By Susan Turk
April 13, 2010—St. Louis—Between now and 6 p.m. Thursday, SLPS Supt. Dr. Kelvin Adams is going to perform a feat of prestidigitation worthy of the nimblest magicians. He is going to make a $57 million dollar budget shortfall disappear. I doubt even Siegfried and Roy could manage that.
By comparing him to a magician, I am by no means devaluing Dr. Adams’ efforts. To the contrary, what he must do is make necessary educational resources and services disappear without harming the quality of education our children receive. How the extent of budget cuts required can be accomplished without resorting to magic is beyond me.
All is rumor until Thursday night. But a forewarning was given at the April 7 Parent Assembly meeting. Dr Adams admitted that some of his budget cutting recommendations would affect the classroom.
He reported the following cost cutting measures as under consideration.
1. Transforming 12 month employees in the schools to 11 month status. This would cut their salaries by 8.3%. Principals, assistant principals and clerical employees would be affected.
2. Staffing schools based on average daily attendance rather than enrollment.
3. Renegotiating all contracts, including food service and transportation.
4. Closing and consolidating as many as 13 schools. ( So far Gallaudet is the only one definitely known to be closing.)
5. Increasing class size by 2 to 4 students
6. Eliminating summer enrichment programs.
7. Eliminating summer transition programs for incoming middle and high school students.
8. Cutting summer school to 3 weeks for elementary and middle school students and 4 weeks for high school students.
9. Cutting the number of school counselors.
It is unlikely this list will add up to $57 million so more cuts can be expected. Expectations that property tax and sales tax revenues will continue to be lower may actually increase the projected deficit beyond $57 million. But school districts are required by law to submit a balanced budget to DESE by June 30. Dr. Adams is making the necessary effort to comply. Whether it remains balanced after June 30 will depend on the variables.
It must be understood that much of this is due to cuts in state aid. It appears that the Missouri Legislature will eliminate funding for summer school and summer gifted enrichment programs from the 2011 fiscal budget. Meanwhile, fixed costs over which school districts have no control continue to rise. Ameren UE has requested a 20% increase from the Public Service Commission and Laclede Gas has just requested an increase.
Dr. Adams will present his budget and recommendations for closing the deficit at 6 p.m., Thursday, April 15 in room 108 of the central administration building, 801 North 11th Street. If you wish to attend, free parking for evening meetings is available in the lot just north of the building. Take a ticket when you enter. When you leave there will not be an attendant on duty. Place your ticket in the slot on the attendant’s enclosure and press the green button. It will raise the gate.
“Why don’t they treat us like customers?”
That question was asked by Clyde C. Miller Academy parent Barry Shelton at the April 7 Parent Assembly meeting. What concerned Shelton was that parents are an untapped resource which the district does not use. Shelton asked Dr. Adams why parents and teachers weren’ asked for money saving ideas. Adams replied that employees had been asked in an email two weeks earlier and that employee ideas had resulted in $3 million in savings. The idea to reduce summer school came from employees.
But Adams had nothing to say about coming to parents for ideas. And that is historically typical of SLPS administrations. The Roberti administration certainly neglected to solicit parent input when they were considering their catastrophic budget cuts seven years ago. Had they done so, there would have been less of an outcry from the community.
But two months ago, when Dr. Adams announced that there would be a $57 million deficit for the coming school year, he stated that he would hold meetings with community groups to solicit budget cutting ideas. This reporter naively though he actually meant neighborhood groups and asked for a schedule of meetings so as to attend and observe the process of engagement used and the ideas generated. Dr. Adams instructed me to phone his secretary for the schedule. I did. She told me she needed his permission to provide it and that she would call me back. She never did.
Subsequently it was learned that he met with Local 420, principals and board of education members to solicit ideas, the school community rather than the greater community at large, and the board of education did not receive adequate information regarding the budget to be able to make constructive suggestions. So, their input was limited.
This reporter attended the Parent Assembly meeting expecting Dr. Adams would solicit budget cutting ideas from parents there. But the purpose of the meeting was for him to report rather than ask for input. It was a PR exercise. He wanted their support, not their ideas. Shelton’s remarks to Dr. Adams’, “You’ve got resources, tap them..parents,…ask them how you can save money,” exemplifies the exasperation that many parents feel. Parents want to help. But their help isn’t requested. The district and its students suffer as a result.
Pennies Pinched
For the last four months the board of education has held its meetings without benefit of microphones. Videotape recording of the meetings has also stopped. SAB Chairman Rick Sullivan informed the board that money was so tight they could no longer provide services that were not directly related to classroom instruction.
Consequently, audience members at board meetings find it difficult to hear what is being discussed even though board members try to speak louder.
Meanwhile, the SAB suffers no lack of microphones and their meetings continue to be videotaped.
Beffa Addresses SAC
The Special Advisory Committee on the St. Louis Public Schools met on Tuesday. April 13. After a 45 minute presentation and half hour question and answer period with SLPS Supt. Kelvin Adams, the SAC opened to floor for public comments. Ten members of the public addressed the SAC, among them Board of Education Members Chad Beffa, David Jackson and Donna Jones. Jackson and Jones’ remarks will be reported in the next Watch. Beffa’s remarks follow.
“First, I would like to provide information regarding the letter sent to members of the St. Louis Board of Education. (from the SAC)
We have never refused to meet with the Danforth-Freeman Committee regarding the St. Louis Public Schools. They offered to interview our board members in private, but as a public body ourselves, we felt that these interviews should at a minimum be advertised as open to the public even if they were one on one interviews.
We requested a set of questions they used for the interview and were given this latest letter claiming there are no questions. I have yet to find an interview that has no questions.
Because of this, I and others should call the methodology into question as to what this body was actually attempting to discover with no questions. At this point, I am requesting from the members of this committee the names of all who were interviewed and their responses to be made public. It is almost impossible to convey all of the intended information from a private one on one meeting as has been done in this case, to the entire committee with the proper meaning or intentions. If interviews were recorded, they should be released to the public and allow them to hear the scope of the questions and draw their own conclusions based from the interviewer questioning and the interviewee answering.
Governance of the District-
There are very few questions that need to be asked and answered to deliberate who best can run the St. Louis Public Schools with the children as the first priority.
First, what types of control are there?
An elected board of citizens in the school district is the most common in the nation. This accounts for over 98% of the school districts in America and in Missouri.
An appointed board or some form of mayoral control is what we currently have since two of the appointees were chosen in City Hall. This is not a new tactic and started nationwide around the mid to late 1960’s after the Civil Rights legislation.
A hybrid board of appointed members and elected members is the third type. Usually this is used for the school boards where appointed boards or mayoral control are transitioning back to elected governance. For instance, Baltimore County is now going to transition back to elected governance with this hybrid system.
Has our current form of appointed and mayoral governance worked, worsened the situation, or improved the St. Louis Public Schools?
The district was taken over on the recommendation of this committee because of financial insolvency, instability in leadership, and poor performance on state standards. I will briefly give the facts on these three issues.
Financial Situation
The district ran a surplus until 2002 when the full funding of the desegregation plan was not realized because the state refused to meet its financial obligation. The district sued and won in court, but lost on appeal of then Attorney General Jay Nixon.
In 2002, the district ran a $13.5 million dollar budget deficit. Under mayoral control in 2003-2004 under the management team of Alvarez and Marsal, the district borrowed from the desegregation fund and ran a $75.4 million dollar deficit. In 2006 and 2007, under the governance of a non mayoral slate and control, the district ran a $1 million and $11.8 million dollar surplus. Consequently, the budget since the appointed mayoral/state board was put into place has plummeted. In 2008-2009 the district ended up with a $33.1 million dollar deficit. 2009-10 is looking to end up with a $20 million dollar deficit, and 2010-11 is projected to have a $57 million dollar deficit. That is $110 million dollars in debt under the current mayoral/appointed board.
By all accounting standards, I would say the mayoral and appointed boards have failed at financial solvency of the district. In fact, they have potentially put us in a hole the district will never recover from- a type of financial Katrina if you will.
In fact, as the Fundraising PTO Board Officer of my children’s school at Kennard CJA, we were denied two grants that I applied for because our district was not accredited. Part of the recommendation of this committee was to take accreditation from the school district, and the consequence of this is we are now ineligible for millions of dollars of grants once available to us since elementary and middle schools have no form of alternate certification or accreditation like the high schools.
Summary of district recent end of year balances. Parentheses mean a negative balance or deficit.
2001 $14 million
2002 ($13.5 million)
2003 ($49.4 million)
2004 ($75.4 million)*
2005 $11.9 million
2006 $1 million
2007 $11.8 million
2008 $1.2 million
2009 (33.1)
2010 (est.) (20.0)
2011 (est.) (57.0)
The 2010-11 budget was presented to us with little information on programs and costs of those programs. It was impossible to say exactly where to cut and what not to cut without a true line item budget or Cost Benefit Analysis of the programs being funded. Consequently, our board voted to offer few suggestions to the appointed/mayoral controlled board since enough information has not been obtained. In addition, we were presented with absolutely no ideas of increasing revenue, but only ideas of areas to cut. For instance, there were no ideas presented to us for partnering with state and federal organizations to bring services and offices into the public schools at a cost savings to the state and federal government and an increase in revenue dollars for the district. These typical services are usually associated as beneficial to the majority of our student and parent populations within the St. Louis Public Schools. There was no proposal for recruiting students back from the failing charter schools, yet we know each student leaving the district costs us over $8700.
Stability in Leadership
First, the stability of the district leadership was not in question before the mayoral board in 2003 came into play. Our long time superintendent retired and the cycle began as unqualified person after unqualified person held the job until Dr. Williams was hired. He was heralded as a visionary with ideas. While the ideas may have been good, we see the result in the deficit the mayoral board racked up. He was unable to compromise his expensive visions and cope with the change in leadership after the city elected two parents to the board and rejected the mayor’s slate. Consequently he resigned his position.
Enter Dr. Bourisaw who stepped in as the interim superintendent under the elected board and became the superintendent after proving herself more than capable of running the district. In fact, her budgets even paid back millions of the borrowed funds under the mayoral board and ran a surplus. Morale was at an all time high amongst the teachers and parents. She remained in her position until the appointed/mayoral controled board came into existence under this committee’s recommendation.
The current mayoral/appointed board of the Transitional School District of the City of St. Louis has had three superintendents in three years. The previous 2003 mayoral board had 6(?)* superintendents in two years. The elected board that defeated the mayoral candidates had two superintendents in two years.
(*Actually 5 between Cleveland Hammonds in 2003 and Creg Williams in 2005. During a 10 month period between June 2004 and April 2005 there were 4 superintendents. Editor’s Note)
Current state law requires the board’s of education to seek and hire a superintendent. Obviously when there is a political change in power, there will be a change in leadership. There was more stability in the short period of time with the elected board not under Mayoral control than at any time under the mayoral/appointed models.
Poor Performance
To me, the most current Missouri School Improvement Plan (MSIP) report says it all. Let us look at the graduation rates and the dropout rates. The graduation rate has declined 10% and the dropout rate has more than doubled. We still only meet 1 AYP standard in regards to MAP testing and student data out of 20 for Mathematics and Communication Arts. Not quite the shining success story.
I want to warn all in attendance and all future observers to look at presented statistics on performance- check out the raw data for yourself on the DESE web site. Statistics can be skewed and presented to accommodate an audience. This is done for many reasons, but the main reason is because of the political ramifications of showing the district has not done better, but actually declined under the current proposed form of appointed/mayoral governance and the past form of mayoral controlled governance.
I feel it is of the utmost importance to remove the political factor from this process of governance. There shpould be free and direct elections of the school board members from the community in which they serve. The school board seats are volunteer positions that must run as no party affiliate and therefore could be state funded in districts of a certain size and thereby remove the special interests from this process and give all candidates an equal footing. This would increase the number of participants in the process because the individuals would not need to worry about securing funding for the campaign.
I submit to you, the only board that will ever place children first and not politics is an elected board of community members free of political contributions and process taint. I feel that currently we have the greatest possibility of succeeding in that endeavor with 6 SLPS parents and one education professor currently serving on the elected board. The process needs reform, not the structure. Tax payers deserve to elect their representatives. With over 50% of the funding coming from the local community through property and sales taxes, it is the community which deserves the right to choose who represents them. After all, this is the American way.”
Calendar
April 15 , Thursday, regular bi-monthly SAB meeting, 6 p.m., 801 North 11th St. room 108
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