By Kevin Lavery, KWMU
St. Louis – The St. Louis school district has hired a consulting firm in hopes of improving its relationship with the public.
The school board voted 4 to 3 Monday to hire St. Louis-based Unicom ARC on a six-month, $60,000 contract.
The district already has a small public relations staff. But assistant superintendent Charlene Jones says the it needs independent eyes to help them identify areas of improvement.
"Part of the problem is you have these people running around talking about conspiracies under every rock, and there's no conspiracy," Jones said. "Everybody knows St. Louis Public Schools desperately needs better communications."
But not everyone at school headquarters thinks the firm is a good idea.
In voting against the contract, board member Amy Hilgemann offered a blunt indictment of the district's current PR staff.
"I don't know why we have people in that department that really don't do anything and we're bringing in consultants," Hilgemann said. "I don't know if the purpose or the product is going to be, here's what your department should look like, here's the types of qualified people we should have, because we don't necessarily have qualified people that work in that department."
District officials say the firm was competitively bid upon. Unicom will start its work immediately.