Funmurphys: the Blog

St. Louis Public Schools: Better Than The WWF?

Archpundit at Blog St. Louis has the continuing controversies in the St. Louis Public School system covered like a blanket. The short version is that a majority of the board became tired of ongoing failure of the SLPS to educate the children of St. Louis and decided to hire a business turn-around firm instead of extending the contract of Cleveland Hammonds as superintendent. This was a pretty radical move, but they felt justified by the slow at best progress under traditional superintendents. Personally, I find the logic impeccable from the standpoint that (as related to me by Edgar Denison, who was a hatchet man at Union Electric as well as famed amateur botanist) nobody likes a hatchet man, and the company wants to get rid of you as soon as you've finished chopping. Consequently, no superintendent who wants to stay with the school district would attempt the required reforms - closing schools, laying off employees, outsourcing non-core functions, and in general treating the SLPS as something other than a jobs program.

Attention has turned from the "secrecy" of the initial hiring of the firm and its planning leading up to the first day of school to the (failed) boycott called for by some members of the community to the ongoing insane (and I use that term in what I believe is a clinical sense) behavior of some members of the school board. If you have a strong stomach and a morbid curiosity, you'll be thrilled by the complete accounting at Blog St. Louis. And don't forget to read the comments for my own penetrating insights into the complex situation.