urbanSTL

I’ve never seen a better argument, including non-education departments, for state intervention. SLPS has tremendously failed the City of St. Louis and it’s noteworthy just how quickly it hit the fan.

Transportation alone is reason enough for hundreds of families to flee to the suburbs. I know I’d be considering it if I had students who needed it.

As a parent with children in SLPS, I'm so angry. 

This is such an epic failure, and I'd really like to know how far up the chain the ineptitude goes. 

Who is responsible for hiring this grifter? They should lose their job(s). 

My wife started driving my daughter and son to and from school after it became apparent that the SLPS busing solutions were not going to work in any kind of way. 

We just bought a house in the city, so we're not leaving, but I do agree that this is going to impact the city in a very negative way if actual solutions aren't found quickly. 

We send our kids to the local parish school. Yes, paying tuition sucks, but you're not just paying for education, you're buying into an amazing place-based community that spans multiple generations and basically constitutes an idyllic small town in the middle of the big bad City. To us it's worth every penny. There are also several forms of financial support available that make it affordable, so its a very economically diverse parish/school, and they don't beat you over the head with the Catholicism either.

To be clear, I support public schools as an absolute necessity for a civilized society and will gladly vote for a tax increase specific to that purpose, but not until/unless the SLPS leadership and governance structure is completely razed and rebuilt.

My children have actually had a wonderful time in their SLPS school. The teachers have been great. 

I just find it unforgiveable that district leadership would blunder the hire this badly. Those that made the hire need to pack up their offices and GTFO. 

SB in BH wrote: ↑

Jul 29, 2024

We send our kids to the local parish school. Yes, paying tuition sucks, but you're not just paying for education, you're buying into an amazing place-based community that spans multiple generations and basically constitutes an idyllic small town in the middle of the big bad City. To us it's worth every penny. There are also several forms of financial support available that make it affordable, so its a very economically diverse parish/school, and they don't beat you over the head with the Catholicism either.

To be clear, I support public schools as an absolute necessity for a civilized society and will gladly vote for a tax increase specific to that purpose, but not until/unless the SLPS leadership and governance structure is completely razed and rebuilt.

Agree with all of that.  
We're in the same boat. 

Catholic / private - is very expensive once the kids move from grade school.  Completely understand why some don't want to or cannot pay HS tuition.

SLPS.

4000 teachers and admin staff
15000 students

19,200 students this year 

. . . and still no real plan to get them to school.

https://www.slps.org/Page/76122

19,600 students
3,600 are homeless
1,176 gifted

Can you shed any light on what their definition of homelessness is? That number seems unbelievable.

legendrey wrote: ↑

Aug 19, 2024

Can you shed any light on what their definition of homelessness is? That number seems unbelievable.

They the basically do not sleep at night at a home with their parents.  they sleep at homes of relatives. 

"Who is Homeless?"
https://www.slps.org/Page/987
According to SLPS, it's ultimately dictated by the federal McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

• Sharing the housing of others (known as "doubling-up") due to loss of housing or economic hardship

I think 99% fall into this category

Metro says under half of the 1,600 high school students that qualified for a free transit pass have taken them up on it and only an estimated 200 have taken MetroBus to school. Metro says that they've added an additional bus on the 95 Kingshighway and have Metro ambassadors and security present during the school rushes. Parents say that they're "uncomfortable" with the bus as a reason why they generally haven't utilized it.

Any thoughts?

St. Louis Public Schools transportation still hit or miss (stltoday.com)

Auggie wrote: ↑

Aug 22, 2024

Metro says over half of the 1,600 high school students that qualified for a free transit pass have taken them up on it and only an estimated 200 have taken MetroBus to school. Metro says that they've added an additional bus on the 95 Kingshighway and have Metro ambassadors and security present during the school rushes. Parents say that they're "uncomfortable" with the bus as a reason why they generally haven't utilized it.

Any thoughts?

St. Louis Public Schools transportation still hit or miss (stltoday.com)

Perception is reality. We need to change the narrative and rhetoric that goes against metro buses. I utilize metro buses more than metrolink and walking. I have never experienced smoking, loud music, yelling or any other nuisance on metro buses. 

Likewise, I ride MetroBus with some regularity and I have never experienced any significant nuisance. 

It may depend on time, date, and route.  Normally everything seems fine, but late evening on a quiet weekend I've seen some things on the no. 70. Some loudly high folks, mostly. But as a result I struggle to get my wife back on board the most frequent bus in town.

St. Louis Public Schools sees large attendance boost (stltoday.com)

SLPS enrollment up by 1,147 over last year (5.9%).

where my bus at??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYKRz7sHZ1w&t=9s

what did you just watch?
https://blavity.com/louisville-students-bus-cuts-song

I already know all this but let me share this. I JUST witnessed a fleet of Ground Transportation vans/SUVs drop by an elementary school and take the children home, one kid at a time. The same Ground Transportation you see at airports. Would I rather see this happen than a kid wandering around with no way home? Of course. But how did we get to this? It was bad a enough when five or six actual full size school buses would come by and leave with two kids on it.

Meanwhile, I see SLPS hiring experts from Houston or Seattle at ridiculous salaries and then they end up resigning two months later in some sort of scandal (I can't keep up with scandals). What is this? The whole thing is being propped up unnaturally as if to say "See, everything is working out just fine with our city public schools" when in reality it's a complete disaster. Who knows what's happening inside in the classrooms. Ugh.

I went to diverse public schools (if that's important to you) all my life, either walk or take a full bus where sometimes you have to stand up and at least it resembled something vaguely normal in retrospect.

I mean, schools built for 300 students with an enrollment of about 50 and about 30 show up everyday? Getting ushered around in private vans? What is this? Scrap the system and start over. Completely scrap SLPS.

TheWayoftheArch_V2.0 wrote: ↑

Oct 25, 2024

Okay, not going to burn it down.  We got burnt by an out of town grifter.  The BUS COMPANY terminated the contract over a year early after losing a substantial amount of their workforce after a noose showed up on someone's desk.  Take a deeeep breath.  

Your numbers are not accurate.  Everyone please calm down and leave the dark corners of the internet, or at least stop relying on easy answers from generative AI. 

Who vetted the "out of town grifter"? How could something so important be so completely flubbed? An "out of town grifter"?!?! An out of town grifter requires an in town grifter. The corruption is obvious. Just scrap the whole thing.

The crew on Donnybrook has been discussing the SLPS fiasco(s) for weeks now. The absurdity of it all leaves them speechless, throwing their hands in the air, wondering how it got this bad. Seems to be a new revelation every week. The general consensus is to clean house and start over (easier said than done, of course).

leeharveyawesome wrote: ↑

Oct 25, 2024

TheWayoftheArch_V2.0 wrote: ↑

Oct 25, 2024

Okay, not going to burn it down.  We got burnt by an out of town grifter.  The BUS COMPANY terminated the contract over a year early after losing a substantial amount of their workforce after a noose showed up on someone's desk.  Take a deeeep breath.  

Your numbers are not accurate.  Everyone please calm down and leave the dark corners of the internet, or at least stop relying on easy answers from generative AI. 

Who vetted the "out of town grifter"? How could something so important be so completely flubbed? An "out of town grifter"?!?! An out of town grifter requires an in town grifter. The corruption is obvious. Just scrap the whole thing.

Yeah, its definitely deeper than just one person/episode. We're not talking about a single, silver-bullet development project, we're talking about a sprawling school district in the middle of a (formerly) major metro.