The Board of Aldermen passed a resolution prohibiting construction of new schools in the city of St. Louis Friday.
Resolution 65 is largely considered symbolic and unenforceable, as the Board of Aldermen does not have the authority to prohibit new schools from opening. Aldermen passed the legislation primarily to send a message to charter schools seeking to open in the city.
The St. Louis Public School District has not opened new schools for some time and has come under fire for closing several schools this year due to a declining population.
The resolution also calls for the creation of a citywide plan to provide “excellent schools which provides consistent education opportunities across all schools, neighborhoods, and wards,” which will be drafted with input from the Board of Education and the Board of Aldermen, before new schools can be opened in the city. The resolution does not offer a specific timeline in which this should occur.
Over the past decade, schooling in the city of St. Louis has started to look more and more like an elaborate math problem.
About 30 of the city’s schools have closed over the past decade, with several hotly contested public school closings in the past year, while 20 new schools opened during that same decade. Most of them were charter schools.
There are 61 traditional public schools and 33 charter schools in the city of St. Louis, all competing for a shrinking student population: 45,000 students, as opposed to 60,000 just 10 years ago. The schools are working with limited funding, which is spread too thin across the system.
Most agree on the nature of the problem, but disagreement surfaces when it comes to solving it.
As the debate for a solution continues, St. Louis Public Schools’ students are often left with knowledge bases and test scores far below state standards — with 18.5% of those students achieving “proficient” MAP scores in math and 22.8% in English. Only eight of the city’s 33 charter schools can claim scores any higher than those of SLPS.
Elisa Tomich, The Opportunity Trust communications director, told The American that the information presented during the meeting is incorrect.
“In fact, 23 of the 36 charter schools operating in 2019 exceeded the district’s proficiency rate in math, and 24 charter schools exceeded the district’s proficiency scores in English/language arts. Twenty-one charter schools exceeded the district’s proficiency rates in both subjects. This is based on the most recent MAP data,” she said.
“The correct information can be found in building-level data tables and data visualizations on the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s website.”
The resolution was sponsored by Alderman Jesse Todd, Ward 18, and passed by a 24-1 Friday morning vote after over four hours of discussion in committee Thursday night. Alderman John Collins-Muhammad was the sole vote against the legislation.
Representatives from SLPS, the AFT Local 420 teachers’ union, Board of Education members, SLPS parents, and other community members spoke in support of prohibiting the founding of new schools.
Donna Jones, Board of Education vice president, said she sees Resolution 65 as a way to address the community’s grief over the last round of SLPS school closures.
“Resolution number 65 is very important to the citizens of St. Louis because so many of them were concerned and hurt during the [latest] closures of St. Louis Public Schools, and many did not understand what was going on,” she said. “At the end of the closures, we started to talk about a moratorium, because we did not understand why we were closing schools, and as soon as we closed a school, we had a charter school open up.”
Most speakers against the new schools moratorium were affiliated with The Opportunity Trust, which funds new charter schools and “education entrepreneurs” in St. Louis. Two of those speakers were current fellows with the Opportunity Trust hoping to establish new schools, Charles R. Stanley and Richard Sherin.
They have lived in St. Louis since July and August, respectively.
“There are four Black leaders interested in submitting charters in the city of St. Louis,” Stanley said. “Not because we hate public schools.” Rather, he said, the way to stop charters from coming to St. Louis would be for public schools to “get it right.”
“The waitlist numbers that exist in charter schools tell a different narrative than this moratorium alludes to,” he said.
Alderwoman Megan Green, Ward 15, responded by saying only eight charter schools out of dozens in the city are currently outperforming SLPS schools.
The two other speakers against the resolution, former Missouri Sen. Jamilah Nasheed and Bridge 2 Hope founder Krystal Barnett, were also affiliated with the Opportunity Trust. They spoke of the issue regarding parents’ ability to choose among many educational options for their children.
“It’s really simple,” Barnett said in a video posted to Twitter. “If there are no good schools for every parent to access, and safety is also an issue, then nine times out of ten, they’re going to leave. I often wonder … how the only time choice becomes an issue is when it comes to us exercising our right to make that choice.”
Among the speakers in support of the moratorium was Alisha Sonnier, Board of Education member and chair of the Board of Education’s ad-hoc Citywide Educational Planning Commission.
Sonnier said “in the most recent annual performance score, there’s not even a 2% difference in performance” between charter schools and traditional public schools in the city.
She also laid out the ad-hoc commission’s ideas for creating a citywide educational plan to end the moratorium. First, the group will undergo a community engagement process involving surveying, canvassing, and listening sessions for “two to three months,” Sonnier said. Then, they plan to lay out a framework to create equitable education in St. Louis and bring all students to a place where they can learn to their greatest potential.
The ad-hoc commission held its first meeting on Oct. 25.
“We know that our scholars are dealing with unprecedented levels of trauma, violence, displacement … and these new schools opening … and closing is a part of this displacement,” Sonnier said. “As a youth myself in this city who just had to bury a friend that wasn’t even 20 years old last week, I’m begging that we do this. If new schools were the answer, we wouldn’t be where we are.”
Alderman Bill Stephens, Ward 12, supported the moratorium resolution.
“This resolution seeks only to staunch a hemorrhage,” he said. “We are hemorrhaging students and resources in schools, and we are looking for how to best bandage it.”
