- 2 min read
- Posted on 06.23.06
“. . . we were so impressed and blown-away by what is being offered there. If this is the future of schools in St. Louis, you will have families flocking to the city.”
A member of my staff received that comment in an e-mail from a mother in Wildwood. What school was she talking about?
Not Saint Louis University High School — or one of the other great parochial and private schools in the City. Not Metro — arguably, the best public school in the state.
This mom and her son were “impressed and blown-away” by Clyde C. Miller Academy, a public high school near Grand Center that — with a lot of support from the local business and academic communities offers a cutting-edge, 4-year curriculum with a career and technical focus. They liked the uniforms, the discipline, the internship programs, the available technology. They loved the principal. In fact, their only complaint about the school was that they had never heard anything about it.
That’s a shame. Too much of the news generated by City schools is about the bad behavior of the adults in charge of its administration, the district’s severely challenged finances, and the personnel woes of its staff. Too little is about the district’s accomplishments.
One of the many things I like about St. Louis Public Schools superintendent Creg Williams is his strong determination to identify the district’s successes and replicate them to serve as many students as possible. More Metros; more Millers. Given the district’s fixed resources, creating the successes will mean discarding the failures. The yelling — and the news — is coming from the failures.
We need to listen to Dr. Williams, not the failures.
