District accreditation to be reviewed March 22-23
By Meliqueica Meadows
Of the St. Louis American
Last Friday some 30 St. Louis Public Schools teachers, parents and activists held a teach-in in the City Hall rotunda to protest a possible state intervention in the administration of the city schools.
“We’re here to say ‘no’ to a state takeover,” state Rep. Jamilah Nasheed said to a crowd of supporters in the rotunda.
“I requested from the attorney general a legal opinion as to if this takeover is possible. If he finds that there is a conflict of interest, then I will find an independent attorney to do the opinion.”
Attorney and activist Eric Vickers said a legal defense fund had been established to retain an attorney and had raised $3,000.
“We are going to fight this to the end,” Vickers said. “My definition of a transition is there is a way in and a way out. There is no provision in the statute to a transition back.”
Nasheed also has filed legislation to repeal the statute that makes state intervention in the district legal.
“We know we need to stop the bleeding,” she said of SLPS. “But we don’t believe the solution is to take the people’s right to vote away.”
Dorris J. Walker McGahee, chair of the SLPS Parent Assembly, said, “We have family who is dysfunctional, but we don’t fire them. We give them the necessary tools to get along.”
On the eve of his victory over incumbent Board of Alderman President Jim Shrewsbury, Lewis Reed said, “Voters have the right to create whatever kind of transition they want to see.”
On Feb.15 the state Board of Education voted to establish a three-person transitional board to operate in place of the current school board, should the district completely lose its accreditation.
The focus now is on the accreditation of the district, which hangs in the balance. Superintendent Diana Bourisaw was charged with submitting detailed background information on hundreds of SLPS graduates to determine if the district would meet the college placement standard for accreditation.
“The state Board of Education is scheduled to meet again in Jefferson City on March 22-23. We expect that the board will consider the accreditation status of the St. Louis Public Schools at that time,” said D. Kent King, commissioner of education for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
“We’re not due to have an accreditation review until 2008,” said Byron Clemens of St. Louis Teachers Local 420. “But the mayor has lost the last two school board elections, and that’s what this is all about.”
Last week, Bourisaw provided preliminary recommendations for the school board’s ad hoc facilities committee to remedy what she calls “the under-utilization of our school facilities.”
The recommendations include closing Kottmeyer Elementary, 1530 S. Grand, and sending displaced students to either Wilkinson or Stix. Other schools recommended to close include Euclid Montessori Elementary, Humboldt Middle and Webster Middle schools.
“We simply do not have enough students to continue operating 93 schools,” Bourisaw writes in the report. “The district could currently house about 43,000 students in the facilities we have open. Unfortunately we only have 33,000 students.”
The preliminary report also recommends reconfiguring Soldan International Studies High School to include grades seven through 12. And at Clyde C. Miller Career Academy, the former Carver School adjacent to Clyde would be reopened and used to provide additional career education offerings in cosmetology, child care, medical assistance, and medical coding and billing.
Bourisaw said there would be a series of public forums on the recommended proposals and that the district has established an online public comment form at (at www.slps.org) where concerned citizens can provide feedback.
Also last week, state Senator Jeff Smith and state Rep. Talibdin El-Amin announced a new plan to address the challenges faced by the district and to encourage qualified youngsters to pursue careers in teaching. The plan will provide a year of college tuition loan forgiveness to high-performing high school seniors in the top of their class in exchange for their commitment to teach for a year in districts that are not fully accredited. They are also calling for an additional 90 minutes in the school day and six weeks to the total school year.