Lucy Reinhart, Susan Turk and Dorris Walker have spent years sitting through late-night school meetings, volunteering in their children and grandchildren’s classrooms and serving on parents’ groups like the Parent Assembly.
They are part of the cadre of active parents who give their blood, sweat and tears to the city schools.
But Ms. Turk and Ms. Reinhart plan to vote “no” on the Feb. 2 sales tax for the city schools. Ms. Walker is supporting it only reluctantly.
Why? Their doubts about a measure so vital to the institutions they love, are a measure of their distrust. Distrust of the press, including the Post-Dispatch that supports the sales tax. Distrust of civic leaders who are promoting it. Distrust of the current leadership of the city school district.
Ms. Reinhart and Ms. Turk would lay down their lives for some of the excellent teachers they know, who they say are too often are maligned in print. But they also believe the school district hasn’t cut its bureaucracy enough, hasn’t mangaged its money well and hasn’t always followed through on educational reforms.
“They don’t know where their money goes, so how can I trust them?” Ms. Reinhart asks.
As a long-time resident of the Shaw neighborhood, Ms. Reinhart is torn as never before over how to vote on Feb. 2. Her 6th-grade daughter, Becky, gets a good education in the gifted program at McKinley Middle School, where she is an understudy in this spring’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
But Ms. Reinhart says she can’t support the tax without seeing the fine print in the settlement agreement that would end court control of the desegregation program. The settlement coordinator, Dr. William H. Danforth, recognizes that the details should have been made public by now, and promises to release them next week. The sooner the better, because that’s the only chance he has of affecting the votes of doubters like Ms. Reinhart.
Ms. Turk also is distrustful of Dr. Danforth and the civic leaders and media backing the two-thirds-of-a-cent tax proposal. She thinks the money it will raise won’t be nearly enough to meet the great needs of the children she knows.
“Children I tutor don’t see their mother much because she is working the late shift or two jobs,” Ms. Turk says. “They are consigned to failure because the district does not have the resources to make up for the absence of resources in the home.”
The sales tax would bring in $23 million and trigger another $40 million in state money. That $63 million total would replace most of the $70 million in state funds that will disappear with the end of the desegregation case. Ms. Turk says $63 million simply is not enough, and she’s willing to bet that the courts will give the children and the schools more money.
But Dorris Walker, president of the Parent Assembly, is afraid to gamble. She’s heard about Kansas City’s experience, where the end of state desegregation payments caused deep cuts in school programs. “I’m just so scared we’ll go broke like Kansas City,” she says.
Ms. Walker now has three grandchildren in the magnet schools. Her youngest daughter graduated last year from Soldan, where the international studies and ROTC magnet paved a path to the Air Force.
She supports the tax because she doesn’t want the city schools to end up without enough money to fund the magnets that have worked well for her children. And even though she pulled her daughter out of the city-county transfer program years ago, she knows how important it is to her neighbors and their children.
All three women have legitimate concerns that deserve response. The details of the desegregation settlement should be made public: No one should vote on something they don’t understand. The press has an obligation to pay close enough attention to the schools that news reports ring true to parents whose children attend them.
Most of all, the school district must be held accountable for its performance, and the performance of our children. The school district’s hiring of an accountability officer last week to serve as a trouble-shooter is a step in the right direction.
School officials should be able to show parents that they know where and how effectively their money is being spent. All parents have a right to expect follow-through on school reforms. And all should demand real improvement in student achievement.
Passage of the sales tax Feb. 2 is vital. But win or lose, the school district must step up to its responsibility to fulfill its obligations to parents like Lucy Reinhart, Susan Turk and Dorris Walker, who have done so much to support it.
Shaw Archives 