Copyright 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Editorial

November 5, 1999, Friday

CITY SCHOOLS

STAND AND DELIVER

MEMO to the St. Louis School Board: Your mission is to serve the children of the St. Louis Public Schools.

You do not exist to protect your own power. You do not exist to file lawsuits ad nauseam. Your sole charge is to ensure that the city's 108 schools effectively educate the 45,000 students who attend them.

Lately, it seems, you have allowed yourself to be distracted from your mission by politics and litigiousness. Last month, the state recommended that the city schools lose accreditation. Instead of using that recommendation as a clarion call to galvanize school officials and the community, you publicly criticized the state standards. Then you filed suit to protest yet another provision of Senate Bill 781 -- subdistrict elections of board members that may make you more accountable. Earlier this year, you sued to block the law's provision for charter schools in St. Louis. These suits came despite your approval of the terms of the desegregation settlement, a settlement criticized by some as too easy on you.

You shook hands on the settlement deal, agreed to accept tax money from the legislation. Then you proceeded to attack the legislation piecemeal. This strategy distracts you and demoralizes the community. The desegregation legislation and settlement gave the city schools -- and you – many concessions. The legislation called for takeover of the city schools by a three-person reform board if the schools flunked the state accreditation review. The city schools flunked, but you will not be held accountable for two more years because you haggled your way out of a takeover during settlement negotiations (to the dismay of some legislators who only accepted SB781 because of the takeover clause).

You promised city voters a better, more accountable school district in exchange for a sales tax hike that will raise about $ 23 million a year for the city schools. Voters passed the tax in February, paving the way for a state infusion of about $ 40 million a year for the district -- another result of SB781.

Now that you have the tax hike, the state money and the takeover reprieve, you must act in good faith and hold up your end of this deal. That deal said you would try to create a desegregation monitoring committee. You haven't done it yet; the monitoring committee should have been up and running by now. Instead, you have spent far too much time and too much of the public's money attacking the provisions of legislation you do not like.

If you want taxpayers to trust you, civic leaders to support you and pa rents to help you, quit squabbling in court and deliver on your promises of reform. You made a deal. Stand by it and focus on the only thing that really matters -- the education of the 45,000 city children whose future depends on your leadership.