After conducting a nationwide search, the Normandy school district announced Thursday, May 14 that it was naming interim superintendent Charles Pearson to the position permanently, effective immediately.
Pearson will complete the current school year with his current salary of $150,000 a year; his new contract begins July 1, with his salary still being negotiated.
Pearson had been head of Normandy’s appointed board when he stepped down from that position in January to succeed Ty McNichols as superintendent. McNichols, who had been in the job for a little more than 18 months, resigned after the board decided to seek applications for his job.
After hiring a Chicago-based search firm for $25,000 to look nationwide for a superintendent, 17 finalists were named from a field of 68 applicants. After reviewing the pool of possible replacements, the search firm recommended hiring Pearson. The firm cited Pearson’s experience, training and track record.
Pearson began his career in the Normandy schools more than 30 years ago and has also worked in the Clayton and Maplewood-Richmond Heights school districts. Since 2008, he has worked as an instructional leadership consultant.
The announcement of Pearson’s appointment came after he told the board in its public meeting that he expects Normandy to be able to survive the next year financially – with a little help from superintendents in nearby districts.
A budget proposal presented to the appointed board of the Normandy Schools Collaborative Thursday night projected that 544 students would be transferring to accredited districts in the next school year. That is above the 530 students that state officials have said could force the district to go broke from the costs of tuition and transportation.
But Pearson said he plans to work with superintendents from other districts to see how they might be able to ease the district’s budget problems, by providing instructional and other kinds of help.
He said he is committed to moving as many dollars as possible out of administration and other support services, and into Normandy classrooms.
“We were into a survival budget,” Pearson said after the meeting of Normandy’s appointed board. “And from that survival budget, we’re now trying to reshift into more of an instructional budget. Because it was candidly about ‘can we keep our doors open?’ before. Now, we’re saying we’re going to keep the doors open, but keeping the doors open without really delivering strong instruction is not good enough.”
He also said that Normandy’s board is committed to not starting the school year in August if it can’t be sure to keep its schools open all year.
Much of Thursday night’s meeting was taken up with Pearson’s restructuring plan. He wants to take sixth graders out of Normandy Middle School and put them into the district’s elementary school with the hope that the move improves their academic achievement. He also floated the idea of taking kindergarten students out of the elementary school and putting them in their own center, in the now-shuttered Bel-Nor school.
But one feature of his plan, hiring seven instructional coaches to help at all levels in the district, was shelved by the board when questions arose about the program’s cost and effectiveness.
Pearson said that because Normandy will be able to hire from a better group of prospective teachers than it could last year, he expects advanced placement classes to return because the district will be able to find the teachers to conduct them.
A preliminary budget for the coming school year showed that the district would start July 1 with a fund balance of $5 million, or $1,250 per student; that’s far below the average of $3,450 per student for other St. Louis County districts.
“It’s enough to start the year with,” said Mick Willis, assistant superintendent of operations. “It’s certainly not zero. But we have a long way to go.”
He said the costs for tuition and transportation for transfer students would total $7.5 million, compared with the current year’s $5.8 million for 424 transfer students. That’s an average tuition of $12,850 per student.
Willis said the district had identified $2.6 million that could be shifted from administrative services to the classroom.
The board took no action on Pearson’s restructuring plan; it is scheduled to meet again in late May.
In public comments before Pearson’s presentation of the plan, questions were raised about the kindergarten center and the new structure in general.
Robert Miller, who often questions moves by Normandy’s board and administration, questioned research behind Pearson’s proposals.
“This is not right,” he said. “This is not right. You’re just kicking the can down the road.”
Edited for length and reprinted with permission from news.stlpublicradio.org.
