Just like any birthday or anniversary, the first one is big.
November 3 marks Kelvin Adams’ first full year as superintendent of the St. Louis Public Schools District. But please, he’s does not want any special attention.
“Every initiative I talk about or that we have put in place focuses on student achievement,” Adams said.
He seemed anxious to get back to the monthly meeting with school principals happening on the first floor. Most likely, he was excited to hear how these initiatives were coming alive in the district’s 74 schools.
In April, he presented 15 new initiatives to the district’s Special Administrative Board. Eight of these initiatives have moved forward this fall – including autonomous “pilot” schools and switching around high school students’ schedules to make credit hours more available. If they are successful, it could lead to higher graduation rates, better academic scores and budget stability.
Providing basic needs – support, educational challenges, health care and social services – is always top priority, and the new afterschool program aims to do that for nearly 3,000 participants.
On Sept. 11, the district launched the after-school program in every elementary school – 53, to be exact – with $150,000 support from Civic Progress and a partnership with ARCHS. The students spend an hour on academics and an hour in cultural programs or sports activities.
To gauge the afterschool program’s success, the district will compare the students’ attendance, behavior and achievement before they started the program, and again in January. If the comparison doesn’t reveal results, Adams said the district will try something new.
In a more intensive approach, the district launched a new program to intervene with lower-performing schools. It hired an outside firm for $1.6 million; if the schools don’t rise to the standards specified in the agreement, the firm will not get paid.
To give students a better shot at graduating, the high school redesign allows students to have a college-like schedule, with the opportunity to earn 32 credit hours instead of 28 in four years.
The immediate benefit is that fewer students are taking credit recovery or night classes, Adams said. Now teens have an opportunity to make up credits doing school hours, rather than having to stay until 5 p.m.
“They can get a job or help their parents,” he said.
Schools often want the “creative license” to focus on their communities’ needs and new ideas, along the lines of some charter schools, but in a large school district that has not always been possible. To address this need, five pilot independent schools were opened this year with various themes, including art integration and languages of the world.
The program, modeled after one in Boston, created schools that can manage autonomously in the district, but still be part of the district’s budget. So far, all of the pilot schools have shown an increase in attendance, except one, Adams said.
Nathalie Means, principal of Jefferson Elementary School, was part of researching and implementing the pilot school program.
“In a district where you see a lot of students going to charter schools, it’s important to offer more choices to parents,” Means said.
Following the money
This year, the U.S. Department of Education funneled $400 billion into public school systems, and Missouri got $1.3 billion of that. In the St. Louis Public Schools, money so far has brought about renovated food kitchens, transportation leverage, staff salary relief for a year, early childhood programming and attention to much needed special education programs.
A second round of funding could be coming to public schools through the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” initiative. As a requirement, states must have charter school legislation in place and meet certain national standards.
The district met in August to make sure it was eligible, and Adams said the district’s pilot schools would have a good shot at getting some funding.
Adams came straight out of the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort with New Orleans’ public schools, where he served as chief of staff for the State-run Recovery School District.
As a hurricane recovery veteran, he understands the process of keeping people abreast of sometimes scary details.
“You keep the data before them, the numbers before them, and hopefully they will understand where you are really in this paradigm shift,” Adams said.
“It’s my role to let people know about our revenues and resources. We don’t shy away, even if it’s a little bit uncomfortable.”
For Rebecca S. Rivas’ video feature of Adams’ new initiatives in the district, see www.stlamerican.com.
