Update on the St Louis Public Schools - Return of the Elected Board? By Susan Turk

St. Louis Schools Watch SAB Recommendations to DESE Regarding Future Governance of SLPS By Susan Turk St. Louis--September 14, 2018—At a joint public meeting of all of the members of the Special Administrative Board and the elected Board of Education Tuesday, March 13th, SAB Member Richard Gaines read a letter the SAB is sending to DESE regarding their recommendation for the future governance of the SLPS. The letter recommends that DESE return governance of the SLPS to the elected Board of Education.  It does not, however, specify when that transfer should occur although the SAB’s current term ends in June 2019 and they have made it known that they do not want to be re-appointed. Significantly, and I would add, ominously, the letter redefines what the elected school board will govern by permanently fragmenting the St. Louis City public school district much like nations such as Ireland, Korea and Vietnam have been partitioned after wars. The letter also recommends that 5 safeguards be adopted to ensure the future success of the elected board.  These safeguards originated in a document referred to as the St. Louis Plan which was created by an anonymous group of people convened by former Washington University Chancellor Dr. William Danforth and recently deceased civil rights attorney Frankie Muse Freeman.  That group met twice in 2017 and agreed on these ideas. They include creating a special oversight body to intervene in underperforming schools before their district would be put in jeopardy of losing accreditation, and giving the elected board the power to contract with not for profit entities to administrate low performing schools and give them a chance to improve and avoid being turned over to the oversight body, delineating the appropriate role of school boards and their relationships with superintendents, administrators and teaching staff, stipulating that a minimum of 5 votes be required of a 7 member school board or 2/3 of a different sized school board to remove a superintendent rather than the simple majority currently in statute, requiring that annual goals dealing with test scores, graduation rates, post-secondary placement, principal and teacher attrition rates, parent satisfaction surveys and student satisfaction surveys  be set and a progress report on the achievement of those goals be published, and developing enhanced training for the elected board. Legislation would be required to establish a special oversight body and the provision of the authority for elected school boards to contract with not for profit entities to administer low performing schools. Under current law, SABs can do that but not elected boards. Legislation would also be required necessitating a vote of 5 of 7 board members to remove a superintendent. Mr. Gaines said that legislation to that effect would be filed tomorrow.  When asked by elected board Member Bill Haas how that could happen when the deadline for filing bills this legislative session was March 1st, Gaines replied that State Senator Jamillah Nasheed, who is running for president of the board of aldermen next year, has filed a placeholder bill that would serve that purpose.  The Watch has learned that Nasheed filed SB 1054 on February 28th.  It was supposed to have a hearing at 8 a.m. Wednesday, March 14th before the senate governmental reform committee but that hearing was abruptly cancelled.  Gaines promised to send copies of the legislation to the elected board later Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. Gaines said an oversight body would be a less intrusive intervention than a state takeover if the SLPS continued to struggle.  It would safeguard academic achievement and establish standards applicable throughout the SLPS. Schools that have been underperforming for 5 years would be given 2 years to improve.  If they did not improve the oversight board would assume responsibility for them and their funding. Underperforming schools are defined in SB 1054 as schools that have qualified for provisional accreditation and un-accreditation for 3 consecutive years. The oversight board would be given broad latitude to improve them.  The body would be composed of recognized leaders appointed by the DESE commissioner and approved by the state board of education. If the oversight board makes progress improving them after three years they could be returned to the governance of the elected board. Alternatively, the elected board could attempt to hold onto schools longer by establishing a choice consortium to contract with non-profit entities to administrate low performing schools and set up site based management councils.  If those schools did not improve after three years they would be transferred to the governance of the oversight body which could also outsource administration to a choice consortium of not for profit entities. This sounds an awful lot like the way things are with the existing Special Administrative Board. It will be called something else and but the situation will be the same and outcomes the same and there will be no sunshine clause so there will be no solution to the persistent under performance of low income disadvantaged children in our community. This “plan” amounts to educational apartheid. The city’s school district would be partitioned and result in the alienation and shunning by city residents of the “bad schools”. These stigmatized schools would be run by the perpetual appointed “oversight body” but the roster could change from year to year based on schools Annual Performance Reviews.  This would leave the elected board of education governing a considerably smaller, truncated patchwork of schools albeit successful ones, removing the threat that the entire city would be under state control in the future. The result would be one form of school district governance for middle class, educated city residents’ children and a different form for the disadvantaged, in other words, democracy for the middle class and autocracy for the poor. When has such a division ever improved societal conditions let alone educational ones? It divides and conquers the community instead of uniting the community to work for the interests of all the city’s children.  If you have two separate entities responsible for two separate sets of schools everyone is not going to invest in both.  It takes total complete commitment to all of the children to ensure success for all of them. How would the permanent fragmentation of the SLPS district and governance of some of our schools by an unaccountable appointed board, something not much different from the SAB result in improved educational outcomes?  The SAB has failed to raise achievement during their 11 year tenure. Continued appointed board control over a large portion of city public schools would mean the sacrifice of the educational aspirations of the children of the least resourced families in the city to keep the rest of the SLPS democratically governed.  Parents separated from the democratically governed district would also more likely feel compelled to enroll their children in charter schools which would lead to the closure of even more schools and more of the chaos caused by school choice. Given that the charters that would be marketed to frustrated parents would most likely fail as well, as has been the case so far, increased student mobility and the revolving doors of school churn, openings and closure would only increase, resulting in a ceaseless cyclic search for non-existent successful alternative under resourced schools housing underprivileged low performing children.  Segregating low performing students has never worked.  Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. It would also continue the perpetual diminution and marginalization of our elected school board. To clarify what relegating underperforming schools to the governance of the proposed “oversight body” would mean, half of district schools were fully accredited schools in 2016 according to data mined from slps.org. The rest of the city’s schools would be perpetually separate and subject to the paternalistic control of that class of people in the city who our leaders consider to be leaders but who have no understanding of the needs or how to respectfully interact with disadvantaged citizens. Those leaders presume it is their right to govern without regard for whether mere plebes would want to be subject to them. These self-defined leaders refuse to admit failure and won’t cede authority no matter how long they continue to fail because money is involved and it their presumed right to control it. Democracy for some but not all is not a constructive way to ensure successful public schools for all. Putting the lowest performing schools under such perpetual appointed governance will not improve them and will perpetuate the disenfranchisement of the adults whose children attend them because it will be impossible to able to hold their governing board accountable. It may well be that this was the best the SAB thought they could do in terms of returning the elected board to some measure of governance.  There is still tremendous resistance to returning the elected school board to governance on the part of the civic elite.  The Danforth Freeman group actually proposed a plebiscite to determine whether the elected board model should be returned to in the vain hope that citizens would reject it despite 35,000 voters casting ballots in the 2017 school board election. Gaines remarked that he thought the state board of education would actually have extended the SAB’s terms again in 2019 had they not voiced their opposition to soldiering on. But the cost, having to sacrifice the education of half the children in the city to satisfy the will to power of the un-elected and probably un-electable leadership segment of community stakeholders, is a hard pill to swallow. No mention was made of providing low performing schools with what they really need, adequate resources, because the safe assumption is resources wouldn’t materialize, not when the legislature is continually considering strategies to lower state revenue, aka taxes. The vague bill has no wording on the choice consortium yet.  The cancelled hearing probably means it is in the process of being rewritten and fleshed out based o Gaines’ remarks Tuesday night. AFT Local 420 opposes SB 1054 and has directed their lobbyists to testify against it. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Elected Board Defines Transition At a work session Sunday, March 11, the elected board of education met to achieve consensus on what they would be asking for in terms of a transition back to governance of the SLPS.  They agreed that a 6 month timetable would be preferable, returning them to governance by September 2018. When it became apparent at their March 13th joint meeting with the SAB that the SAB did not intend to include a timetable for transition in their recommendation to DESE, the elected board attempted to convince the SAB to do so.  SAB Member Richard Gaines expressed absolute opposition to the idea of recommending DESE return the EB to governance by September.  The nebulous fallback of continued intensive training requirements for the EB upon which he would not place a length of time was used as an excuse. He reminded the EB that only DESE can decide when the transitional school district which the SAB governs can be terminated. Darnetta Clinkscale held out an olive branch by suggesting that as training progressed it might be possible that the SAB would recommend to DESE that transition occur before June 2019.  EB Member Katie Wessling reminded the SAB that there are 2 school board elections scheduled between now and June 2019 and that it was possible that 4 of the current EB members might not be present if transition were put off making their training a waste of time and resources.  In response, Verjeana Jacobs, the National School Board Association meeting facilitator expressed that they were laying the groundwork for future board members and should not feel that their time was being wasted. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Current Bill Summary SB 1054 - This act creates requirements for school districts that have returned to local governance after being under the authority of an alternate governing structure. Such districts shall comply with the following requirements: • School board members shall observe the proper role of a school board and respect the roles of the district superintendent, administrators, and teachers in running the day-to-day operations of schools in the district; • A vote of greater than 2/3 of the members of the school board shall be required in order to terminate the employment of a district superintendent; • A school board shall publicly establish annual goals, as set forth in the act, and provide a report at the end of each year on whether or not such goals have been achieved; and • The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education shall develop and provide enhanced training for members of school boards in districts that have previously lost accreditation. Additionally, the Commissioner of Education shall establish an oversight body that shall have authority to intervene in persistently underperforming attendance centers and schools, as defined in the act. Such oversight body shall establish standards applicable to all public schools in the state and shall develop a process to give school districts with underperforming attendance centers and schools a chance to improve. The oversight body shall provide recommendations to underperforming attendance centers and schools as described in the act. ......................................................................................................................................................................... The editor encourages readers to forward The Watch to anyone you think would be interested. Our city and our schools need as much public awareness and public engagement as we can muster at this time. ..........................................................................................................................................................................................    Questions for the Watch? Letters to the Editor? Stories to contribute? News tips? Send them to SLS_Watch@yahoo.com [endif] ...................................................................................................................... Calendar March 20, 2018, Tuesday, regular monthly meeting of the Board of Education, Location TBD  check slps.org   6:30 p.m. April 4, 2018, Wednesday, Special Administrative Board meeting, 6:00 p.m., 801 N. 11th Street, room 108  ........................................................................................................................ Please Subscribe to the SLS Watch. If you have never subscribed because friends have forwarded The Watch to you, please consider subscribing now. Internet newsletter mailing and management services are not free. The Watch has always concentrated its efforts on getting you the news and analysis of the SLPS that you value rather than on keeping itself in the black. But in order to pay our bills, we do need your subscription. 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