State Takes Control of Troubled Public Schools in St. Louis

Photo by Huy Richard Mach/St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The New York Times reports:

The Missouri State Board of Education voted on Thursday to take control of the troubled St. Louis public schools.

At an emotional meeting in Jefferson City that was interrupted by students who had arrived by bus from here to protest the expected decision, the board voted, 5 to 1, to strip the St. Louis Public School District of its accreditation, effective June 15.

The board also voted to provide for a transitional three-member panel appointed by state and local officials to run the city’s 93 public schools, many of which are old and run-down. The district’s seven-member school board will remain intact, but will have no governing authority.
The governor, the mayor of St. Louis and the president of the city’s Board of Aldermen will each appoint one-member to the transition panel.

A spokesman for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Jim Morris, said the three-member panel was expected to run the district for the next six years, although the State Board of Education could elect to extend the panel’s term indefinitely.
“Ideally, the local board would be in a position to resume authority over the district once it’s turned around,” Mr. Morris said.

The St. Louis school district is at least the seventh to be taken over by a state since March 2004, said Jennifer Dounay, policy analyst for the Education Commission of the States, but none were as large as St. Louis. A year ago, the Maryland legislature blocked an attempt to take over the Baltimore schools.

The St. Louis district, which has 35,000 students — many of whom are poor or homeless — has a history of financial, administrative and student achievement failures. Its cumulative debt in 2006 was almost $25 million, according to the State Board of Education, and it has had six superintendents since 2003.