QUALITIES OF LIFE, CAPE GIRARDEAU; SPECIAL REPORT: EDUCATION; NUMBERS SHOW FEW TRENDS FOR CAPE'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The 1990s have been filled with educational highs and lows in Cape Girardeau, and more movement is in the forecast for the future.

The Quality of Life Indicators for Progress report explored trends in the Cape Girardeau public school and university systems from 1990-1995 in educational areas such as enrollment, graduation rates, expenditures per student, standardized test scores, teachers' salaries and continued education.

What the report found was the quality of public education in the city has been difficult to gauge due to numerous progressions and depressions since 1990. Richard Bollwerk, associate superintendent for Cape Girardeau schools and a member of the QOL committee, said trends are difficult to discern in the report because some of the figures were tracked or calculated in a way that could be misleading.

"Some of these things include only two or three years of data, which makes it hard to see a trend," Bollwerk said. "There's not enough explanatory information about some of the data that's included. I think it's the goal of the report to be able to inform the community about all of the different factors that affect life in the community and to provide discussion about things they want to do something about in their community."

Bollwerk said the report data on average public school teacher salaries is one area that needs to be refined in the report. The numbers are misleading, he said, because the data was calculated by averaging all salaries rather than charting one specific group.

"A better indicator of whether we're having any increases would be the beginning salaries, because when beginning salaries increase, salaries increase across the board," he said. "These figures aren't really accurate because if something happens in one year, like last year for example, when we offered early retirement, then the numbers are going to dip. That's the kind of thing that needs to be refined."

Superintendent Dan Tallent said many of the indicators in the report have flat-lined or are slightly upward moving in recent years, which indicates the district is progressing. The district will benefit from increased local funding due to the recently passed school bond issue and Proposition C tax waiver, Tallent said, but continued progress will occur only if state and federal funding increase similarly in the future.

"One of the things I have lobbied for with our local legislators is for increased funding in some of the mandated service areas," he said. "The state looks at us as being a wealthy district because we have a higher assessment per pupil, but the fallacy is that we have a lower tax base in comparison to other districts. This means we get almost no state funding and we have to provide a lot of the extras ourselves."

Tallent said the district performs well with the budget it has available, and goals have been laid out in the district's master plan which will bolster some of the lower-end data in the QOL report. For example, he said, goals are in place to improve the district's 90 percent graduation rate and the expenditures per student in special service programs like learning disability and special education.

"We set 15 major goals and within these goals some of these things that we're looking at here are addressed," Tallent said. "It's ironic that they fall out together like that."