Governor, school leader discuss the future of schools in St. Louis

ST. LOUIS -- Gov. Matt Blunt said Wednesday he doesn't think anyone is satisfied with the existing state of St. Louis schools, but pointed to modest improvements in standardized test scores as one step in the right direction.

Blunt and his representative to the St. Louis Transitional School Board, Rick Sullivan, held a news conference to provide an update on efforts to turn around the long-troubled district. The district is the largest in Missouri and under state supervision due to academic and financial problems.

"I don't think anybody is satisfied with the current state of the St. Louis schools," Blunt said.

Both men said the district has some excellent schools and successful programs and will work harder to replicate those elsewhere in the district.

While an interim superintendent is in place, a search continues for a permanent one. Some other top administrative positions are also unfilled.

Sullivan said the hope is to announce the new superintendent at the end of September. He said 34 qualified candidates applied. Many know of the "turmoil and turnover" that urban districts may experience, but candidates expressed satisfaction in the transitional board being in place, he said.

"They see the start of stability here," he said.

Blunt and Sullivan pointed to slight standardized test gains in English and math as a bright spot for the city schools.

"They had nothing to do with that," William Purdy, a member of the now-disbanded elected school board said in a telephone interview. Another elected school board member, Peter Downs, agreed, saying students who earned those Missouri Assessment Program scores had done so under policies and curriculum approved by the previous board and superintendent.

The three-member, transitional school board including Sullivan was appointed last year. The district will be under state supervision into 2011.

The elected school board no longer has say over the district, long plagued with problems including budgetary issues and low graduation rates and college placement.

Improvement needed

Both the governor and Sullivan outlined areas that need improvement. For one, about 21,000 students showed up for class Monday, though about 28,000 were expected. Blunt also said there will be more focus on providing nutritious lunches.

Following the news conference, the district issued a statement saying four children encountered "bone-like chips" in their cheeseburgers Wednesday, and the cheeseburgers were removed from school cafeterias as a precaution.

St. Louis district spokesman Patrick Wallace said Blunt and Sullivan would not have been aware of the cheeseburger concern at the news conference. Wallace noted he first learned of it while they were already speaking.

The district also had a problem where hundreds of families weren't notified about updated bus stops for the first day of school.

"The bus schedules this year, I bet they didn't talk about that, did they?" Purdy said.

Wallace said about 400 families didn't receive notices from the district about this year's bus stops, a development that stranded some students Monday morning. He said the district is investigating to see how the glitch, believed to be either a data entry or computer problem, happened and to correct it.

However, the officials reported success with a new program encouraging fathers to bring their children to school, saying many dads did. Sullivan said the hope is to make that a more common event, where dads may be asked to accompany their children on the first day of every month.