Dave:

Here are some talking-points for you for tonight:

1. Give the hype a rest, focus on the tasks at hand: opening the schools on time, providing a quality education to our kids, and returning the district to solvency.
2. Give the new Superintendent a chance, she seems to be in earnest.
3. The Board merely accepted the former Superintendent's resignation after some issues came to light, which being personel issues cannot be publicly discussed.
4. The Board did what it had to do in naming the new Superintendent so that classes can start on time.
5. The feigned "outrage" by the Board minority is a thinly veiled attempt to get the state to step in so that the minority can take over the Board.

To the contrary:

1. The reality, not hype, is that the District still faces non-accreditation within Missouri and must find ways to address the unfunded national mandate of NCLB yet not go broke.
2. This new superintendent was neither interviewed nor shared publicly. How long will she now serve as interim or acting superintendent before an open process is followed?
3. Williams may have officially resigned, but you don't exactly come out of closed session with a salary buyout, unless being pushed out.
4. The start of another academic year is certainly a time when someone is needed to fill the shoes of a superintendent, but a public process must still be followed in hiring a replacement. And if you talk about timing, why was Williams forced out now? Haste makes waste, or in this case, a quick return to the Purdy-led days of past chaos just in time for classes.
5. The state will intervene whether or not a minority on the school board supports such action. That's because such action is not as simple or political as a call from Slay to Blunt. But this new majority's actions are certainly adding public pressure to the state's more objective decision.

1. What hype? It's the present Board majority that failed to pass a budget, that forced the District to commit millions of dollars to rehabbing a building the district doesn't need, and that brought in their "superintendent-in-waiting."

2. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be sitting here." - Bourisaw. Yet there she sits, only a month or two after being brought in as an "internal auditor." She knew all along, as did the rest of the Board majority, that their intent was to fire (or force to resign) Williams and put her in as "interim." Why give a new sup a chance when the old one was doing a good job?

3. My...isn't that convenient? More like another word that begins with "C" and ends with "rap." I was working in the Board office when Williams was vetted and hired. No group of candidates could have been more closely examined. This isn't "personnel," it's "personality." Williams refused to be the new majority's puppet, and so lost his job. Just last week, Ms. O'Brien denied any intention to fire Williams. Hhhmmm....

4. I'll grant that they wanted their puppet in place before the beginning of the year.

5. Feigned? Hardly. According to an admittedly "unscientific" poll over at P-D, 64% of those responding think matters will get worse at SLPS with the new sup. The majority of thinking St. Louisans are up in arms about this. The only people who support the present Board are those who are continuing to boondoggle the District's coffers for their own benefit. I have met Messrs. Jackson and Archibald, as well as Ms. O'Brien. Ms. O'Brien is two-faced. She mouthed support for Dr. Williams when he was hired, then turned on him the second the votes were counted in the last election. Purdy and Downs are idiots, with them we're back to Haas and Hilgemann. As for the fourth member of the majority, I know so little about her as to not remember her name. All I know from one brief encounter is that she votes blindly with the majority without comment as to why.

This was an intentional slap in my children's faces. I'm sorry to say that mine will be two of the 1,600 children leaving SLPS this year. Until the present majority is recalled, or Kent King steps in, this school district is doomed.

===1. Give the hype a rest, focus on the tasks at hand: opening the schools on time, providing a quality education to our kids, and returning the district to solvency.

Bill Purdy was Board President as the District was bankrupted last time. Why is this time going to be better--that is his debt they need to plan to retire.

The hysterical part of this is there are two ways to get back to solvency. Change the staffing patterns which is what Williams wanted to do, or raise taxes. No one is going to raise taxes in the SLPS for some time after this maneuver.

While some have tried to criticize Archibald for his comments about a few million being nothing, he is correct. Saving that money does nothing for the long term health of the District. There are quite simply structural problems in the budget brought on by having to borrow money from the capital deseg budget. Money that had to be tapped because everyone sat around with their thumb up their butts the 2001-2003 school years pretending that there wasn't a problem and that NCLB wasn't coming.

The financial issues were audited 13 times in the first year after the the Mayor's slate won and all said the same exact thing so there are no questions as to how it happened--the District suffered like other Districts under the state cuts and did nothing to solve the structural problems in place at that time. You got insolvency. And now, paying off the debt from that insolvency is about due....and the structural problems are being recreated with a desire to keep open buildings that are not supported by student needs, the desire to rehire staff, and no desire to deal with new staffing patterns.

IOW, all public statements of this current board majority suggest they want to recreate the situation of 2002-2003, but claim that the finances will be better.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.