This proves the Arch City Chronicle would be better named City Hall's Chronicle.

Or, it proves that you can take a thoughtful, non-political look at the District's challenges and progress, and conclude that the kids' needs are best served by more of Dr. Creg Williams' reforms and the Board majority -- Clinkscale and Buford -- that supports them.

Most of his reforms were in place and dismantled by Darnetta Clinkscale and the board majority.

Is it true reform to bring in friends from other places as part-time employees at higher salaries than full time administrators are paid in the better performing county schools? Resources that could go to the children through the schools are going to very high-paid administrators and profiteering consultant fees.

Mrs. Clinkscale will have to answer as to why she dismantled the school system and is now in favor of bringing back what she dismantled in the first place.

And this is a non-political, objective observation.

And why does the man publicly blame the teachers for the violence caused by students who once would have been sent to alternative schools, but the Mayors' slate closed such schools?

Check into the latest part-time hire at $75,000 a year. They also have a Chief of Human Resources who flies in from Chicago from time to time and who cancels many meetings because she is flying back home. She works three days a week at a huge salary. Most businesses will tell you they need their human resource head full time.

The one coming at $75,000 a year is coming with $375,000 from another school district to which she must continue to consult until the end of June. Her school district credit card racked up over $38,000, including many high-priced meals in Washington, DC. Too bad other school district administrators aren't allowed to eat so high on the hog.

Yep, this is what the debt-ridden school district needs -- more big spending at the top -- now that's school reform sure to be envied by other districts that try to spend the taxpayers' generosity wisely and more frugally! Ask the people in the Parkway and Lindbergh school districts what they pay their people with better results.

Some teachers sacrifice a middle class lifestyle just to teach the city's poor and at-risk children while the head honchos experience increases reaching close to 50% over salaries paid to past administrators. And then the district loses way too many points in its accreditation.

Publiceye, perhaps you can advise the mayor and his slate to consider the appearances at least of their decisions. For some reason, the mayor forgot "spending like a drunken sailor" and its effect on the schools.

Is it possible to take a non-political look at a school district?

Of course, everybody wants to present their ideas as natural and inevitable (thus apolitical or nonpolitical) to persuade people, but when making any conjecture about a part of government one is engaging in politics.

"Some teachers sacrifice a middle class lifestyle just to teach the city's poor and at-risk children . . ."

SLPS teachers salaries are matched to the average salaries in the five highest performing districts in the county.

If only the students' scores did.

" . . . consider the appearances at least of their decisions."

You mean, like eliminating more than a 1,000 non-teaching jobs scattered throughout the system?

"SLPS teachers salaries are matched to the average salaries in the five highest performing districts in the county."

That's refreshing. On the other hand, the annual salary for a library aide in the St. Louis Public Schools is a little over $13,000!

Which side of the poverty line is that on?

" . . . the annual salary for a library aide in the St. Louis Public Schools is a little over $13,000! Which side of the poverty line is that on?"

That's pretty firmly on the poverty side of the poverty line. What are the qualifications of a library aide? And how many of them are there?

It?s Tough to be a Student!
It?s Tough to Be a Parent!
It?s Tough to Be a Teacher!
It's Tough to Be the Superintendent!

Public School Students, Teachers and Staff at Risk
Violence in the Schools Caused by Just a Few
Board Majority Slayte Eliminated Alternative Schools
Transportation for Many Students
Larger Classes, Fewer Counselors &Social workers
Ignored the Recommendations of the Dan Kirner Report

by Helen Louise Herndon
(with information provided by various parties)

The media gets the picture, but somehow the city schools' administration and board majority Slate remains in the dark regarding a crisis facing children, parents, and worthy men and women who choose to teach in the city schools. This crisis revolves around growing violence against school students and staff by unruly students. Parents feel left out of the process.

PARENTS ARE NEEDED ON THE BOARD OF EDUCATION.

In a week's time, KSDK TV's Leisa Zigman aired a video regarding the surge of violence in public schools, Julie Randolf of Suburban Journals wrote about increased aggressive and violent behavior by girls in "Girls on the Offensive," and Peter Downs' St. Louis School Watch published "Parents at Stevens School Protest Violence, Lack of Schooling."

It's tough to be a student! Let?s make it clear: there are many wonderful students who attend our city schools. The vast majority of children in all grades are well behaved and want to learn and strive for excellence. Too often the district places heavy burdens on children who want to learn.

Frequent complaints from students and parents are voiced regarding the recent and abrupt discontinuance of providing Bi-state bus tickets to many high school students. This change was made without notice. Many high school students now find it almost impossible to attend school, especially when the starting time is as early as 7:19 A.M.. There are dangerous security issues for students walking to school in the dark, and when severe weather conditions prevail. Such conditions severely affect both attendance and achievement. An increase in absenteeism is reported due to the district?s abrupt discontinuance in providing bus tickets. Just getting to school for many is a challenge and has now been exacerbated by this recent administrative decision to stop providing transportation to hundreds of students.

During the school board meeting of March 7, 2006, the board majority Slate of Clinkscale, Buford, Archibald and Jackson unanimously refused to even discuss the possibility of providing safe transportation to those students. Yes, it is tough to be a student!

It?s tough to be a parent! It?s tough to get the school board?s attention. Many parents complain they are unable to contact the transportation office because of repeated busy signals and long wait times in order to reach an operator.

According to a longtime transportation official, prior to 2003 there were as many as 15-16 operators in the transportation call center. There are now only five (5) telephone lines into the building whereas the previous call center had as many as 12-13 telephone lines. Parents complain they remain on hold for up to 45 minutes, they are unable to contact the transportation office, or are frequently forced to leave messages in voice mail. They are frustrated in that they are unable to reach transportation officials when buses fail to arrive for morning pickup or are late returning students home from school.

Children Still ride around the city as late as 7:30 p.m. The office is often closed for the day while children are still in transit home in the evening. During the school board meeting of March 7, 2006, the board majority Slate unanimously refused to even discuss the possibility of addressing these parental concerns. Yes, it?s tough to be a parent!

PARENTS ARE NEEDED ON THE BOARD OF EDUCATION.

It's tough to be a teacher! Yes, the city public schools accept all children and work with at-risk children. Nonetheless, today another at-risk population must be addressed, which comprises students who want to learn, teachers, and school staff. One parent reported, "Kids are beating kids, parents hitting teachers, students hitting teachers, and the students who do that are still in school. There is no support from the principal to do anything about it." In a fifth grade class, "The students were cussing, they were throwing stuff, and they were tearing that room apart. The teacher called security, but they never showed up."

Most unfortunate in this growing scenario is misdirected blame on teachers. Increasingly, the tendencies to shift blame from culprits to victims or duly appointed enforcers are taking a toll on the stability and well being of our community and society. The police are accused of hurting criminals instead of blaming the criminals for harming or endangering others. Schoolteachers are now being blamed instead of the disruptive, violent ruffians in their classes. Where and when will it end? The superintendent, in public meetings, reportedly blames teachers for the violence saying it is their fault for not controlling their classrooms. Eyewitnesses reported earlier in the school year the superintendent took off his suit coat one day, used some profane words, and put up his fists to fight a union representative protesting the outsourcing of specific jobs one day in front of the district's headquarters. Teachers and school staff do not have that option. They can be terminated for the use of profane language or touching a student. Why blame teachers when national media report one of the most dangerous professions is that of junior high school teacher?

A former elementary school principal reports staff called him to say how bad it is getting. Some believe the worst offenders for disruptive behavior now are students in K-3 grades. He indicates that for many principals, their hands are tied by the central office administration. Personally working in a middle school, the culture of violence and glib profanity among some students astounded me. One middle school has had seven secretaries since August. Teachers are abused, attacked and assaulted, and burnout from working under tremendous duress and hardship takes a toll on support staff. I retired earlier than planned to escape tremendous stress and pressure.

Just last year, a neighborhood complained about one Saint Louis Public Schools middle school's students roaming their neighborhood damaging property, automobiles, and assaulting older citizens. Some car jacking perpetrators come from or are dropouts from our school system. A city middle school?s students viciously murdered an innocent woman and still another raped and drowned a young girl in a toilet bowl. There are many other stories and tales which could be told. Again, the vast majority of city students are well behaved and want to learn and they need our help.

PARENTS ARE NEEDED ON THE BOARD OF EDUCATION.

Abusive and violent behavior with horrific results is on the rise while excessive downsizing and under staffing of schools is taking place. Teachers are not trained as police or military personnel and cannot control large classes of behavior-challenged students. Teachers are trained educators who are not supported in the role for which they are trained. Teacher complaints about violence directed at them by unruly students are not empty grievances. They are safety and life-threatening pleas. Many really want to teach children who want to learn! Why is this so difficult for the Slate to understand?

Factors contributing to the rise in safety issues affecting both students and teachers can be traced back directly to decisions made by the current Slate that runs the school board.

The elimination and closing of alternative schools that Dr.Cleveland Hammonds Jr. wisely initiated and doing away with in-house suspension classes have resulted in violent and disruptive students returning to regular classrooms. Under normal circumstances, classes comprise students who want to learn and who pose no threat to the instructional process. When unruly students are returned to the classroom, those students, who want to learn experience increase distraction and disturbances. Educators meet with even greater resistance and eventual personal physical and verbal threats.

Dr. Hammonds and previous board members worked diligently toward alleviating problems in the classroom to afford teachers? necessary time and opportunity for quality education and instruction. The Slate has ignored the legitimate recommendations commissioned by the former school board and made by a large community-based task force chaired by former Alderman Dan Kirner and administrator Charles Simms.

Tantamount to the closing of alternative schools, rigorous reductions in counselors and social workers abetted a growing crisis of violent behavior. Counselors and social workers became stretched beyond capacity to satisfactorily tend to the severity of the needs presented by dysfunctional or behavior-challenged students, notwithstanding students with basic needs, such as adequate clothing, food, housing, transportation needs and challenged by lead poisoning. Not the least of contributing factors to the increased attacks and assaults on students and teachers are the larger classes that hinder learning and prohibit the necessary individual attention any student might require.

Thank goodness the word, indeed the truth, is aired and published by our local media. A yeoman's rescue effort to protect at-risk students, teachers, and school staff is needed.

Since the media gets the picture, how much longer before the district's administration and the Slate sees the focused picture clearly as well? Let's hope that more students and teachers will not be injured as we patiently wait!

The Slate's decisions to raise salaries at the top and to dole out extravagant consultant fees and contracts, while cutting staff on the front lines, is coming home to roost. Our children and school staff are paying dearly for those unwise decisions. Yes, It?s Tough to be a Teacher!

It's Tough to be the Superintendent! And now our new superintendent is faced with the daunting task of putting the pieces back together. We wish him well and we are willing to help.

PARENTS ARE NEEDED ON THE BOARD OF EDUCATION.

It?s Tough to be a Student! It?s Tough to Be a Parent! It?s Tough to Be a Teacher! It's Tough to be the Superintendent

Helen Louise Herndon
Hloherndon@cs.com

Helen Louise,
Your writings seem to miss the old days. If you have forgotten the old days saw record low performances from our children, and the violence from public school students and dropouts was on the news almost every day. The old days only seem nice to those that lost their jobs when this board came in to improve the schools.
As for the teachers having it rough. I am sure some do, but difficult decisions have to be made when there is a $60,000,000 deficit, and you can't make payroll. How difficult would it have been on the teachers if they didn't get paid in 2003?
Also I believe the district would have more money for other personnel if the teachers hadn't asked for and gotten a nice raise in the last contract negotiations.
I believe that there are some parents on the Board of education. Darnetta Clinkscale is a mother, and I believe that Ron Jackson, Flint Fowler, Robert Archibald, Jim Buford, are Fathers.
In closing I think that Darnetta Clinkscale and Jim Buford will continue to support Dr. Williams and am convinced from listening to Peter Downs and Donna Jones that they will try and keep him from making the changes necessary to improve this district. I believe that Downs and Jones will lead to Dr. Williams no longer working for the district if they are put on the Board and that is why I will vote against them.

Peter Downs and Donna Jones are endorsed by the Teachers Union. Why don't we just move their chairs to the teachers' side of the negotiating table when it comes time to do the next contract (which will occur during their terms, if (ugh) they are elected). How blind are people? Do we want a school board that gives teachers a free pass at the expense of our precious children? Downs and Jones obviously do.

Veronica O'Brien and Bill Purdy, current Board members, also received the enthusiastic backing of the Teachers Union. Bill Purdy, the "drunken sailor" who spent the District into the huge finacial hole that the current majority inherited, O'Brien, Downs and Jones are close allies. This anti-reform, anti-student, pro-jobs, anti-accountability majority would be a gigantic disaster for the District. Let's not go back to the miserable days of the Purdy board when there was no financial accountability. Say NO to these naysaying, free-spending darlings of the Teachers Union. Let's elect Board Members, Clinkscale and Buford, who have vision and who fully support Supt. Williams in his quest for excellence in our St. Louis Public School District.

Dylan, Worried Citizen didn't address you directly for your post but talked to Helen as if she posted it? Worried Citizen has been around for a while and seems to be a city hall cheerleader. Yeah, now that the school district is closer to being unaccredited than ever before, the good old days do seem better.

There's more violence every day since the present board closed the alternative schools. And the schools have been warned not to call the police when violent students attack teachers and staff. The union is telling the teachers to call the police when they are injured to get a police report. The violence is worse than it has ever been but the expensive PR brought on board is spinning information to make them look good. Think of how expensive it is to reopen alternative schools that the Clinkscale board closed! And oh yeah, the best approach to a $60,000,000 deficit is to triple the salaries at the top and complain about the teachers being given a bit of parity with county school districts. In the good old days, no one was hired to work part time at $75,000 a year and to come on board with a credit card abuse scandal unresolved in another city! Yep, it's those terrible overpaid teachers who are to blame for the district's woes, not the high salaries or excessive consultant fees or sales of property at a pittance of their value.

So Dylan, it's better this fake worrier didn't address you personally. Worried Citizen couldn't work or operate in the system or the schools. He or she would not be worried, but would be scandalized by the conditions.

elf44, Sylvester says it best by hitting the old nail on the head. At least he sees through the ACC's agenda on behalf of City Hall.

"It's interesting that the candidates for April's St. Louis School Board
elections have been lumped into two basic categories; reformers and
[]opponents[] of reform.

The candidates backed by Mayor Francis Slay - current School Board
President Darnetta Clinkscale and Jim Buford, president of the St. Louis
Urban League - are the so-called "reformers." Those not receiving the
mayor's blessings include editor, publisher and former School Board
candidate Peter Downs, educational health advocate Donna Jones, former St.
Louis policeman Dennis McLin-Shireff and retired public school executive
Joe Clark. These candidates are dismissively included with the critics,
dissenters, naysayers, obstructionists, []opponents[] of reform and
all who've criticized candidates backed by the mayor.

Consider the recent edition of the Arch City Chronicle, a local alternative
newspaper offering an in-depth, "just-the-facts" review of the current
School Board contest. The paper's general manager, Dave Drebes, who
endorsed Slay's slate, summarized the upcoming race this way:

"Others will campaign on the missteps and mistakes of the reformers. But
those reformers are the only ones with a positive vision for the schools.
And I'll swallow their mistakes every day of the week to get a functional
system."

Everyone wants a "functional" school district, but before we voluntarily
swallow mistakes, shouldn't we expand the "reformer" vs. "nonreformer"
definitions? Shouldn't we also examine what exactly has been "reformed"
since the mayor's candidates first came aboard in 2003?

It's bad enough that the opposing candidates operate at a distinct funding
disadvantage. Slay seems to have no problem convincing corporations to dole
out thousands to fund his crew's advertising and slick, full-color campaign
material. The []opponents []group will be lucky to muster enough
dough for photocopied fliers to shlump from door-to-door. Not only are they
financially outgunned, they're marginalized as an anti-reform,
anti-education group.

Reform isn't always or necessarily a positive thing. I could "reform" a
house but, considering my carpentry skills, my handiwork would be a
dangerous, questionable version of reform. That's pretty much how I regard
most of the efforts of Slay's previous School Board picks.

We don't have to beat the dead horse about the clandestine []way[]
they went about reforming schools. Let's simply look at the results. In the
name of cost-cutting, the majority Slay board closed alternative schools,
sold buildings, traded the services of longtime employees for food service
and maintenance corporations, crammed kids into already crowded classrooms
and gifted drive-by executives and consultants with exorbitant salaries.

Today, teachers, parents and students complain of low morale, sometimes
spoiled food, dilapidated buildings, an unreliable transportation system,
growing violence and a district that's more than $20 million in debt and
precariously close to losing its state accreditation.

Seems to me the reformers just replaced an antiquated, ineffective,
bureaucratic, costly system with a more modern, ineffective, bureaucratic,
costly school system.

All candidates should be judged on their vision for a "functional" school
district. It's not necessarily a bad thing that a few want to reform Slay's
handiwork while they're at it."

Agreed: A Board of Education cannot be a completly non-political entity. However, it is in the better interest of all citizens, students and teachers when the SLPS BOE has members - such as Peter and Donna - who will NOT rubber stamp and idea just because it fits with a developer's view of St. Louis and/or Mr. Slay's blessing.

The current members of the Board approved Roberti and friends ... and what did they get for some 5 million? Let's see: They ousourced jobs to those who have little stake in the work they do other than a pay-check. They hired an uncertified principal. They embraced the "new" and "bold" visions of Dr. Williams that is little more than a "Back to the Past" list of ideas.

No, Darnetta and crew have to go. Will this eliminate politics? Of course not. Will this open up the Board to the citizens - certainly.

Richard Callow, incase you are still checking this:

Library Aides make $13,978 for 10.5 months of work out of the year. The base requirements are a high school diploma/GED and at least one year of library work--but though the position doesn't require a college degree, that still does NOT make $13,897 okay, especially considering how few SLPS graduates make it through college. I have heard of one case where a woman with a Masters library degree from Bosnia had to work as an Aide and not a Librarian for years because it took them years to recognize her foreign degree. So, it ain't just nineteen year olds working those positions.

I don't know how many Library Aides there are in the system, but my guess would be that it's half the number of K-8 libraries in the system. Library Aides work at two assigned schools, trading places each day with a librarian with an MLS. The position was created to cut costs, 'cos they didn't want to pay a person with an MLS to run each library every day. They actually lost accreditation points over it.

Even taking in to account that this position is only 10.5 months out of the year, full time it still works out to less than eight dollars an hour. That's not a living wage--it's hardly even an eating wage.