ST. LOUIS RELIGIOUS LEADERS ANNOUNCE MAGNET SCHOOLS

Here are excerpts from a statement scheduled to be delivered this afternoon in St. Louis by Tim Daniels, director of the soon-to-open St. Louis Academies. I have been working since last winter with a group of African American church leaders and activists, of which Daniels is a leader, who plan to open eight new charter schools.

A wider array of choices in schooling is coming to St. Louis this fall.

Over the last year, leaders of the Church of God in Christ have been working to open up to eight charter schools in St. Louis. We developed a sound plan to accomplish this. All our work to get charters up and running has come to naught, as each and every one of the potential charter-granting institutions has slammed its doors in our faces. Our days of going around begging the established authorities are at an end.

We are here today to announce positive action for St. Louis schoolchildren. Our church, and our increasingly broad-based, grass-roots movement, will endeavor to open up to six separate, community-based schools right here in the city in September.

Our academies will be offering educational choices to area residents, focusing on magnet programs. These will include vocational-entrepreneurial magnet, science-mathematics-technology magnet and an honors program-college preparatory magnet. Each of these schools will be K-8 the first year, adding 9-12 later, as soon as practicable.

Our plan is to have each of these schools operating under distinct, local, community-based governing entities and to involve parents, residents and neighbors in partnership in governing these academies.

We aren't here to be "in-your-face," nor to be unnecessarily divisive. We want to leave behind us the divisive "turf wars" over funding and control issues within the school district.

We do, however, believe that the time for talk has passed, and that the time for action has arrived. Further, we have no hesitation in saying the following: We challenge the St. Louis School District and all its leaders to radically reform their practices. We further challenge them, finally, to respond to the decades-long yearning for a more effective and responsive administration and governance model.

We of the St. Louis Academies are swiftly moving forward on renovation of five separate school sites, of which this is one. We will be enrolling students beginning immediately through Sept. 30, or until capacity is reached. Further, we are currently working to finalize financing for an additional site to open this winter, which will bring the total number of students we have the capacity to serve in the 2001-02 school year to approximately 3,000. All these students will enjoy the opportunity to participate in before- and after-school programs that receive some federal funding, with the schools open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

We have had the good fortune to recruit a well-known education leader, Dr. Diana Bourisaw, as assistant director of the St. Louis Academies. Bourisaw, a former public school superintendent, enjoys an excellent reputation as a result of her impressive career in education. Recently, to her credit, Gov. Bob Holden appointed her to the prestigious state Coordinating Board for Higher Education.

We look forward to this exciting adventure in educational innovation for the children of St. Louis. Please join hands with us in this revolutionary effort.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.