Seniors, freshmen at different sites Jan. 17
By Bill Beene
Of the St. Louis American
On September 17 freshman at Vashon High School are going to a middle school and seniors are going to college.
The entire freshman study body will be relocated to the now closed Williams Middle School and 65 of about 200 seniors will attend the University of Missouri – St. Louis and Ranken Technical College. Sophomores and juniors will remain at the Vashon site.
The relocations were approved at a December St. Louis Public Schools board meeting.
Parents, students and teachers received the news with mix feelings.
“I disagree with it,” said Tina Scott whose 9th-grade daughter Marnay Scott attends Vashon.
“How are they going to break them up in the middle of the school year? It’s going to be a whole big mess.”
Scott’s daughter said she doesn’t like the change because she won’t feel like she’s in high school.
SLPS Superintendent Dr. Craig Williams isn’t wasting any time addressing imperative school needs such as adequate educational achievement.
“We got to address the academic needs of the 12 high schools here in the city of St. Louis,” Dr. Williams said, adding that officials “want to place a renewed emphasis on academic achievement, and where we’ve fallen short on that we are attempting ways to correct it, and this plan starts that movement.”
Under the plan select seniors will take rigorous university level coursework such as Sociology and Introduction to Anthropology. At Ranken Technical College seniors will be introduced to technical trades and entrepreneurial opportunities in those specialized fields.
Seniors must be on track for graduation, have a minimum 2.5 GPA, exemplary attendance, good citizenship, leadership potential and desire for post-secondary education.
Seniors will also have the option of dual enrollment opportunities.
“We want to give seniors the opportunity to be exposed to the college experience and earn dual college credit,” Dr. Williams explained.
Seniors will depart Vashon daily at 7:30 a.m. and return at 2:30 p.m. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays they will go to UM-St. Louis. They will go to Ranken Technical College Wednesdays.
Another goal of the reorganization is to implement intimate and personalized learning environments that will lead to higher graduation rates and lower drop-out rates.
In a Power Point presentation to parents last week Dr. Williams pointed to research that declares the first year of high school difficult to many students. Also, higher failure rates coupled with elevated discipline issues can have a disruptive influence on student achievement which could lead to increased dropout rates.
Vashon High School has had its share of discipline issues. It’s reputation for supremacy in basketball is equaled by the number of fights and other violence at the school.
“I wanted to have the opportunity to pull the freshmen out of the building to begin to address their academic needs in a different capacity,” Dr. Williams said.
Chatman believes that the number fights won’t decrease when freshmen are moved to the former Williams Middle School because most of the fights are among ninth-graders.
“Freshmen start most of the fights,” Chatman said. “There’ll probably be more fights at Williams because the ninth-graders have the most beef.”
Some changes may take place at Beaumont, Cleveland and Roosevelt. The former and the later have also been inundated with violence.
Dr. Williams said he’s going to start working with Cleveland to create some options without removing students.
He said he’s already working with Roosevelt.
A circulating email from an anonymous and disgruntled Roosevelt teacher that made it’s way to American described changes at Roosevelt a quickie experiment.
The author of the email wrote, “Mostly, I am upset about these directives that come down about which we cannot voice our opinions or needs, yet we are the ones assigned to work with students everyday who are encountering a number of serious problems.”
The writer criticized a “New Perspectives Alternative School” within the building with a separate entrance and rules, claiming it that “there isn’t anything in writing, only one new teacher and no mention of any resources to support it. And two new teachers will be teaching a new Kaplan curricula without training.”