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Parents and Teachers Challenge School Closings in St. Louis


ST. LOUIS, Sept. 1 (AP) — Parents and teachers are upset over the closings of a dozen schools in mostly black North St. Louis, saying the changes imposed by out-of-town consultants have endangered children's safety and torpedoed a disenfranchised community.

Relations have deteriorated so much that Vince Schoemehl, a school board member and former mayor, called protesters who stormed board meetings Nazis. Mr. Schoemehl later apologized.

Rochell Moore, a black board member, wrote a letter that was apparently an effort to place a curse on Mayor Francis Slay, who is white, because he supported the new board members who initiated the changes.

Parents and teachers are calling for a boycott when school starts next Monday.

The school district, Missouri's largest, with an enrollment of 42,000, has laid off 1,400 people and closed 16 schools, 12 in North St. Louis. The changes, because of the district's mounting deficit, were announced three weeks ago with little warning.

"It's callous, reckless and roughshod," Catherin Rowe-Uddin, a first-grade teacher, said.

Last month, Ms. Rowe-Uddin was among teachers and parents who walked the route some children whose schools were closed would have to take along highway overpasses and through busy intersections and unsafe neighborhoods because their schools were closed. "We're trying to save your schools, baby," she said, hugging a former student, "so the bad people will go home."

She was referring to the consultants hired by the multiracial school board in May for $5 million to run the district temporarily. The district contracted with a New York City corporate turnaround firm, Alvarez & Marsal, which had never worked with a public school system.

Katrina Kelley, the National School Boards Association's urban program director, said that some other city school districts had privatized aspects of their operations, but that only St. Louis had turned to a private company for governance.

The district's annual budget is $500 million. In December, an auditing firm selected by the mayor's office reported no deficit. But before Superintendent Cleveland Hammonds Jr. retired this summer he said the district was $55 million to $60 million in the red.

Days after the consultants were hired, they said they had found that the deficit was $90 million, and they promptly made plans for the layoffs and closings.

"If it's a systemwide problem, why should the brunt be on one community, one side of the city?" asked Sheryl Johnson, 49. "Why is there no parity in the closings?"

The management team has said its criteria for recommending which schools should close were occupancy rate, academic achievement, the building's physical shape and whether it was air-conditioned.

The consulting firm's chief managing director, William Roberti, did not respond to telephone requests for an interview, but told KTVI-TV he was surprised by the negative reaction to the closings and layoffs. Mr. Roberti said only an outside entity could make such tough decisions.

Among those laid off was Harry Acker, 59, who was the head of the district's audio visual department. The entire department was closed.

"They never once came out to look at our operation," Mr. Acker said. "They looked at a piece of paper."

Mr. Hammonds said enrollment and the tax base had declined because of suburbanization. In addition, some families have opted for parochial and, more recently, charter schools, which the district pays for.

The district also has an expensive desegregation agreement stemming from a 1972 federal discrimination lawsuit. A settlement in 1999 ended court supervision of the state-subsidized plan, which will be phased out over the next decade.

Mr. Schoemehl said the $5 million cost of fixing the schools was small considering the challenge. "Right now," he said, "we're spending $11,000 per kid and the kids can't read."


— Associated Press
Parents and Teachers Challenge School Closings in St. Louis
New York Times
2003-09-02
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/education/02LOUI.html?tntemail1

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