State plans to take over St. Louis schools Friday

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Missouri officials are poised to take over the state's largest school district Friday. All that stands in the way is a lawsuit, a lot of questions, and the fact that two of three appointees to a new board to oversee the district have yet to be named.

There's been no shortage of infighting in the St. Louis public school district in recent years, but what everyone can agree on is that change is needed.

Consider that the schools have a 19 percent high school dropout rate. And those students who took the ACT college entrance test had an average score of 16 compared to the state average of 22, according to the St. Louis district's 2005-06 annual report.

Yolanda Perkins, a mother of five, hopes state intervention can help fix the schools. She worries that public school children are not performing at the grade level they should be.

Students aren't challenged enough in the city schools, she said, but her kids also have had trouble keeping up with math and science by the time they reach middle school. She's concerned they didn't get a strong enough foundation in those areas in elementary school. By the time kids get older, "They're either dropping out or goofing off," she said.

The state takeover isn't a done deal yet. Five of the elected School Board members in the city, who stand to lose their power when the state takeover begins, have filed suit.

A judge in Cole County will consider Wednesday whether to stop an appointed board from stepping in Friday. That board is to have three members, but only one has been named, home builder Rick Sullivan of the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield. He has not returned calls seeking comment.

The other two appointees -- one each to be named by St. Louis' mayor and the aldermanic president -- will likely be announced Thursday or Friday, after the hearing related to the lawsuit, Mayor Francis Slay's spokesman Ed Rhode said.

District officials say in the meantime they've been working to open summer school, which began this week, and to make preparations for the new school year in the fall. Superintendent Diana Bourisaw reeled off a list of areas where the district is working for improvements, from expanding the gifted program to improving alternative school options.

The school board's vice president Bill Purdy, who is leading the board after board president Veronica O'Brien was voted out of her post, thinks the lawsuit raises several significant legal questions that must be addressed before the new appointed board can begin its work.

He's not clear how the appointed board will operate, and he's disturbed that he's seen no evidence of a new plan for the district.

"Suppose on Friday, it is official," he said. "What do they do? Do they hold public meetings? What happens to existing contracts?"

Robbyn Wahby, the mayor's education assistant, said, "It's not going to be Friday, flip the switch, and it's all blue skies and everything is OK." But, she said the state can provide resources to help the schools.

She said three factors joined together over the years to bring the schools to their current situation: a lack of stability in governance, a crisis of leadership and major economic changes as the region moved from an industrial economy to part of a global economy. The district needs to change to meet the needs of today's students, she said.

Wahby said those problems were decades in the making. She said St. Louis struggled with a desegregation case for years, where courts were often telling the district what to do, resulting in leaders who felt they couldn't step outside of what was being mandated.

"Because of the case, we didn't have innovation, we didn't have risk-taking," she said.

But, she said, the state's intervention should foster a closer relationship between Missouri's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the city school district. "They'll be, we hope, sending in the cavalry," she said.

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On the 'Net:

St. Louis School District: http://www.slps.org

State Education Department: http://www.dese.mo.gov