By AP/KWMU
St. Louis – A high-profile St. Louis school board member is stepping down after less than three years at the post.
Vince Schoemehl resigned Monday after several contentious years on the board.
Mayor Francis Slay has appointed James Buford, president and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, to replace Schoemehl.
Schoemehl was part of a four-person slate that Mayor Francis Slay had endorsed and that tended to vote as a bloc, recruiting a firm to run the district, closing more than a dozen schools and laying off staff.
Schoemehl was once accused of threatening a fellow school board member and making comments that compared district parents to Nazis. He later apologized.