A crowd of parents and activists gathered on a Thursday evening in late February outside the Downtown office of St. Louis Public Schools. They gathered to show support for SLPS Superintendent Diana Bourisaw, who had recently declined a surprise offer from the district’s Special Administrative Board to apply for the position she already holds.
The offer came as a particular surprise to Bourisaw, because she had recently submitted a proposal to the SAB for a two-year contract on what she considered reasonable terms.
Rick Sullivan, CEO of the SAB, said the board had discussed Bourisaw’s contract, but “not in detail.” He said it was “similar in scope to her existing contract.” He said her contract proposal “may have played some part” in the board’s opening a national search for superintendent.
Should Bourisaw leave her position at the end of the current school year, she would become the sixth superintendent to depart SLPS within five years.
Many of the students in the city’s public schools may struggle in mathematics, according to State assessment tests, but that math is easily understood by district parents – and it angers many of them.
“I like Diana Bourisaw. I like stability,” said Kathleen Styer, the mother of two children at Metro High School who said she “has worked with the system since my oldest daughter was in kindergarten.”
Styer said, “I am very unhappy with the current situation.”
Peter Downs is baffled by it. Downs is president of the elected school board, whose authority was ceded to the SAB by decree of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Downs (who also is a parent in the district) was one of many close observers shocked to see Bourisaw, in effect, handed her walking papers immediately after Sullivan’s appointment as CEO of the appointed board was approved. The abrupt request for the current chief administrator to apply for her own position was a clear blow to the district’s stability.
“And when the elected board met with the State’s special commission, one of the things you said you were most concerned about was the district’s stability,” Downs told the American.
Downs used the direct address of “you” because he was speaking to the American’s editorial board, which is chaired by publisher Donald M. Suggs, who also served on the State’s special commission to review the city’s public schools. Suggs and others of that board’s commissioners, including William H. Danforth, chancellor emeritus of Washington University, have been watching the district under the leadership of the SAB with growing concern.
Sullivan also told the American yesterday that he personally considered Bourisaw “very qualified” for the position of superintendent, but that she had declined the board’s offer to apply for the position.
Meanwhile, many parents are incensed.
Bill Ramsey, an activist and parent in the district, said the SAB’s handling of Bourisaw “was disastrous for the teachers and parents of the district.”
Styer, who stuck with the city and the district through six superintendents in five years and “through many, many school closings,” said the SAB’s timing of its de facto dismissal of Bourisaw shows how out-of-touch Sullivan, Richard Gaines and Melanie Adams are with the district’s operations.
“Why, now that it is starting to work, would you change it?” Styer asked.
“The morale of principals and teachers is infinitely higher now than it’s been. Why fix it when it isn’t broken? I think the timing is ludicrous.”
Styer, Ramsey, Downs and other activist parents express frustration that the taxpayer-funded district responsible for the education of their children is now administered by three un-elected board members – none of whom has a child who attends school in the district.
“None of them have children in the district,” Styer said of the SAB members. “None of them have a stake in the system.”
Of the SAB members, Sullivan was appointed by Gov. Matt Blunt and Gaines was appointed by Lewis Reed, president of the Board of Aldermen. Only Adams was appointed by Mayor Francis G. Slay. But many district parents detect Slay’s fingerprints on the effective ouster of Bourisaw, who was brought in to lead the district by an elected board majority (led by Downs) that had defeated a slate of school board candidates backed by Slay.
“I am sure the mayor is involved,” Styer said. “He doesn’t control our funds, yet somehow his name comes up with everything.”
Slay, his Chief of Staff Jeff Rainford and Robbyn Wahby, his education liaison, have campaigned aggressively for more charter schools in the district. Bourisaw, like many veteran administrators of public schools, doubts the wisdom of focusing limited resources and energy on charter schools.
“I have an issue with the expansion of charter schools when there is no selectivity,” Bourisaw told the American.
“A number of charter schools are performing very poorly and need to be shut down, yet they are allowed to continue and be ineffective.”
Bourisaw, like many policy experts on public education, also said the charter school movement deepens existing educational disparities.
“We have 10 percent homeless students in the district,” Bourisaw said. “Are charter schools another way to divide those who have little from those who have nothing?”
Such sober observations run directly counter to Slay’s cheerful promotion of charter schools. He and Rainford have promoted charter schools directly to meetings of Catholic clergy, an important base for the mayor that stands to benefit from additional resources devoted to charter schools – and to privatized public education, or school vouchers, which Slay also supports. Many think Bourisaw’s principled opposition to focusing the revival of a troubled district on charter schools and privatized education is the real reason behind the SAB’s abrupt withdrawal of support for her.
Styer said of the SAB, “I think they are looking for someone who is more pro-voucher, more pro-charter schools, who can help them bring down the present system.”
Sullivan, the SAB CEO, did speak the precise language of the school voucher movement when interviewed by the American about a KIPP charter school coming to St. Louis. Sullivan said, “As the competition gets better, we will have to respond.” This expresses the business model of competition often used by proponents of both charter schools and school vouchers.
Bourisaw, as superintendent of a cash-strapped public district with 28,570 students, was struck by the resources Washington University seems prepared to pour into KIPP, which plans to educate only 1,500 students over the next 10 years. She told the American, “I asked KIPP for their cost per pupil. They wouldn’t give it to me.”
Bourisaw also wanted to lend Slay her expert advice on charter schools. He wasn’t interested in hearing it.
“I asked Robbyn Wahby to be on their charter school advisory board,” Bourisaw said. “They denied me.”
If the SAB is headed in a direction where Slay’s vision for the public schools has more authority, many parents are filled with dread. Ramsey said, “Any time the mayor has intervened, we’ve had a less stable district.”
The mayor’s intervention in the public schools has always been understood as part of an effort to make the city more livable and thereby increase its population and tax base, which are important goals. But his efforts are having the opposite effect on parents like Styer.
She said, “They’re not driving me away from the city and the district, because I am committed, but they are coming pretty close. They say they want more parents who are involved in education, more parents like me, but they are driving me away.”
The SAB will hold a public hearing on the 2008-2009 Budget at 5:30 Thursday, April 3 at the Administration Building, Room 108, 801 N. 11th Street. It will hold a public board meeting that evening at 6 p.m.
The elected board will hold a public meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 8 at Carr Lane VPA Middle School, 1004 N. Jefferson Ave. in the dance studio.
– Jessica Bassett contributed reporting to this story.
