year) and for half as much.
The board will also be asked to approve $3 million for replacement of textbooks; nearly $700,000 for laptop computers for 26 schools; $300,000 for library books; $255,000 for new science lab equipment; $65,000 for Palm Pilots from OfficeMax to be used for "literacy programs;" and $465,000 in professional development for the district's 90+ curriculum coaches (all of whom were recently asked to reapply for their jobs).
2 Comments:
Doesn't the Navy sponsor Cleveland, how could they let one of "their" buildings look like this? Don't they ever come and visit, they have money, God knows they have most of mine!
Wednesday, May 10, 2006 5:46:36 AM
Cleveland didn't just start falling down. This has been happening for sometime, they just didn't bother to maintain the building or stop it from deteriorating. Why wasn't the school board cited by the city for violation of building codes? code violations had to be in place for sometime. All of that money that went to Roberti and consultants, some of the money should have gone to bringing the buildings like Cleveland & Central and many others up to code.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006 11:02:05 PM
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