This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 17, 2010 - The state Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday to extend the authority of the three-member appointed board over the St. Louis Public Schools for another three years.
The board accepted the recommendation of Commissioner Chris Nicastro, who in turn was acting on the report submitted by a committee headed by William Danforth and Frankie Freeman. That committee, whose report led to the Special Administrative Board first being named in 2007, was reconvened last year by Nicastro to come up with suggestions for the future governance of the schools.
The board also voted to recommend that the three current members of the SAB -- Rick Sullivan as president along with Melanie Adams and Richard Gaines -- be retained. While the state board has the power to extend the authority of the SAB, it does not control membership of the panel. State law gives that power to the governor, the mayor and the president of the Board of Aldermen.
Both Mayor Francis Slay, who appointed Adams, and Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, who appointed Gaines, have said they would keep their appointees on the board. A request to Nixon's office about Sullivan's status brought no immediate response.
Tuesday night, the Special Administrative Board released this statement in response to the state board's vote:
"The recommendation of Commissioner Nicastro and the Special Advisory Committee and the action of the state Board of Education acknowledges the Special Administrative Board's work over the past three years. The SAB recognizes that there is still much more work to be done to provide a high quality education for our students. Our students, their families, staff and the St. Louis community have been important partners in the improvements made thus far in the district.
"Looking ahead, the SAB will continue to work closely with Commissioner Nicastro, DESE, the Missouri General Assembly, and other state officials to create sustainable, positive improvements in academic achievement for all of our students."
Read the Beacon's earlier story:
Sooner or later, authority of a three-member appointed board to run the St. Louis Public Schools should end.
Both Missouri's commissioner of education and members of the elected city school board agree on that point. But until the school system makes more progress toward accreditation by the state, Commissioner Chris Nicastro wants that time to come later and wants the appointed board to run the schools for at least another three years.
The state Board of Education will take up Nicastro's recommendation at its meeting next week. The board has the power to extend the life of the Special Administrative Board (SAB), but it has no say over whether the three current members -- President Rick Sullivan, Melanie Adams and Richard Gaines -- will remain in their posts.
That quirk in the law that governs the St. Louis situation is one of the items that members of the elected board brought up during a meeting with Nicastro Wednesday on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. They would like the law governing St. Louis schools and an appointed board governed by the same law that governs other districts, such as Riverview Gardens.
In those cases, members of the governing board are appointed by the state school board. But for St. Louis, the governor names the head of the panel and the other members are appointed by the mayor and the president of the Board of Aldermen.
"What's good for one district should be good for all of them," said Chad Beffa, one of the elected board members who met with Nicastro.
As far as changing the law, Nicastro expressed doubts. She took into account the results of last week's election, saying that "this may not be the best year to bring statutory changes because you have such huge numbers of new people" coming into the Legislature.
Nicastro's recommendation to extend the authority of the SAB comes from the five-member special advisory committee headed by William Danforth and Frankie Freeman, which was reconvened last year and submitted its report last month.
The report said it found no overall difference in quality of schools run by an appointed board from those run by elected boards, and it said that in time, an elected board should once again be put in charge in St. Louis.
But, it said, the transition should wait until the city schools make more progress toward accredition, either full or provisional, and once it occurs, it should take place gradually, including a transitional period of several years when the board has both appointed and elected members.
Discussing the recommendation at their meeting last month, state board members differed on whether full accreditation should be the point at which the change occurs or whether it would be good enough for the city schools to show academic progress.
Nicastro told the elected board members this week that the change from the appointed board "cannot and should not be automatic." She noted that Missouri is about to institute a new program of evaluating public schools that will involve more frequent reviews than the current five-year cycle. She also pointed out that standards for accreditation are being steadily increased.
Noting that the city schools have improved a bit in their most recent review, Nicastro said:
"We do see some progress, modest but consistent and across the board. We see that as a positive sign. How long it will take for the district to regain provisional accreditation, that's hard to say."
She later added:
"I'm absolutely confident that the district will achieve full accreditation."
Rebecca Rogers, an education professor at UMSL and president of the elected board, said she did not want to see the continuation of an appointed board to be open-ended. And she noted that the Danforth-Freeman committee had said that a hybrid board, with both elected and appointed members, was not the best way to establish and continue the stability that the committee said was needed for the city schools to thrive.
Because the functions of the two kinds of board members are different -- appointed members run the district, while elected members have only the power to monitor what is going on -- having both types of members on the same board for any period of time would hardly bring stability.
"While we haven't been governing," Rogers said, "we certainly have been preparing ourselves to govern."
Donna Jones, who was re-elected last week to the elected board, said that because she and some of her colleagues have children in the school system, "we have a stake in the game."
Talking about Sullivan, the head of the appointed board, Jones said:
"You have a CEO who is not vested with this district. We're vested. We don't need Jefferson City to run our schools. We can run our own schools."
When members of the elected board brought up the fact that not one member on the state school board comes from St. Louis, despite an opening from one of the two congressional districts that make up the city, Nicastro said:
"I could not agree more. I've spent the last year trying to get that done. I hope it will happen soon."