By Travis Reems
Filed Wednesday, October 4 at 10:37 AM
The following letter from school board Vice President Bill Purdy was sent to the Post-Dispatch as a letter to the editor in response to an earlier editorial. The editors of the Post chose not to publish it.
Re: "Chaos Continues" (September 28). Let me assure your readers that any chaos exists primarily in your editorials. The St. Louis Public Schools are on a sound road to recovery after three years of plummeting performance that began in 2003. Further, the system is now firmly embarked on a plan to regain full accreditation.
My first suggestion would be for your editorial writers to take an arithmetic tutorial. Diana Bourisaw is the first superintendent hired by the current board majority, after four superintendents put in place since June 2003 by the former majority. To get to the six referred to in your editorial you have to go back to 1996 when Cleveland Hammonds, Jr. was hired and whose retirement created the 2003 opening. In just two years the old board majority first hired Bill Roberti who was neither certified nor experienced as an educator and next Floyd Crews for a few months, followed by Pamela Hughes and then Creg Williams. (Now that wasn't too difficult, was it?)
In 2003 the schools were on a steady path toward full accreditation. Since then, the path has been downhill toward total loss of accreditation. Further, there was no plan in place to regain accreditation. Missouri State Achievement scores are falling. The high school graduation rate is dropping, reaching a modern record low of 55.1 percent in June.
Let's review the facts. Six weeks ago when Dr. Diana Bourisaw was appointed Superintendent after the sudden resignation of the previous superintendent, very little had been done to prepare Missouri's largest public school system for the first day of school, August, 28. The new board majority and its new superintendent and staff had a lot of work to do that had not been started.
Many major improvements are already in place. The heavy reliance on substitute teachers has been virtually eliminated. Schools opened on time and smoothly, and student attendance rates are excellent (92% attendance rates for the first four weeks among all enrolled students.) There are more certified teachers in classrooms this school year. The central office has been streamlined with more money going into classrooms. New principals and assistant principals were hired for vacancies the previous administration failed to fill. Textbooks were ordered and delivered ensuring they were in the classroom on day one.
Parents were notified regarding where their child would be attending school and buildings were prepared for the opening of school. Our facilities required a lot of work that had not yet begun on July 17, including general maintenance and construction work on reconfigured schools. To add insults to injury, several buildings were severely damaged by the July storms.
We are pleased that our newest major corporate citizen, Macy's, chose the schools for its special week of employee service, deploying hundreds of employees to schools across the city.
Could your view of the schools be jaundiced by the fact that only one of the candidates your page endorsed for the four vacancies since 2003 was elected in fiercely competitive and highly funded elections?
William Purdy
Vice-president, St. Louis Board of Education
11 Comments:
great letter. I sent a copy to Bill McClellan, Eric Mink, Sylvester Brown, Charles Brennan, Jon Grayson, and Jim Butler of KMOX.
I will say if he should be careful about phrases like offering an arithmetic tutorial--------his "Six weeks ago when Dr. Diana Bourisaw was appointed Superintendent after the sudden resignation of the previous superintendent" seems off by a few weeks.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006 3:43:00 PM
The part in the letter about the parents being notified about their childrens school is bullhonky i was neither notified or told the correct school i had to call the unorganized bunch of monkeys at the central office several times being told at one time my child would be picked up and sent to pruitt even though he was in eighth grade, i knew only from this site that eighth grade was not offered at pruitt I told them they didn't even know!!!I was also told to refill out an application and fax it in, then they lost it!
Thursday, October 05, 2006 5:47:00 AM
Anonymous
While your experience was unfortunate it would be helpful if you reported the details of your experience to one of the board members and the superintendent so that they can correct such problems in the future. I believe that Creg Williams closed Pruitt for middle school kids and Cleveland cadets were moved into that building. Former Pruitt students were given the option to attend other magnet middle schools. Parents were notified to fill out an application to one of the other schools. Give the people downtown a little slack because the new group inherited a disaster ready to happen. After all, even the post office delivers the wrong mail on occasions and school and bus assignments are complicated.
Thursday, October 05, 2006 7:08:00 AM
With the steep drop in accrediation points in the first year after Hammonds left, doesn't it appear to anyone else that Hammonds had built a house of cards. Was his administration reporting correct information to DESE or did it orchestrate a higher accreditation score that the district could really support?
Of course, Mr. Purdy won't criticize Hammonds. Bill was still on the board when ole' Cleveland was in charge.
Thursday, October 05, 2006 12:15:00 PM
Leave the conspiracy theories to the X-File show. Offer proof that there was a house of cards and that wrong data was sent to DESE. What if the accreditation score was really higher? DESE checks the accuracy of the data and remember that the information was audited by an independent accounting firm selected by Mayor Slay. Look at the DESE web site and you will see a steady increase in accreditation points over several years until 2004 when 16 points were lost in just the first year after Hammonds and 9 more the second year. Even reading scores have dropped this past year. DESE uses the same standards for St. Louis as it does for all districts in the state. Fact is “ole” Cleveland did a good job.
Thursday, October 05, 2006 3:26:00 PM
Nobody "sends" test score data to DESE. DESE collects the completed State tests and has them scored, then informs the districts of their results. A large chunk of accreditation points are awarded based on these State test results. Other data used for accreditation points like dropout rate, graduation rate, attendance, ACT results have been reported by the same people in the same way for over a decade. The formulas DESE uses to calculate these are very specific and have to be documented (by building). To look at the categories and 2005 points earned by SLPS go to:
http://dese.mo.gov/planning/
profile/apr/2005s115115.html
Thursday, October 05, 2006 9:00:00 PM
Test scores aren't the only criteria for awarding accreditation points. What about dropout rate? I've heard Hammonds was reporting students that were gone for more than 30 days as absentees and not dropouts. They sure sound like dropouts to me.
And what about college placement? The district lost accreditation points in both areas after Hammonds left. Those two areas alone account for the loss of 16 accreditation points between 2003 and 2004. Look it up on DESE's Web site. The information is all there.
Friday, October 06, 2006 9:59:00 AM
Contrary to what you have "heard" Hammonds wasn't "reporting" anything. The dropout rate is calculated by an Analyst using DESE's formula which is based on students who have or have not re-enrolled by a certain date in the fall as supplied by each building's own data. This is rolled up to district level, but not controlled in any way by the Superintendent. Each school reports the presence or absence of a given student as enrolled/not enrolled. Hammonds did not submit any of these numbers. If any funny business occurred, it was at the building level.
Friday, October 06, 2006 7:50:00 PM
Anon #2:
During the transition period for the cadets from Cleveland to Pruitt, there was much confusion and misinformation within the previous administration about the future of Pruitt's middle school program. I have been told by a Pruitt parent that at one point parents were given the option to enroll their middle school students at Pruitt. It appears that these confusions were part and parcel of the entire mess of the last administration, which was not remotely ready to open the schools on time.
Saturday, October 07, 2006 12:47:00 AM
I was infact one of those parents who was offered that, my child enjoyed the military curriculum and wanted to further his military traing at Cleveland i was sooo excited to learn of this option and told my child, this of course was not so and we weren't told till the last minute. Sour grapes! He'll be attending Missouri Military Academy if Cleveland is still housed at Pruitt, It's too small for the cadets and was very dirty when my child was there.
Saturday, October 07, 2006 4:51:00 PM
I spoke with one of the faculty members today of Cleveland at Pruitt, who shared the students' and parents' sentiments that the Pruitt facility is too small to operate a highschool within.
Saturday, October 07, 2006 10:11:00 PM
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