By Antonio D. French
Filed Wednesday, October 18 at 10:24 AM
The controversial former chief academic officer for the St. Louis Public Schools has made a sudden departure from her current post in the Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Dr. Spampinato, a Lawrenceville native, gave up a top position in the St. Louis Public Schools to return to Pittsburgh in December. She played a leading role in the establishment of eight new schools called accelerated learning academies, in the selection of a new elementary reading program and in the development of a curriculum for middle-grade and high school students. Her departure comes while those initiatives, described as critical to the district's academic turnaround, remain in their infancy.
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22 Comments:
She seemed to be a very bright person with no people skills. Had she had some people skills she may have been able to succeed. Instead she alienated many many people.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006 11:35:00 AM
Inspecteur Clouseau ici: Mes amis, I was told she was a chain smoker and outside a lot smoking.
Perhaps with such a habit, she felt she had to make up for the time away from the job outside taking a smoke.
My French friends would say, "elle a fumé trop." She smoked too much. In English, others said she fumed (fume is French for smoke)too much at others. How ironic, mes amis, that in French she fumed too much and in English she fumed too much too! In other words, she smoked and was angry too often. That's a recipe for a heart attack. Someone should counsel her to chill out and join a smoke out.
Mon avis (my opinion) only.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006 11:46:00 AM
well, well, well.
She sounds like she could have replaced Williams (it is looking more and more like he knew he was in over his head and wanted out)had Slay's people won the election and she was still here.
"She had rubbed some employees the wrong way with her impatience, a quality Mr. Roosevelt said he admired. Like Mr. Roosevelt, she was a graduate of the Broad Urban Superintendents Academy, which bills itself as a training ground for innovative school administrators.
In St. Louis, where she was chief academic officer for 16 months, she won praise from the school board but irritated the teachers union for speedy implementation of improvement initiatives."
Corporate crap.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006 4:57:00 PM
Yeah she was bad don't forget she is famous for Open Court.
Thursday, October 19, 2006 5:09:00 PM
Oh, she's bright. Why else would she choose the Houston curriculum for St. Louis, when Texas was in the bottom five for matching up with the NAEP, and Missouri was in the top five? Let me think - free curriculum from MODESE, or pay a fortune to friends for the Houston curriculum, hmmm?
Thursday, October 19, 2006 6:15:00 PM
Oh yeah and the board paid to bring in her friend with a contract and fly her first class.
Thursday, October 19, 2006 9:08:00 PM
That's sort of reassuring. It proves that St. Louis does not have a corner on short-sighted, pro-status quo, anti-children educational policy.
Friday, October 20, 2006 7:33:00 PM
Hey, anon at 8:33:07, did you share in the spoils or something? Her Open Court Reading program has resulted in a drop in elementary MAP scores. I think THAT is "anti-children". For years before the Mayor's slate of four took over the school board, elementary MAP scores were improving annually. We had come within a few points of accreditation. Now, we have lost dozens of accreditation points and the upward trend in elementary MAP scores has been reversed. Reform movements are supposed to improve things, not make them severely worse.
Friday, October 20, 2006 8:29:00 PM
Lynn Spampinato and others who travel from district to district wreaking havoc, are the modern-day carpet baggers of public education. Someone in Pittsburgh is trying to save face for hiring her in the first place. She skips town just before the negative effects of her programs can truly be identified.
God I hope the momentum to dump this Open Court and Reading First crap continues to increase.
Saturday, October 21, 2006 2:05:00 PM
Jim,
Good analogy. The carpetbaggers also include Charter School companies like Edison Schools that suck money out of public education like the big cash cow that they consider it to be. One of Spampinato's pet projects was an attempt to hire Tungsten Learning. She also hired a company to build software to provide the same data that MODESE was already providing for free on their website. The Broad Foundation must exist for the sole purpose of teaching educators how to extract corporate dollars from public education funding.
Saturday, October 21, 2006 3:41:00 PM
"Charter School companies . . . that suck money out of public education like the big cash cow that they consider it to be."
How do they do that? Using the same per pupil subsidy as the SLPS gets, the charter companies have to pay local teachers, lease or buy a local building, purchase local supplies, and hire local maintenance and security people.
Where does the "out" go?
Saturday, October 21, 2006 4:01:00 PM
Do you rally think Edison does this for free? Money comes to them the same way it does to public schools: per child in attendance per day. Often, the Charters report inflated attendance to get additional money, and there is no district official to monitor their attendance figures. At SLPS, there are numerous checks in place to account for students. One Charter (now closed) routinely padded attendance numbers, and even enrollment counts by not taking students off of the rolls when they left.
Saturday, October 21, 2006 4:32:00 PM
Do you rally think Edison does this for free? Money comes to them the same way it does to public schools: per child in attendance per day. Often, the Charters report inflated attendance to get additional money, and there is no district official to monitor their attendance figures. At SLPS, there are numerous checks in place to account for students. One Charter (now closed) routinely padded attendance numbers, and even enrollment counts by not taking students off of the rolls when they left.
Saturday, October 21, 2006 4:32:00 PM
Another thing that gives Charters more money is their ability to refuse to enroll students with special needs (a big expense for public schools, who have to take everyone, and are obliged by law to provide such services as physical therapy and speech therapy). They are not even required to provide counselors, social workers, or school nurses.
Saturday, October 21, 2006 4:38:00 PM
One of the things that has always surprised me is why the city and county don't pool their resources to address the problems of students with special needs. Surely, the savings of providing highly specialized services to more students with the same severe disabilities would make such cooperation very worthwhile.
The SLPS should join the Special School District -- which already provides such services for most county school districts.
Sunday, October 22, 2006 12:22:00 PM
Would the Special School district let slps join?
Sunday, October 22, 2006 8:23:00 PM
Let? Isn't Special School District a creation of state law?
Monday, October 23, 2006 12:13:00 PM
Back to the original topic... any theories on why Lynn Spampinato has been put on leave in Pittsburgh?
Monday, October 23, 2006 6:55:00 PM
How much money do the charter schools get per student per day? year? If anyone has any reliable data, it would be appreciated.
The reason I ask is that I am looking for a reliable number to say that SLPS spends $X per non-special ed student. For the $X, how are we doing compared to other districts and their non-special ed students with the money they spend.
Friday, October 27, 2006 8:00:00 AM
Armstrong,
Special Ed. isn't a single factor. It is hard to isolate costs for certain things. If we have a dozen Psychological Examiners to do all of the mandated Special Ed. testing, is that dispersed by student, by school, or by district? Students aren't likely to be identified on a cost basis at the individual level, because the increase in services is absorbed at the building level or sometimes considered as "administrative costs" (hence the seemingly high administrator to student ratios) which are barely meeting minimal Federal requirements for satisfying the IDEA Act. That is why it is so difficult to answer your question. Also, SLPS has more free and reduced lunch price students than other districts, so even if you could selectively "bill" all of the special services by customer to determine who is using them (special ed., regular ed. alternative ed., etc.) there would be additional differences from district to district to take into account.
Friday, October 27, 2006 10:10:00 AM
Well Lynn Spampinato has just robbed the taxpayers of yet another district, namely Pittsburgh Public Schools to the tune of $213,000. How does she get away with this? The moral is... come into a new district, bring in your cronies, treat those that are hardworking and have been with the district poorly, or worse-drive them out, mislead school board members and then collect your money and leave with a bogus "consulting" agreement...
Pittsburgh Public Schools and it's board members ought to be ashamed of themselves for being duped, not asking more questions of the administration and being less than responsible when making decisions that impact thousands of children...
Thursday, November 16, 2006 9:07:00 AM
well as a pittsburgh public school resident and teacher, I was upset when she was hired to begin with. See, I googled her and read about all the damage that she did elsewhere. There are a lot of us who wondered where Roosevelt's brains were. We now have new curriculum in reading, which we didn't need, new curriuclum being written, and money spent that we can ill afford. She definitely reminds me of a carperbagger. She is crazy.... like a fox.
Monday, November 20, 2006 6:42:00 AM
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