urbanSTL

I wanted to chime in and share a couple of observations...

After missing out on Kennard for pre-school, my son ended up going to St. Margaret of Scotland, and we couldn't have been more pleased. We are not religious and it spurred interesting questions from my son and funny moments along the way, but we never felt uncomfortable. We were quoted a stat that about 60% of students at the school are Catholic. We were pleased to the point of almost not reapplying to Kennard, but we did with the understanding that we were not going to take extraordinary measures to get him in.

Good news is he got in through the lottery, and the financial considerations made it a no brainer to make the change. Then I had an interesting conversation with a neighbor. She is a gifted resources teacher in the Ladue District, and I mentioned we had considered moving into my grandfather's old house in the district. And she said "oh no, you don't want to do that, Kennard will provide your son with much better education than you would get at a Ladue elementary." So that made me feel happy with our choice.

onecity wrote: Uninvested taxpayers (e.g. not using the schools) are just as much at fault for ruining the school system as trashy "parents."

What? I'm a city homeowner and childfree by choice. Therefore, I'm paying taxes and not using the schools. Please explain to me how I'm ruining the public school system. I'm terribly curious.

newstl2020 wrote:Exactly. Someone has to start the process. Not saying I would necessarily, but for those saying this is the fix (which I agree with), there has to be a starting point.

Maybe there would be a way to do it on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis? Get meetings going with the intent to "inject" a larger amount of middle-class students into a specific school at the same time to "soften the blow" so to speak?

No easy fix. That is the crux of the issue. It doesn't help when the local politicians do not utilize the system at all. Removes a lot of their incentive to actually address the issues surrounding the school system.

I understand where you're coming from and agree that any chance of creating a successful school involves a critical mass of solid, invested families...but the pessimist in me just sees people shouting segregation, gentrification and racism when you go try to tell the current families using the school that the school will only get better when there are "better" people using the school.

The city just lost another family because of schooling.
I wonder how many times per year I hear about this from people I know.

Newsweek just released their ranking of the "top 20 public high schools in the midwest."

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/morn ... dwest.html

Metro Academic and Classical High School (of the SLPS system) ranked #12 and Clayton ranked #13.

What if you could set up a school system with a type of partnership between the city and the community?

So say the city sets a baseline of how much it gives to each to school. This would cover the minimal/basic cost for education. Covers teacher salaries, books, whatever the school is legally required to pay for. Then its up to those schools and the families that attend there to add tuition on top of that for the amenities, better teachers, better curriculum, extracurricular activities, and so on that they want.

Or if its in a poorer community, they go out and get charity donations, do fund raisers and the like. I guess similar to charter schools.

So people kind of take ownership of where their kids attend.

I honestly have no clue how the system currently works, and I'm a ways off from having children myself to worry about. And having gone to private school, I'm pretty ignorant to the current SLPS system. There may already be something like this.

Anybody think this is a terrible idea? I think it could help get more quality education.

^^It's not a terrible idea at all, but runs pretty counter to the definition and idea of a public school, at least in my mind.

"As to how nonuser taxpayers are just as at fault for ruining the schools, it's pretty straightforward - if you don't have/had/won't have skin in the game so to speak - no kids attending/attended/will attend the public schools, you aren't going to PTO meetings, you aren't engaged with and invested in what is happening in the schools, all your tax money does is perpetuate a dysfunctional status quo."

I think you need to clarify that you are speaking about tax-payers who have kids but are choosing not to utilize (or are flat out avoiding) the public school system.

I am assuming that you do not expect a city resident with no children to attend PTO meetings. (Regarding Erina's post on the last page.)

onecity wrote: As to how nonuser taxpayers are just as at fault for ruining the schools, it's pretty straightforward - if you don't have/had/won't have skin in the game so to speak - no kids attending/attended/will attend the public schools, you aren't going to PTO meetings, you aren't engaged with and invested in what is happening in the schools, all your tax money does is perpetuate a dysfunctional status quo.

It's not like I can reasonably opt out of paying property tax or somehow designate that it gets spent on something other than public schools.

the kind of free basic education that is a public right.

Is education a public right? I don't really think it is. But that's not the point of this discussion. So moving on...

The public schools in the county are better because they are in communities of higher income. They get more revenue from their tax base. They can pay better teachers and afford all the other things that go along with good education. They also don't have their tax revenues stuck in pensions (at least not to the extent of cops and firemen in the city).

The city doesn't have that luxury. I don't know for sure, but I would think that the city has a lower average salary. They get less from their tax base. So starting with a base amount of money for city citizens reflects that lower income level. If those with higher income in the city want to supplement their child's education, they can pay more. And whatever that

more

is, may be the equivalent of what they would pay in the county for public schools. Don't know for sure, but I think it could work

pat wrote: Or if its in a poorer community, they go out and get charity donations, do fund raisers and the like. I guess similar to charter schools.
Anybody think this is a terrible idea? I think it could help get more quality education.

And what happens when they are in a poorer community and

1. Don't have the skillset, time, or resources to get charity donations or do fund raisers
or
2. DGAF about the schools

onecity wrote:I was primarily referring to people with kids, BTW, erina. That didn't communicate.

But as to the role of folks like yourself, I think there is not a single issue with greater impact on the future viability of the city than the state of public education. It is intrinsically tied to the crime rate, level of funding for infrastructure through tax base, ability of the city to attract skilled professionals and their families, attractiveness of the city as a place for 21st and 22nd century businesses to invest in and potentially relocate to, and a whole slate of other things. Every person in the city should be involved in this one, even if they don't have kids, because it's impact on the city and the region as a whole would be so profound.

Very good points.

Nice JA quote as well BTW.

erina wrote:

And what happens when they are in a poorer community and

1. Don't have the skillset, time, or resources to get charity donations or do fund raisers
or
2. DGAF about the schools

Then tough s**t.

You get basic education (which if done right, should be enough).

Wow, there you go.

I thought that might get a reaction.

My point really is that government can only provide so much. At some point the government has to draw a line and say that's all we can do. They have only a limited pool of resources, and those have to be distributed elsewhere.

A major part of education is parenting, and the government (or city in this case) can't play that role.

Alex Ihnen wrote:"the fact that so many St. Louisans wouldn't use the public schools even if they were the best in the world"

That's not a fact.

Not a fact, but you might be surprised at just how prevalent private schools are in the STL area. I live in one of the top school districts in the area, and the majority of my neighbors send their kids to the nearby Catholic school. I'd say the overwhelming majority of the people I went to grade school, high school and college with live in top performing school districts yet still send their kids to private schools.