South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

Public engagement process to be launched by Mehlville

The Mehlville School District intends to launch a public engagement process that could include a $12,000 community survey and annual public forums to help formulate the district’s long-range planning model.

“It’s the difference between being a strategic district and a reactive district,” said Keith Klusmeyer, south area superintendent.

Klusmeyer and Superintendent Tim Ricker last week presented to Board of Education members details regarding a 12-month process intended to gain public input on the district’s Comprehensive School Improvement Plan, or CSIP.

“We have a CSIP plan, but it’s time to review it and enhance it,” Klusmeyer told board members July 22.

Board members unanimously approved the engagement process, 6-0, but noted some concerns regarding the plan’s call for multiple committees, volunteer recruitment and the plan’s annual start date.

Board member Tom Correnti was absent from the board’s July 22 session.

Mehlville administrators recommended Feb. 2 that the Board of Education select UNICOM/ARC to help gather more public input that would assist the district in formulating its CSIP, but board members tabled the proposal until the consultant and administrators could bring back more public engagement and financial details.

Ricker then announced during a June 24 board retreat that administrators internally decided to scrap hiring a consultant and intend to facilitate a public engagement process for the Mehlville School District’s long-range planning model with district staff and resources.

Klusmeyer, Bernard Middle School Principal Michele Condon and Oakville Senior High School Assistant Principal Brian Lane attended long-range planning model training June 14.

Deputy Superintendent Jane Reed, Klusmeyer, Condon and Lane all will act as facilitators of the engagement process.

The plan involves recruiting community stakeholders, parents and employees to sit on a Long Range Planning Committee. Committee members will monitor the formulation of the district’s CSIP, help formulate questions for the community survey and report the plan’s progress to Board of Education members.

The plan calls for the collection of public input via open forums in the fall and winter of each year. The winter forums will be utilized to present the community the drafted CSIP.

“Communication throughout this process will be very important,” Klusmeyer said.

The south area superintendent later said, “Again, continued communication with the public — we can never communicate enough. It’s just so important to do so and we’ll make sure we do that.”

Ricker added, “Those open forums, I would hope, I envision them to be on an annual basis so that people get to know that in the fall of the year, sometime in September, there will be open forums that the community will be able to participate in to talk about the issues in the district — either related to the plan or new issues that crop up that we need to consider that could affect our district and affect the students within the district.”

The school district will seek other volunteers to serve on four Action Teams, each with a district area of focus — finance, facilities, academic achievement and technology.

Action Team members, according to the plan, will report directly to the Long Range Planning Committee every month suggesting CSIP revisions and feedback in their respective focus areas.

The revised CSIP is scheduled annually to be submitted to Board of Education members for consideration in January.

Additional volunteer committees, referred to as School Improvement Teams at each district school, will be forwarded the revised CSIP and charged “to support the district CSIP,” according to district documents.

Development, purchasing, training and budgeting decisions then will be made from February to August.

Sometime between September and November of this year, Ricker said he would like to see the community surveyed through a public opinion poll, which would be conducted by an outside surveying service contracted by the district.

“Whether it’s a telephone survey, a written survey, a computer survey — we would like to put together an RFP and shop that around to various opinion polling people that we know that might be interested in doing this work for us,” he said.

The superintendent noted he would like to see the community surveyed every two to three years after the fall public forum has taken place so that the district has a better idea of what questions to put on the survey.

“I have incorporated in this year’s budget money to enable us to do some of that community surveying,” he told board members.

“Not a lot of money because we want to make sure it’s a good survey and is quality, but we also don’t want to spend an arm and a leg on something we might only be able to use for a short period of time,” Ricker added.

Asked by board Vice President Matt Chellis how much had been budgeted for the community survey out of the 2004-2005 budget, Ricker answered $12,000.

Board member Bill Schornheuser posed concerns to the superintendent about the formulation of the primary plan committee in August.

He said it would be “ambitious” for the district to believe it could recruit and begin a committee of 20 to 30 volunteers so early in the year — especially while people still are taking vacations.

“The plan timeline … the spacing between things seems to be good. I think the start probably is a little suspect,” Schornheuser said. “I would probably want to say that organizing a committee like that probably would be best served to do that more in the October time frame when everybody is back at school. It’s going to be very difficult, I know, because a lot of people are not around in August …”

Schornheuser later added, “That’s probably my only concern. … Getting people in August is probably not a good time I would think.”

Board secretary Marea Kluth-Hoppe said that while she also believed August was early, she said in future years when classes start earlier in the year, beginning the committee in August may be more appropriate.

Chellis echoed Schornheuser’s comments.

“I think that’s right Bill …,” Chellis said, questioning if the district would be able to recruit enough people to serve on the various committees. “We talked a little about about what we do … if we get too many volunteers. What do we do if we don’t get enough so that we’re not representative of our community?”

In that case administrators would encourage principals, chambers of commerce and other community and service organizations to suggest potential committee volunteers, Ricker said.

Board President Cindy Christopher asked, “Do we have any way as a district of identifying parents … that have expertise in certain areas?”

Ricker agreed that tracking parents with certain occupations would be a good recruitment tool for the four Action Teams, but current district data systems do not make that possible. In the plan’s first year, he said the district will have to rely on who administrators and principals know.

Referring to the structure chart of all the committees, Schornheuser said he could come up with a committee that already exists. For instance, he said the school district already has a budget committee, a committee to help students on college-entrance exams, a Citizens’ Advisory Committee and a technology committee.

“… Could we envision consolidating?” Schornheuser said. “I mean we’ve got a lot of committees either administratively assigned or board assigned. (Could we) try to see if we could funnel them all through one structure?”

Board member Rita Diekemper said it would “make sense” to ask parent groups in each school to take on some of the School Improvement Team responsibilities. She wondered, she said, if the current parent school groups are “well-attended.”

Current district committees have done important work for the district, Ricker said.

“But what were finding is … that we’re getting the same people over and over and over again on some of our committees,” he added.

The board also met in a closed session July 22 and voted 6-0, with Correnti absent, to extend a listing agreement for the St. John’s Elementary School property with the Lechner Realty Group for an additional six-month period ending Jan. 15, 2005.

Call Newspapers filed a lawsuit in May against Ricker, the district and the board, alleging three purposeful violations of the Missouri Sunshine Law, including withholding from the newspaper the listing agreement with Lechner Realty for the St. John’s property on the corner of Will Avenue and Lemay Ferry Road.

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