frenchmills's Blog

Response to Missouri State Board of Education¹s Decision To Disenfranchise
St. Louis Citizens for Three More Years ­ From St. Louis Board of Education
President


The state board of education¹s decision to disenfranchise St. Louis citizens
for another three years shows how corrupted and antidemocratic the political
system in Missouri has become.

Not only is the decision void of any reasonable basis, it runs counter to
the very idea of public education, which by its very nature demands public
involvement. In violation of all norms of democratic process and of plain
common decency, the state board of education jumped to a conclusion without
informing either the citizens of St. Louis or their elected representatives
that this decision was on their agenda, much less did they provide an
opportunity for public comment. Under state law, the elected St. Louis Board
of Education is supposed to audit the progress made under the state
appointed board (SAB). Neither DESE nor the state board of education has
asked for any report on the district, nor did they make any effort to have
the SAB comply with state law to provide information to the St. Louis Board
of Education. The fact that they would make such an important decision while
hiding in Jefferson City and without seeking comment from citizens or St.
Louis is but another example of their lack of respect for St. Louis
residents.

While seeking to divorce the public from public schools, the state board
again is rejecting parental involvement in schools ­ four of the seven
members of the St. Louis Board of Education have children in St. Louis
Public Schools; no one on the SAB does.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that such a thoroughly undemocratic
process would arrive at an irrational conclusion. Conditions in the district
have deteriorated over the last year: There is more instability at the top,
the financial progress the district was making has been slowed, and the
district¹s performance has fallen. In ratifying the decision of the SAB to
fire the superintendent so that they can administer the daily operations of
the school district themselves, DESE and the state board have again taken
the position that businessmen with no competence in education should run the
school district instead of trained educators. The state board¹s experiment
in disenfranchising St. Louis is a failure. The experiment in replacing
professional educators with businessmen 2003 was a disastrous failure. Yet
the state board insists on continuing those experiments for another three
years.

The only explanation is political. DESE and the commissioner of education
were fully behind the program of cutting services and turning chunks of the
school system over to private companies when the mayor¹s people ran the
school board. We believe the evidence shows that, when faced with the
prospect of a new board majority that put education first instead of private
profit, DESE altered and manipulated rules in order to justify taking over
the school system so that the state board could protect those private
contracts.

The elected school board just completed a planning process that, with input
from respected educational leaders in the metropolitan community, concluded
that the way to best improve the school district is through the professional
development of teachers and principals, not through private programs sold by
for-profit companies.

We believe that the state board quickly and quietly decided to extent its
control for another three years in order to continue transferring public
funds to private companies for questionable programs. Once again, they have
placed private profits ahead of educational opportunities for our children.

We hope that a new governor and new state assembly next year will clean up
the Augean mess that DESE has become.