© 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Date: Friday, November 12, 1999

Section: EDITORIAL

FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN

CITY SCHOOLS

REMEMBER how it felt to be a child? To squirm in a rigid little desk, grip those chewed-up pencil stubs and squint at that scuffed chalkboard? To be so smitten by a good teacher, that one day without her seemed like a thunderstorm? To be so scared of a bad teacher that assignment to her classroom felt like a death sentence? To remember childhood is to remember what a frightening, wondrous place the world is for people less than 4 feet tall.

To help the children in the St. Louis Public Schools, we must remember. We must remember the pain, the hope and the fragility of childhood. We must remember how much trust children place in us and how much we owe them. We must remember what matters most to them: a kind and good teacher with a smile and time for each of them, a cheerful and orderly classroom, room to run at recess, lots of books, lunch -- and what matters least: administrative overhead, political patronage, recycled reform schemes.

This week, the parties in the St. Louis desegregation case announced their picks for the monitoring committee to implement the desegregation settlement. Most of its 25 members are insiders who represent a particular constituency, which may make it hard to push reform. Compounding that problem is the presence of the School Board president on a watchdog committee charged with assessing her performance.

For better or worse, though, these are the committee members we have. The future of the

desegregation settlement -- and in large part, the future of 45,000 city school children -- rests with them. They must zealously pursue school reform, accept no excuses and remain loyal to one -- and only one -- constituency: the children.

In a committee saturated with entrenched interests, its members may be tempted to fixate on the details and neglect the bottom line, to put the jobs, interests and reputations of adults before the education of children.

The committee has one hope for resisting that temptation: They must be in the schools. Not just one school. Not just one day. Each member must make repeated, regular, lengthy, unannounced visits to city schools -- the good, the mediocre and the troubled.

If they do, they will remember how it feels to be a child. And they will learn how it feels to be a child in the St. Louis public schools: poor and powerless in a world where adults bicker while children suffer. They will see children who learn on an empty stomach, children who wear the same shirt to school day after day, children who hear harried teachers howling at their classmates, children who spend weeks watching substitutes float in and out of their classrooms, children who see their best teachers disappear to the suburbs.

They will meet children who are treated as something less than precious because they are poor. Children whose entire futures depend on an education that will get them nowhere, or anywhere. Children who have spent a lifetime waiting for the adults to stop pointing fingers and hold their hands. The committee members must remember that the future of so many depends on their unflinching, undivided loyalty to one constituency -- the children.