State intervention urged by St. Louis school board president

~ However, the top school district official, Veronica O'Brien, did not call for a full state takeover of the district.

ST. LOUIS -- The president of the St. Louis School Board is asking the state to intervene to save the long-troubled district.

Board president Veronica O'Brien on Monday recommended a temporary suspension of the superintendent's office as part of an effort to save a district she described as "probably at [its] worst." She expressed her displeasure with superintendent Diana Bourisaw, whom O'Brien personally chose for the job in July after Creg Williams was forced out a little more than a year after he was hired.

O'Brien spoke before the State Advisory Committee at Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis. She did not call for a full state takeover of the district, which has struggled financially and with poor academic performance, and has seen much turmoil on the school board and turnover in superintendents.

"The state needs to intervene in some way," O'Brien said. "This is a district that needs help and at the rate we're going, we're not going to get any better."

The committee will deliver a report on the district next month to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Several options are under consideration, ranging from a full state takeover to a temporary district that would oversee the schools.

O'Brien declined to say which alternative she preferred.

Bourisaw in the sixth superintendent since early 2002. O'Brien said she was not pleased with a report the superintendent delivered last week to the State Board of Education. She told the advisory committee that she was particularly concerned about Bourisaw's contention that St. Louis was narrowing the minority achievement gap.

She told the committee that it was unclear whether English as Second Language students -- including Latinos and the children of Eastern European immigrants -- were lumped in with white students when the administration composed the achievement gap data.

Inclusion of English as Second Language students would lower the average test scores of white students, O'Brien said, giving the illusion that the learning gap between whites and blacks was closing.

District spokesman Tony Sanders said there was no connection between English as Second Language and the achievement gap. All of the information supplied to the state came from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

O'Brien was also critical of Bourisaw for de-emphasizing the dropout rate.

"At this rate we're going to have around 4,000 dropouts very soon, and that is a very, very serious issue. We must do everything we can to stop the dropout rate or we're not going anywhere," she said.

Bourisaw said, "We need to fix the parts that are broken, align the teaching and curriculum with professional development and continue to put quality teaching and learning in place."

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, www.stltoday.com.