School cuts target the vulnerable - SAB meeting Thursday, 6 pm

Consider the planned staff reductions: Last year there were 30 school
psychologists, according to the psychologists themselves; now the SAB is
going to cut that number to eight. With 30 psychologists, each one served an
average of three schools each. With eight psychologists, they will serve an
average of 11 schools each ­ less than half a day a week per school. Even
without knowing what they do, that would seem to be an unrealistic workload.

When you stop to consider what the psychologists do, however, you can
appreciate that this is an underhanded way to deny children special
education services. When a teacher or a parent wants a child considered for
special education services, the psychologists are part of the school-based
team that decides whether or not to actually refer the child for evaluation
for special education services. If a child is referred for evaluations, a
psychologist is part of the team that evaluates the child to determine what
disability or disabilities s/he has and what services the school will
provide to accommodate or remediate the disability. Psychologists also are
part of the teams that evaluate children, mostly in middle school or high
school, to determine if they should stay in special education or if they
have learned methods of coping with their disabilities that enable them to
perform without special accommodation.

In both the cases of evaluating students who have been referred for special
education and re-evaluating students who have been in special education
there are legal deadlines that the school district has to meet to stay in
compliance with federal laws.

With these drastic cuts in the number of psychologists the district will end
up either violating special education laws (³fall out of compliance with
regulations²), or severely curtail referrals to special education (if the
psychologist can¹t make a meeting at a school for three months, there¹s a
three month delay in referring that child). In either case, the result is to
deny appropriate services to children who need them.

The budget also calls for cutting half of the social workers, leaving only
11 social workers for 27,000 children ­ 24,000 of whom live in poverty,
5,000 of whom are homeless. A former parole officer told me that with
caseloads that large, the social workers ³will not be able to do anything.

The SAB also announced it is going to cut up to 39 counselors. Counselors in
St. Louis Public Schools don¹t just do academic counseling ­ telling
students what classes they need to graduate ­ they also take the lead in
grief counseling. We had several instances last year where a student was
killed. Near the end of the year, there was a student run over by a van
while taking his younger sister home from day care. There were students who
were killed by drive-by shootings near their homes. We recently gave a
security officer an award for saving the life of a student, who was shot in
the neck when he was on a street near a school. We had way too many such
incidents, but in every case the district mobilized counselors to go into
the school the student had attended and help surviving students cope with
the tragedy. That service will fall victim to these cuts.

If a student is messing up in school because of family trouble ­ divorce,
abuse, whatever ­ counselors take the lead in trying to help the student.

There was a study that came out recently that concluded that children
growing up in many urban neighborhoods are like children growing up in a war
zone and suffer similar rates of post-traumatic stress syndrome, which, yes,
interferes with their ability to learn. How can we expect children surmount
these hurdles when we are cutting to the bone, or even cutting the bone, of
the programs that will help them?

The decision to eliminate 46 early childhood teaching assistants (TAs)
raises another compliance issue. State law mandates no more than 10 children
per adult in preschool. The only reason we have TAs is so we can provide the
benefits of preschool to more children. We have preschool classrooms with 19
or 20 children in the class a teacher and a teaching assistant.

There is probably no educational reform that has as much research and
support behind it as the effectiveness of preschool in getting children
ready for school. The National Governors¹ Association calls it one of three
demonstrated effective ways for boosting the success of underprivileged
children in school, and the one with the biggest affect. We can¹t provide
preschool to as many children, however, if we cut 46 early childhood TAs, or
we will be out of compliance with state law. Here is another cut that says
city children don¹t deserve the same opportunities and quality of
instruction as other children.

There could be another compliance issue with librarians. A couple of years
ago, we were out of compliance with state regulations that required us to
keep school libraries open for specified hours, and we were out of
compliance because we did not have enough librarians. DESE cited us for it.
If the SAB cuts 31 librarians, the district will again be out of compliance
with state regulations. All of these compliance issues lead me to wonder if
DESE has already promised to waive the rules for this board and not enforce
state laws that demand that school district meet a certain level of quality
in their services and accommodations for children.

These cuts illustrate to me a profound difference between the SAB¹s policies
and the policies the elected board has favored. I believe that the goal of
public school is to help all children learn ­ and the state has determined
that they must master certain things to be successful later in life. If we
are going to help all children learn, it is imperative that we intervene
early when there is a problem that interferes with learning. The SAB,
however, is eliminating the very things that enable us to discover problems
and take early action to correct them. That can only prevent us from
reaching the goal of helping all children learn.

These cuts result directly from a crisis that the state department of
education itself created. The State of Missouri has so far failed to live up
to the promise made by the Danforth Commission that a state takeover would
mean more resources for city public schools. On the contrary, the state has
reduced the resources available to the schools since taking over. That is
not surprising: both the state board of education and House Speaker Rod
Jetton gave reducing spending on education as a major reason for taking over
St. Louis Public Schools.

The unwanted and undemocratic imposition of the state appointed board puts
it in the position akin to that of an occupation authority imposed by a
foreign power. It cannot successfully ask the citizens to pay more to
support its actions when it stripped those citizens of their democratic
rights to influence and oversee those actions. Indeed, the first acts of the
appointed board included canceling decisions made to avoid crisis. The SAB
canceled a marketing plan to compete with charter schools and canceled plans
to cut the costs of contracted services and consultants. In addition, the
SAB¹s erratic behavior, as seen in its decision to push out Superintendent
Bourisaw, has cost it corporate support.

The Post-Dispatch reported Sunday that these cuts are only the beginning.
The paper reported that Richard Gaines and Melanie Adams are committed to
closing 20 more schools this year.

Alderman Terry Kennedy says city residents should ³let their voices be
heard² against the cuts. I think one place to let your voice be heard is at
the SAB meeting this Thursday at 6 pm at 801 S. 11th.Street.

Sincerely,

Peter Downs