SCHOOLS PONDER STRUCTURING; CAPE BOARD MEMBERS TO HEAR REPORT ON DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Cape Girardeau public schools will undergo "massive restructuring" in the next few years, said Superintendent Neyland Clark.

"Some of it has already started," he said.

The Board of Education will hear a report about one plan for restructuring at its Monday meeting. The meeting begins at 4:30 p.m. at 61 N. Clark.

"We have to begin to open our eyes and minds to the fact we are going to change," Clark said.

The district is investigating a restructuring project called the School Development Program, developed by child psychiatrist James Comer of Yale University and the New Haven, Conn., public schools.

Cape Girardeau was one of 30 school districts accepted into the project this year.

"We're very happy to be part of the Comer project," Clark said. "We have asked the board to give us permission to pursue this.

"The Comer process would change schools around the developmental stages of children as they change from children to pre-adolescent to adolescents to adults. This approach might be more conducive to the learning environment," he said.

Clark said he is looking at changes to begin in the 1992-93 and 1993-94 school years.

Clark said the data that will be received from three Project Partnership community planning groups can be fed into this process.

Carolyn Vandeven, principal at L.J. Schultz Middle School, was one of 30 educators from across the nation accepted for the training held in March. Four other Missouri districts also attended.

To be accepted, Vandeven wrote an application grant proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation. The proposal included letters from the superintendent, the teachers association and the parents association supporting investigation of this idea.

Vandeven said: "This is really a plan for all of us to work together. It's a child-focused program.

"The school district's approach to education would be continually asking, with everything you do, what is best for the child," Vandeven said. "You look for a vision of what is ideal and what is best for our children, and that is how you look at restructuring schools."

School districts across the country are looking at ways to catch up with changes in technology, demographics and social issues.

"This is an organizational and management structure that would be put in place to solve problems collaboratively," Vandeven said.

"It's a process that utilizes the talents and strengths of administrators, teachers, support staff and parents to plan the schools academic, social, and staff development program."

A key to this program is a school planning management team made up of administrators, teachers (selected by teachers), and parents (selected by parents).

The team would plan and coordinate school activities at every level, including setting specific academic achievement goals, setting social development goals and working on better public relations.

"It's a power-shifting type of program," she said.

The management style is also different. Instead of voting and winning or losing, decisions are made by consensus and collaboration.

"It's also a `no fault' process. We will look at what is going on in the school and what we want to do. Then we plan how to get there."

Among components of the plan is a mental health team for each school, pulling together people on the school staff and interested people from the community to look at school-wide social issues.

"It's a real different way of working together," Vandeven said. "It doesn't happen overnight."

She said spokesmen from school districts already using this model said that it takes several years for people to become used to this approach.

"It's not a quick fix or easy solution," she said. "But by working together, the school becomes a better place to teach and a better place to learn."