Mayoral Control Could Help City Schools

Posted on by Timothy B. Lee

The state school board in Jefferson City was a scene of pandemonium on Thursday, as angry Saint Louis residents protested a vote that would lead to a state takeover of the troubled city school district. Both sides in the debate make good points. On the one hand, state education officials are concerned about a dysfunctional school district that has been failing to provide kids with an adequate education. On the other hand, some Saint Louis residents are understandably worried that without local representation, the district will not be responsive to the concerns of the district’s students and their parents.

State officials would do well to consider an alternative that could address both concerns: mayoral control of the Saint Louis school district. If Mayor Slay were given the authority to appoint the entire board, he might be able to provide the consistent, disciplined leadership that the city’s schools require. And because Mayor Slay is elected by Saint Louis voters, mayoral control would make the district more responsive to local concerns than state control.

However, as Rick Hess wrote in a recent study for the Show-Me Institute, mayoral control should be approached with caution. Mayoral control advocates can point to some important success stories, but there have been some failures as well. Hess’s research suggests that mayoral control should only be pursued if the mayor is willing to invest significant political capital in school reform efforts, and if civic leaders in Saint Louis are willing to hold Mayor Slay accountable for the results of the reform effort. Without an engaged mayor and committed civic leadership, mayoral reform will be a cure worse than the disease.

One of the biggest problems facing the Saint Louis school district is unstable leadership. Nearly every school board election in recent years has brought renewed chaos, as different factions jockeyed for control. The state take-over will represent the sixth leadership change in as many years. It’s not surprising that none of the six superintendents who preceded the state takeover were able to turn the district around. Most of the superintendents had only months to implement their reform strategies before school board elections or shifting political alliances led to their ouster.

The state takeover may bring greater continuity of leadership. The board nominated Rick Sullivan, an executive with McBride and Son, as the district’s chief executive. He will supervise the district along with individuals selected by Mayor Slay and Aldermanic President James Shrewsbury. This configuration should give school officials more time for their reform efforts to bear fruit.

On the other hand, critics point out that Sullivan is not a city resident, and that the new governance arrangement will provide parents with little influence over the direction of the district. Moreover, there is no guarantee that this three-person governance panel will show more leadership coherence than the school board it replaces. In 2000, the Washington, DC, school board was re-shuffled to include four members appointed by the mayor and five members directly elected by voters. This fractured leadership structure has not worked very well. DC Mayor Anthony Williams described it as “trying to drive a car with one pedal.” Similarly, under the state take-over plan now under way, control over the district will be fractured among the governor, the mayor, and the president of the board of aldermen—three politicians who may have divergent views on how the district should be governed. Mayoral control could address both of those concerns, giving the district unified, coherent, and stable leadership under an elected official chosen by Saint Louis voters.

However, mayoral control will only make sense if Mayor Slay is willing to step up to the plate and make education reform a focus of his administration. And given the structural limitations on the power of the mayor in Saint Louis, the business community and other civic leaders must be willing to provide strong backing for the mayor’s reform efforts as well.

Children in Saint Louis have waited too long for competent leadership. Mayoral control should be explored as one way to achieve effective school governance. However, any further governance changes should be made cautiously, because the last thing Saint Louis school children need is yet another ineffectual leadership change.

Timothy B. Lee is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute.

Because the Police Aren’t Busy

Posted on by Timothy B. Lee

MODOT engineer Judy Wagner thinks that police have nothing better to do than harass motorists about wearing their seat belts. She claims that “wouldn’t cost anything.” It “doesn’t cost anything” in precisely the same way it “wouldn’t cost anything” to pass a law requiring the St. Louis police to clean my bathroom. The cost is in the form of police time, time they could be spending dealing with actual crimes like speeding, drunk driving, or murder.

Beyond the waste of police resources, the proposal also worries me because it gives undue discretion to police officers. There are far more people not wearing seat belts than the police could possibly pull over, so the police would have a great deal of discretion about who to target. Moreover, even if someone is wearing a seatbelt, it’s not that easy to see it in a moving car, so a police officer could easily claim he thought someone wasn’t wearing a seat belt and pulled them over to check. That, in effect, means that the police would have an excuse to pull over anyone they like. That kind of arbitrary discretion in the hands of government officials is worrisome because it opens the door to abuses of power like racial profiling.

Mayoral Control Means Local Control

Posted on by Timothy B. Lee

My latest article points out that mayoral control of the Saint Louis school districts could be a good way to put control over our schools back in the hands of an official who is directly elected by Saint Louis voters, while still giving the district the stable, coherent leadership it so desperately needs. However, I also emphasize that mayoral control will only work if the mayor and other civic leaders are committed to making it work:
 

Critics point out that Sullivan is not a city resident, and that the new governance arrangement will provide parents with little influence over the direction of the district. Moreover, there is no guarantee that this three-person governance panel will show more leadership coherence than the school board it replaces. In 2000, the Washington, DC, school board was re-shuffled to include four members appointed by the mayor and five members directly elected by voters. This fractured leadership structure has not worked very well. DC Mayor Anthony Williams described it as “trying to drive a car with one pedal.” Similarly, under the state take-over plan now under way, control over the district will be fractured among the governor, the mayor, and the president of the board of aldermen?three politicians who may have divergent views on how the district should be governed. Mayoral control could address both of those concerns, giving the district unified, coherent, and stable leadership under an elected official chosen by Saint Louis voters.

However, mayoral control will only make sense if Mayor Slay is willing to step up to the plate and make education reform a focus of his administration. And given the structural limitations on the power of the mayor in Saint Louis, the business community and other civic leaders must be willing to provide strong backing for the mayor’s reform efforts as well.

Here is the PDF of our recent study on mayoral control by Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute.

Trash Talking

Posted on by David Stokes

One area where pure free-market ideology has long reigned has been trash pick-up in unincorporated St. Louis County.  Other than requiring you to have it, county governnment has not been involved in it at all.  Homeowners contract with a hauler and the entire thing is handled privately.  Now however, the system is going to change somewhat.  St. Louis County is planning to have haulers bid on providing trash services to the residents of soon-to-be-established trash districts.  The winning bid will then have the monopoly on doing the trash hauling for that area and contracting with the residents and neighborhoods within it.  I think this change could be good for St. Louis County, especially because trash hauling will still be handled entirely by private companies.  The changes will decrease the number of trash trucks on unincorporated roads, which all County taxpayers pay for.  Better to have one company serve an entire neighborhood once a week than four companies serve one-forth of a neighborhood at four different times each week.  The economies of scale produced by a firm serving households closer together than before should reduce costs for all involved.  My only concern is that new start-up companies be allowed to compete fairly for the residential bids, (commerical hauling is still unregulated) without favortism shown to established, union companies.  We will have to wait and see on that.               

More of the Same in Saint Louis Schools

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Outstate Missourians are annoyed that so many of Missouri’s tax dollars have gone towards education in St. Louis, with poor results:

Last Thursday, the Missouri Board of Education voted 5-1 to take over control of the St. Louis School District and its 33,000 students. The district was stripped of its accreditation because it met only five of the state’s 14 standards on its last state report card. The district has piled up huge debt while graduation rates and test scores lag. The district has had six superintendents in the last four years.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that an outside entity has had to step in and manage the St. Louis School District.

Even if less state money went to the district, the rest of the state wouldn’t escape the cost of St. Louis’ educational crisis. There remain the costs to the criminal justice system and the costs of offering remedial courses at the college level.

But this op-ed is right that the money is not being spent effectively. It’s time to try something different, like tuition tax credits or another parental choice policy. However, considering the St. Louis Public Schools’ obsession with educational fads, I’d guess they’re more likely to try archery:

"Students can learn the physics behind it and read novels about famous archers," said Knauer, adding that she plans to study whether learning archery in the classroom can help improve Missouri Assessment Program test scores as well. "We want it to be as relevant to schools as possible."

Local Control and Local Funding

Posted on by Timothy B. Lee

The Springfield News-Leader has an insightful editorial arguing that Missouri should be allowed to opt out of No Child Left Behind. They correctly point out that the law puts too much power over the education of our kids in the hands of Washington bureaucrats.

But for some reason, they still insist that the federal government should continue providing funding to the states even after the other red tape is repealed. This doesn’t make any sense to me. The money came from Missouri taxpayers in the first place. What’s the point of sending it to Washington, where the federal bureaucracy can skim off a share, before sending it back here? That doesn’t make sense. Instead, Congress should repeal NCLB entirely—funding included. It can use the savings to cut taxes or reduce the deficit. And then, if Missouri policymakers decide that Missouri’s schools need more money, we can levy taxes here at the state level for that purpose. That way, every dime will stay here in Missouri, and Missourians will have complete control over how it’s spent.

As the editorial puts it:
 

Next week, voters all over the Ozarks will practice the ultimate in accountability when they go to the polls and elect school board members and say yes or no on various bond issues. Some school districts and school boards will get a pat on the back for a job well done. Others will be told to go back to the drawing board.

It’s a system that puts accountability in the hands of those who know the most about what’s really going on in schools.

I couldn’t have put it better myself. Congress should cut the federal education budget so that Missourians will have full control over education spending in Missouri.

Last of the Vice-Cops

Posted on by David Stokes

Ticket scalping is in the news due to the discovery that tickets taken by police from scalpers in last year’s World Series were used by family and friends of the police before being turned over as evidence.  This is of interest to me on this blog because I can’t think of another crime that should be removed from the books faster than scalping.  A ticket is a commodity in the purest form.  It has a value to the people who sell it, who are in most cases trying to sell a large number of them which influences the initial pricing decision.  It has a value to the person who first buys it.  Like many commodities, it has different value to different people.  An opera afficianado values tickets to the opera more than someone who has never been to the opera.  If someone else values that commodity – the ticket – more than the person who buys it first, there is no reason it should by forbidden to be resold, like a used car or garage sale furniture.  There are many silly crimes, many of which made sense at some time in the past.  But there is no other crime like scalping which so clearly violates the basic laws of economics.  And for the record, I have no intention of scalping my tickets to the NCAA tourny Sunday, and fear of police has nothing to do with it.         

Charter schools and state takeovers; a tale of two cities

Posted on by Steven Bernstetter

Yesterday the state Board of Education voted to take control of the St. Louis Public Schools district. In the process, the district also lost its provisional accreditation, failing to meet the necessary 6 of 14 requirements to maintain it. Meanwhile, in Kansas City, a nationally recognized charter school has been approved by the state, and is likely to open in July somewhere in the city’s downtown area. KC leaders hope this development will help attract residents with children to the area, diversifying the downtown population beyond young professional couples and singles, and ensuring its enduring viability.

The disparity between the two cities couldn’t be more stark in this light. Though education in KC certainly has its problems, it at least seems to be making progress, whereas the situation in St. Louis seems locked in a perpetual downward spiral. The difference is in the willingness and ability of KC to try new things, like expanded charter and magnet schools; whereas St. Louis prefers to stay the same misguided course in fear of change.

As I noted in a recent post, charter schools are not a cure-all for the many problems faced by our public school system. However, any measure that gives parents an option beyond their local failing public school is a step in the right direction. Mayor Slay seems to at least recognize this point, as he has asked for the authority to authorize and hold accountable new charter schools in the St. Louis area. As a lifelong St. Louisan, it pains me greatly to say this, but St. Louis and mayor Slay would do well to follow KC’s example and expand its charter school program, enabling city residents to choose an education for their children beyond their failing, unaccredited public school.

MetroLink Ridership High, Numerically Speaking Of Course

Posted on by David Stokes

Metro, via the Post-Dispatch, is reporting that MetroLink ridership is exceeding expectations since opening six months ago.  This is a good thing, obviously, but major fiscal troubles still face Metro in the near future:

Metro faces a $28 million operating deficit next summer, partly due to the $14 million to $15 million in operating costs associated with the Shrewsbury line. Fares cover only about a third of that cost.

Metro has asked that state for a significant increase in funding, and that is not going to happen.  They may get a gasoline tax exemption, which would save Metro a few hundred thousand dollars a year, but that is likely the most Metro can realisticly expect from Jefferson City.  In order to make up the shortfall, St. Louis County voters can expect to see a tax increase on the ballot late this year or early next year.  I predict the tax increase will fail – though I will probably vote for it, and I vote for tax increases about as often as Tom Niedenfuer comes through in the clutch.  If and when the tax increase fails, serious cuts to bus service can be expected, and that cycle will more or less continue until bus service is a shell of its former self.  My generally positive opinion toward Metro and MetroLink could change drastically though if the train is late Sunday and I am late to the tournament game at the Dome, though.  Go Salukis!, and yes, I am a complete fair-weather fan when it comes to Southern Illinois.

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