urbanSTL

And you'd know by January prior to school year starting, giving time to move if one must.

That is completely nuts.

roger wyoming II wrote:

Alex Ihnen wrote:^ Yep. No one in their right mind will move to the city for a 50/50 chance at a particular school. So what does one do? Rent an apartment in the city and claim residency to apply? Buy a home, rent it, and use the address? (I've contemplated all of the above, and more)

I think what Mark is showing is that there are a number of options with SLPS or charters that serve families well. Kid didn't test into Kennard? Wilkinson turned out just fine and the parents were actually glad it turned out the way it did. Didn't get into Citygarden? French Immersion was fantastic. Sure, it would be foolish to bank on any particular school, but there are more good options than many believe and parents should really explore hard... if it doesn't seem to work out for a particular situation, that's fine. But having just one school in mind is rather limiting.

That's a good point, but a language immersion school, Montessori and other schools aren't interchangeable. Kids can thrive in many environments, but many parents (including this one) desire a particular education for their children.

^ Why nuts? Again, only a small chance you wouldn't get into any selection. And moving if it doesn't work out wouldn't be any different than getting an out-of-town job offer, etc. I think everyone agrees that city schools (regardless of SLPS or charter) have a long way to go and the goal is to get a quality education for all, but what seems nuts to me is couples who decide to leave the city as soon as fetus is here w/o even taking a serious look at viable city school options. If you really love the city and enjoy living here, there is no real reason not to. Again if doesn't work out for someone, it doesn't work out. But you gotta try.

^ It's not necessarily a small chance. City Garden had twice as many applicants as spots this past year. And that doesn't account for those who already have one child in the school. It's very different than a job offer - in that case you're moving for a necessity, a job. This would be like moving someplace for a job and then not having the job. What I don't get is an allegiance to a political border. I love the city, but I equally love the home on the west side of the U-City/City line as I do the one on the east side.

^ Why nuts? Again, only a small chance you wouldn't get into any selection. And moving if it doesn't work out wouldn't be any different than getting an out-of-town job offer, etc. I think everyone agrees that city schools (regardless of SLPS or charter) have a long way to go and the goal is to get a quality education for all, but what seems nuts to me is couples who decide to leave the city as soon as fetus is here w/o even taking a serious look at viable city school options. If you really love the city and enjoy living here, there is no real reason not to. Again if doesn't work out for someone, it doesn't work out. But you gotta try.

It is nuts because if you expect someone to put in the time and effort to make the city better by investing in it, making improvements in the building stock, paying their taxes including the earnings tax, being an involved and informed citizen, etc, it is completely unreasonable to tell that person their child *might* get into a safe school in their own neighborhood. It puts the people the city should basically be bowing down to and throwing every incentive on the planet at in a high stress holding pattern. That frankly isn't good enough...not by a long shot. The city needs to get real with itself and decide what it wants to be: a high poverty shell of itself, or a first tier city with a large middle class - and if it wants the latter, it had better adopt the policies to get it there yesterday. Which means if I live in the city and pay taxes to fund the schools, then safe, reliable, no-wait-list public schools full of education-minded families are a requirement.

Let me clarify why I am doing these school profiles. I have kids at Kennard, McKinley as of next year. I am completely ignorant when it comes to the city schools, private, charter, SLPS other than Kennard:McKinley:Metro.

I sit on the sidelines and keep my mouth shut when I hear people bashing the SLPS as a whole because I don't have any ammo for a rebuttal. You start to believe it...just like the county people who bash St. Louis as a whole. When I hear people talk about moving to Maplewood or U City or anywhere else to get a safe/good school track for their family, I hope to have enough knowledge to challenge them a little. I also get a lot of correspondence from people relocating to STL through my website. I want to be more educated and actually be able to point them in the right direction when it comes to neighborhoods and schools.

You know, not all of North City is crappy, and it took visiting all areas and talking to people who live there to become educated. Sometimes in a region that has serious self-loathing issues, it's good to point out success stories and simply share positive experiences of child rearing/education in the city.

Mark Groth wrote:Let me clarify why I am doing these school profiles... Sometimes in a region that has serious self-loathing issues, it's good to point out success stories and simply share positive experiences of child rearing/education in the city.

Good stuff and a great service, Mark. My kid goes to Stix ECC; it has been a great experience and I couldn't imagine moving him out of the Tower Grove Park area, which after all is a completely awesome place for young and old alike!

^^^ Yeah, we're in U-City now, but not because of the schools. For a year+ we looked for a 4BR home in a generally safe neighborhood near a MetroLink station and preferably near either my office or my wife's. That limited our options greatly. We searched without regard to municipal lines or school districts. We couldn't get off the waitlist at City Garden. If our daughter had been accepted there, I can't imagine that we would have moved away from the school (even just the 7mi or so to U-City). But she didn't get in, so we looked for other Montessori schools. My daughter now attends A Growing Place in Clayton. The other options were in Webster, Kirkwood etc. and we didn't want to move to either place (see criteria above). From here, we'll likely move again once we make a final decision on schools post-6 years old.

Which means if I live in the city and pay taxes to fund the schools, then safe, reliable, no-wait-list public schools full of education-minded families are a requirement.

^This. If you move into Clayton, you get into Clayton High. If you move into Chesterfield, you get into Marquette. If you move into Webster, you get into Webster High. If you move into St. Louis, you automatically get into... Roosevelt? Beaumont? Sumner? Vashon?

From a realistic perspective, when someone lands an engineering job at ABInBev and is looking for a $400K house, why buy into a three-bedroom in the CWE, Shaw, or St. Louis Hills, when you could buy into Webster and get a sense of community, architecture, AND Webster High? Same for Clayton, et al.

I'm not sure that splitting SLPS into two or more districts is a solution, though; that raises the specter of segregation (by both class and race). Currently, as I've heard SLPS reps tell it at neighborhood meetings, they already operate two systems in one (magnet and standard).

From my limited perch, I can say that a lot of suburban districts essentially do this in reverse; they maintain enough seats in the "regular" schools for every kid, but they ALSO maintain separate schools for students with "difficulty" in the regular learning environment. The smaller districts contract together with these schools. For Parkway, they operate one just for their district; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern_Ridge_High_School. Almost every district generally operates a special school for troubled students via a program called Missouri Options (http://dese.mo.gov/divcareered/document ... -11-12.pdf). Why not turn the comprehensive high schools into one MO Options high school, send the miscreants there, and turn the rest of the system into regular (magnet) schools with no waiting lists?

*Edit*
And for you, Alex, University City operates their program at the "Lieberman Learning Center". http://universitycity.patch.com/article ... chievement

From my limited perch, I can say that a lot of suburban districts essentially do this in reverse; they maintain enough seats in the "regular" schools for every kid, but they ALSO maintain separate schools for students with "difficulty" in the regular learning environment. The smaller districts contract together with these schools. For Parkway, they operate one just for their district; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern_Ridge_High_School. Almost every district generally operates a special school for troubled students via a program called Missouri Options (http://dese.mo.gov/divcareered/document ... -11-12.pdf). Why not turn the comprehensive high schools into one MO Options high school, send the miscreants there, and turn the rest of the system into regular (magnet) schools with no waiting lists?

^ Exactly. SLPS is completely backward in its priorities. SLPS' top priority should be to attract tax-paying families of all races to the city via stellar schools. The way to do that is to socially segregate the kids whose parents have taught them to be delinquents from everyone else. Unless you believe all the black students in SLPS would fall under that umbrella, it would not be a race driven policy. It would be behavior and attitude driven, and a decent chunk of black students would remain in the newly functional SLPS. I have a hard time believing any education-focused black families would object. MO Options could be a great path for finally confronting this reality.

Maybe you don't spin it. Just get buy in from the black middle class, that's really all that matters IMO.

Alex Ihnen wrote:^^^ Yeah, we're in U-City now, but not because of the schools. For a year+ we looked for a 4BR home in a generally safe neighborhood near a MetroLink station and preferably near either my office or my wife's. That limited our options greatly. We searched without regard to municipal lines or school districts. We couldn't get off the waitlist at City Garden. If our daughter had been accepted there, I can't imagine that we would have moved away from the school (even just the 7mi or so to U-City). But she didn't get in, so we looked for other Montessori schools. My daughter now attends A Growing Place in Clayton. The other options were in Webster, Kirkwood etc. and we didn't want to move to either place (see criteria above). From here, we'll likely move again once we make a final decision on schools post-6 years old.

Thanks. With our situation we're quite comfortable with Stix but we'll have to keep an eye on options after 2nd grade; hopefully Humboldt will mature into a strong feeder school for the Stix/Wilkinson kids. btw, I did see one UC elementary school had strong MAP scores, but the rest of the schools were pretty weak.

The other thing I was thinking about is how the differences in overall neighborhood quality of life for families fits into decisions..... The Tower Grove neighborhoods are awesome in this respect with good walkability to family attractions, but I was thinking to myself maybe if our home was in some other city neighborhoods that may be great for young couples but not so much for kids perhaps we'd be less inclined to stay put. It is good to hear you think you likely would have stayed in FPSE if Montessori option would have worked out.

Maybe I'll start a thread on family-friendliness of City neighborhoods.... Mark, might that be something you could play around with in your profiles.... patent the Goth Index on Neighborhood Family Friendliness and charge the city for each family served.

^ Great idea. The idea of "walkability" and "family friendliness" is horribly misconstrued by measures like WalkScore. Perhaps a traffic count of strollers could be taken? A critical look is needed.

And what would the "delinquent" school be -- more a prison than a school? How would one turn his life around and get out of such a place?

No. It would be a mandatory year-round KIPP format with a much lower student:teacher ratio than the rest of the district. The main idea is to improve kids' performance by removing them as much as is legally possible from the toxic influence of their family, neighborhood, and the poverty mindset.

What is St. Louis Fresh Start Academy North and Fresh Start Academy South? Aren't they the Options schools for the SLPS system? The Missouri Options sites says these types of schools are voluntary. The goal appears to be getting high school degrees or GED for dropouts or potential dropouts.

Based on the appallingly low graduation rates and high juvenile/young adult crime rates in STL, one would think a case could be made for the city to make these types of schools mandatory for students meeting certain risk criteria, separate from the regular district, and scaled to a much larger population of students. I would imagine that in order for this to have an impact, you'd need to route a good third of the existing student body to alternative settings. Anything less radical is useless symbolism and/or giving in to an obsolete race driven way of "thinking."

[quote="roger wyoming II"...patent the Goth Index on Neighborhood Family Friendliness and charge the city for each family served.[/quote]

Hilarious typo

Alex Ihnen wrote:^ Great idea. The idea of "walkability" and "family friendliness" is horribly misconstrued by measures like WalkScore. Perhaps a traffic count of strollers could be taken? A critical look is needed.

Yeah, some good thought would have to be given to the essential factors to consider... in addition to the presence of good school options, I think other things to consider would be typical housing stock w/ at least some backyard space, proximity to quality green space/parks, walkability/bikeability to kid-friendly attractions (ice cream shops, family restaurants, etc.)

Comparing Shaw to Tower Grove Hts./TG South, for example, I'd think Shaw rates higher on schools but the TGs higher on attractions.

^ oops, sorry for the typo!

Kennard Classical Junior Academy is yet another viable school option in St. Louis.
http://www.stlouiscitytalk.com/2013/04/ ... ademy.html