The majority of the elected St. Louis School Board still clings to the notion that it is at least partly in control of the school district. Superintendent Diana Bourisaw politely disagrees. Since June 15, Bourisaw maintains that she has answered solely to the special administrative board empowered by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The school board president argues that the elected and appointed boards should share authority until a judge rules on the elected board's legal challenge to the state intervention. In the meantime, the judge has denied a temporary restraining order that would have stopped the three-member appointed board from taking control of the city schools.
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EARLIER: Almost half of the school districts in St. Louis County, Mo., have decided that they will not accept additional students from St. Louis schools after the state of Missouri intervenes in the management of the city school district. The remaining county districts are undecided on the issue; no district has agreed to take extra students from the failing St. Louis Public Schools. State intervention and the loss of accreditation for the city schools, expected to take effect June 15, would make every school-age child living in the city eligible to apply for a seat in a nearby district. But state law does not require other districts to accept those students.
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The Missouri State Board of Education has voted to take the first step to intervene in the St. Louis Public Schools, despite parents and teachers who disrupted their meeting this morning. The final step hinges now on whether the district is awarded provisional accreditation. That decision is expected as early as Feb. 28. Under the statute that allows the state to put the transitional district in place, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt and the president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen each would appoint one member to the governing board. (St.Louis Post-Dispatch)
