The often troubled St. Louis Public School District entered a new cycle of tumult late last month after school board members voted unanimously to oust Superintendent Keisha Scarlett and replace her with an interim leader. But the uncertainty about the future of public education in the city extends far beyond the question of who will ultimately take over.
The direction of the 18,000-student St. Louis Public Schools will be determined as leaders await the outcome of an audit by the state of Missouri. The district’s chief financial officer recently announced that her office has turned over most of the financial and administrative records requested by state officials, including receipts and contracts dating back “years.” Meanwhile, Scarlett has said she will appeal against her dismissal under the terms of her contract.
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The state of the district has raised concerns among city leaders in recent months, with Mayor Tishaura Jones calling the disarray at the start of the school year “unacceptable.” In a statement shared with The 74, a group of four former school board members, including two former chairmen, called on the current board to regain the faith of community members.
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“The current state of affairs at SLPS cannot continue,” the statement read. “The lack of transparency surrounding the leadership change and the new school year has eroded stakeholder trust and damaged the district’s reputation. The public deserves and is legally entitled to clear, honest information about the Superintendent’s investigation and transportation issues, as well as general back-to-school topics such as academics, finances, administrative vacancies, enrollment and attendance.”
The responsibility for addressing these issues will now fall to Interim Superintendent Millicent Borishade, who originally brought Scarlett to St. Louis to serve as superintendent of schools. Borishade is one of a handful of high-ranking administrators — most of whom were subsequently fired — who previously knew or worked with Scarlett when she served in a leadership role at Seattle Public Schools.
But Borishade will first have to obtain credentials to take up the job. In a press release announcing her appointment, the district noted that the interim principal had filed paperwork to obtain certification as a Missouri superintendent, and that her commitment to the role would depend on whether she received one . After initially stating that she held such certificates in both Illinois and Washington state, the district’s press office later clarified that Borishade had only held them in the past.
The school board’s vote, held during a special session, terminated Scarlettt’s contract just a year after she took the job. Although her arrival raised high hopes for an academic turnaround in one of America’s lowest-performing school systems, Scarlett was criticized for her hiring and spending practices, which subsequently led not only to the state-led audit but also to an internal investigation. .
Byron Clemens, a spokesman for the St. Louis branch of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote in an email that Scarlett was entitled to due process and that the district should continue its improvement efforts, including an expansion of public kindergarten and recruiting children. more teachers.
“We don’t have the luxury of clutching our pearls and getting lost in fear,” Clemens said. “We are here for the children of St. Louis every day – we got through the pandemic, and we will get through this.”
The hurried transition of leadership is just one of a growing set of challenges facing St. Louis Public Schools as the 2024-2025 academic year begins. When a major bus company unexpectedly canceled its contract with the district, officials had to create a patchwork transportation plan in August, involving more than a dozen suppliers, to fill the void. In total, more than a thousand families had no reliable way to send their children to school, and some were given a gas card to cover driving costs.
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Short-term finances have also been called into question. After starting last year with a $17 million surplus, the district now projects it will have a $35 million deficit by 2024-2025 – although these figures are still only estimates and mechanisms to increase revenue are being considered .
Even these setbacks are just the latest to plague St. Louis Public Schools, which have lost the vast majority of enrollment over the past half-century as families fled to charter schools, private alternatives or nearby suburban districts. Local education observers have increasingly pointed to the need to close under-enrollment facilities, both to reduce costs and to tailor a system that enrolls only about a sixth of students as was the case in the 1960s.
Even in the midst of a pandemic that has caused significant harm to children across the country, St. Louis was hit particularly hard, with testing data indicating that COVID cost the average student the equivalent of 0.8 years of reading instruction and more than double that in math. An analysis conducted by The 74’s Chad Aldeman found that only about one in five St. Louis third-graders read at grade level, far fewer than the city’s underlying poverty rates would predict.
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Krystal Barnett, a mother and CEO of the advocacy group Bridge 2 Hope, has criticized the district since this summer for not communicating with parents about transportation issues and has called on school board members to resign over what she called failed leadership. In an email to The 74, she said she wanted to know more about the grounds for Scarlett’s appeal.
“We need leaders in our schools who will hold themselves to a standard and not compromise,” she wrote.
Current school board vice president Matt Davis declined to comment on the vote to fire Scarlett.
