urbanSTL

Mark Groth wrote:Good news if you like the Ittner designed schools: $6M renovation of the former Wyman school (1900) to house the Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience. The former building on Des Peres is a plain jane.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/educ ... 6026f.html

Great spot - right in the heart of the SLU med campus.

Interesting note on McKinley - the McKinley principal was supposed to attend the Mallinckrodt PTO meeting earlier this week (Mallinckrodt will start feeding students into McKinley in two years), but cancelled without explanation the day of the meeting and instead SLPS sent someone who had only worked for the district and at McKinley for 3 weeks (some "communications" person who very nice, but also seemed like the type of mid-level ineffectual administrator that school districts are often criticized for wasting their money on). I also learned that even though the magnet school guidebook published by SLPS has referred to McKinley High as a school for gifted kids for several years, the district does not actually consider it a school for gifted kids (McKinley Middle School, housed in the same building, however is considered a school for gifted kids).

Another interesting note - McKinley Middle School currently has about 115 kids per grade (75 from Kennard, a gifted elementary, and 40 from elsewhere). In two years, Mallinckrodt will start sending 50 kids per year there. It is unclear if the building can continue to accomodate both a middle school and high school if the middle school's enrollment increases by 50 kids per grade.

Probably the fact that we have some of the blackest possible school districts in the country.

south compton wrote:http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... 8eb18.html

Why would suspension rates for elementary schools be so much higher in Missouri compared to the rest of the country? These numbers are crazy.

Those really are crazy numbers; so much higher than the national average for blacks. Perhaps we have greater "zero tolerance" -- the worst invention ever, imho -- for black youth than white kids. It would be interesting to see how SLPS rates compare to say Chicago or Cleveland public schools.

Also, here is a story on how Pittsburgh is addressing the issue:

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/educat ... 1502230005

i literally live a stones throw away from buder... in fact i take my dog to their fenced backyard and let him run around.

Great podcast on sending kids to "bad" city schools. This parent in Springfield, MA was told by a teacher that his daughters will become crack whores if he continues sending them to the city schools.

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015 ... an-schools

Calling the St. Louis Engineering Community:
You are challenged to join Civil Design Inc. and MoDOT in a
STEM School Supply Drive for Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls!
Thursday, August 13th
5:00pm – 7:00pm
Urban Chestnut Brewery Company
(The Grove Location, 4465 Manchester Ave. St. Louis, MO 63110)
Please bring all supplies and funds raised with you on the 13th!
Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls Mission:
The Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls provides a safe, nurturing and stimulating environment that engages young
women from diverse backgrounds to achieve academic success in a college preparatory program and to become
leaders in their communities and professions.
http://www.hawthornschool.org/
School Supplies:
• Composition notebooks with graph paper
• Wireless composition notebooks
• Pencils
• Highlighters
• Pocket folders
• 1” Binders
Science Lap Supplies:
• Calculators
• Meter Sticks
• Safety Googles
• Lab aprons
Cash donations will be given to support Science Lab

For the first time in more than a decade, St. Louis Public Schools has scored in the "fully accredited range" in the state's Annual Performance Report. Still plenty of struggling schools but this is definitely a positive sign.

The St. Louis school system hasn’t fallen under the transfer law, and its jump from 43 percent to 76 percent on the 2015 report card indicates it likely won’t anytime soon. The district showed significant improvement in English, math and social studies categories, as well as its graduation rate. Forty-five city schools saw gains. In 32 of them, they were double-digit gains.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/educ ... Ww.twitter

Positive sign. Though I'm generally skeptical of the scores because of how large some of the lower districts numbers jumped and with the change in tests and that stuff. Does anyone think its possible for SLPS to jump 50% in two years? I really don't but Missouri cant figure out how to consistently test kids so there's no way to tell. I do think Adams is a great superintendent and that we are definitely on the right path

^I've got two kids in a magnet school elementary. It's a great fit for my kids (particularly my older kid who would be completely bored by a standard curriculum). However, there is a level of guilt shared by many of the parents that their satisfaction with the magnet school comes at the expense of the neighborhood schools. My kids' school has an active and well-funded PTO and parents who simply won't accept a mediocre or bad school. Some of the neighborhood schools don't even have PTOs.

Another downside of the magnet schools is the transportation issues. The logistics of getting kids from one part of the City to dozens of magnet schools in other parts of the city is an inefficient and costly process (I've heard so many stories of buses with one or two kids on them that I wonder if it would be cheaper to just send the kids home on Uber).

Magnet schools likely keep kids in SLPS that otherwise wouldn't be. Unfortunately, if all those kids just went to the regular SLPS schools, there'd be much less need to have magnets and the whole district would be healthier.

I'm not judging. At least you're staying in SLPS. That's the one thing I'll commit to doing when I some day become a parent.

I think I'd like to try to keep my kids in neighborhood schools, but it may already be silly enough committing to how I'll raise them before I have them. Not going to take it that far.

Perhaps by the time I have kids and they are of school age, it won't be quite as difficult of a decision. I think magnet schools are a good intermediate step, but I hope they're not one that become permanently relied on to keep dedicated families with resources in SLPS.

^Hell, I'd love to send my kids to a high-quality neighborhood school too. I also realize how difficult it will be to get good neighborhood schools when magnet (and private and, to some extent, charter) schools suck up a lot of the good/stable families that you need to make a successful school. There's simply no denying that. I think it's almost impossible to have the level of school choice that City residents enjoy and still have high quality neighborhood schools. Even the neighborhood schools in the most stable south city neighborhoods are not places most middle class parents are choosing to send their kids.

I'm happy to see articles stating that the neighborhood schools are getting better, but realistically, better does not equal good and good is a long way away.

Right. It's not the building or the teachers that are primarily responsible for how good a school is. It's the kids and more accurately, their parents.

Now, of course the teachers and resources matter. And if you're considered bad and don't pay well, you're not going to attract the best teachers. But there are a lot of good teachers at "bad" schools, and it's simply because they're teaching kids with parents who can't afford to or don't care to be involved in their education.

My arrogant and maybe ignorant belief is that I'm going to be a damn good parent, so I'm going to send my kids to neighborhood SLPS schools and they're going to do just fine because I won't allow anything less. We'll see how well I can hold to that when I'm actually put in that situation.

But I wasn't lying. I'm not judging you one iota, SC. I'm happy you kept your kids in SLPS, period. And you doing that is going to make the situation better for me and my kids when that's a reality for me. You're part of the solution, not the problem.

I just hope we gradually become less dependent on the magnet schools, not more dependent.

roger wyoming II wrote:(btw, is there a good thread somewhere to discuss City politics in general, such as ballot initiatives and BoA proceedings?)

If there isn't, we should start one.