St. Louis Community College could be more involved in getting high school students exposed and ready for college, said several candidates who hope to be part of the college’s governing body.
In the April 4 general municipal election, 12 candidates will vie for two seats on the St. Louis Community College Board of Trustees.
Nine candidates will be on the ballot for the Subdistrict 1 seat, including incumbent Derek Novel. The other candidates are Candace Gardner, Marsha Bonds, Kevin Martin, Marcus D. Adams, O. Daniel Gray, Veronica Avery-Moody, Theodis Brown and Miranda Avant-Elliott.
Three candidates have filed for the Subdistrict 2 seat, including Pam Ross, Patrick J. Burke and Ciera Lenette Simril. Incumbent Hattie R. Jackson will not seek re-election.
The winner of the Subdistrict 1 seat will serve a three-year term while the winner of the Subdistrict 2 seat will serve a six-year term.
Subdistrict 1 includes the Hazelwood, Ferguson/Florissant, Riverview Gardens, Jennings, Pattonville, Ritenour, University City, Normandy, Clayton and Ladue school districts.
Miranda Avant-Elliott, a Subdistrict 1 candidate, is the supervisor of college and career readiness for St. Louis Public Schools – which was the first district to participate in STLCC’s Early College Academy pilot program that launched in fall 2016. This past semester, almost 30 SLPS students studied on the college’s campus and earned college credit hours. Avant-Elliott helps to facilitate the dual enrollment program and feels it’s a great way to partner with school districts.
“You have dual enrollment and dual credit programs, and both of those are ways to get students used to the academic rigors of college,” Avant-Elliott said. “The college has a lot of great things they offer, but they often go unnoticed because of advertising.”
As a board trustee, Avant-Elliott feels she could support the college in enhancing these partnerships. Being a public school educator for 15 years and now a college-pipeline specialist, Avant-Elliott feels she has the “knowledge and the experience” to help STLCC achieve its goals for increasing enrollment and supporting students once they are on campus.
“I am a ‘first gen,’ so I also have that understanding,” Avant-Elliott said. “I am passionate about continued education.”
Kevin Martin, a Subdistrict 1 candidate, is critical of STLCC’s current outreach efforts with its dual enrollment or dual credit programs, as well as the college’s lack of remediation initiatives in school districts.
In the fall semester, STLCC had 589 students in dual credit courses and 297 in dual enrollment, for a total of 886 students concurrently enrolled at both STLCC and local high schools. Martin, a middle school assistant principal in Hazelwood, said that number is dismal compared to the number of students participating in similar programs at University of Missouri – St. Louis. UMSL has about 5,300 high school students taking dual credit courses and 19 in dual enrollment.
“The first thing we need to do is to reach out to school districts,” Martin said. “Don’t wait for the K-12 school districts to reach out to the college.”
Rebecca Emerson, executive director of K-12 partnerships at STLCC, said that the reason the number is so low compared to UMSL’s is that the college just started its programs in 2014.
“We are the new kids on the block, and the other programs have been around for 30 years or more,” Emerson said.
Because these programs often come at a cost to families and school districts, both Martin and Avant-Elliott said the college should look at the possibility of utilizing Pell grants, like Ranken Technical College does, to pay for dual credit or dual enrollment fees. Both promised to push the college in that direction.
Martin cited a statistic that 36 percent of all Missouri high-school graduates in 2010 who entered a public in-state college or university had to take one remedial course in basic subject areas of math, reading or English once they got to college.
“It’s concerning,” Martin said, and he believes that the community college should be working more closely with school districts to get these students college-ready – particularly the districts that need it the most.
Emerson said there is a lot of “curriculum sharing” in the local high schools, including subjects of engineering, science, criminal justice and business.
“There is a lot of collaboration,” Emerson said. “That happens all the time. That’s what we’re here for.”
Marsha Bonds, another Subdistrict 1 candidate, knows from experience that the “cookie cutter” approach doesn’t work for all the students at the college’s four campuses. For 12 years, Bonds was the former director of North County CARES at the college’s Florissant Valley campus, which was a program that tried to pair students and community members with social services and employment opportunities. Bonds designed the program after she hosted a Welfare-to-Work summit for the college. She also secured a $2.5 million, 5-year GEAR-UP grant from the U.S. Department of Education to engage over 800 students and their families in two North St. Louis County school districts in the program.
Bonds also led workshops to help social service organizations understand poverty.
“People have a really inaccurate perception of people who are in poverty,” Bonds said. “Education is a route out of poverty. It’s not that people don’t want to take the road out, but they have so many other challenges that pull them away from the things that can potentially improve their lives.”
In her work, she helped to mitigate those challenges for those wanted to get an education, she said. She also was a faculty member at the college for several years and is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Florissant Valley campus. This experience will help her to understand the faculty’s needs and concerns, she said.
She also has ideas about how to partner will school districts to get students college-ready, including leading professional development workshops where teachers and students get to interact and learn together.
“I have a heart for this,” Bonds said. “I believe that I could add something to the board.”
