Monday's post in the blog "written" by Mayor Slay was the Mayor's To Do list for this year.
The list (sans the honorable mentions section):
"•The Riverfront
•St. Louis public schools [My italics]
•City services and finances
•City pension funds
•Economic development
•City parks
•St. Louis Centre
•Jobs
•Mississippi River Bridge
•I-64 reconstruction"
I find it interesting that "The Riverfront" is listed first, and the schools come after it. That pretty much says it all.
I should start taking bets that there will be a silly, unnecessary little artificial island in the middle of the Mississippi before Roosevelt High School is a safe place again.
I should start taking bets that the ridiculous swimming pool in the middle of the silly island will be complete before teachers at Washington and Euclid Montessori schools start receiving proper Montessori method teacher training again.
I should start taking bets that the ridiculous island and its silly swimming pool will have their grand opening ceremony long before SLPS regains the accreditation points it had before Slay took office, and before SLPS students ever get the chance to appreciate a curriculum that is not based around obsessively preparing for standardized tests.
If I actually put money on this stuff, my guess is I could make enough money to pay off most of my mortgage.
But who knows, maybe 2006 will hold positive surprises for the SLPS. Let's hope so. Nothing is going to change until the schools are viewed as the top priority, rather than just a public relations issue.
Thursday, January 5, 2006
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7 comments:
Good point.
Of course, his post for Saturday listed your neighborhood ahead of "Downtown" and "The Auto Theft Task Force" for the . . . 10 Improved Things for 2005:
Lambert Airport
Old North St. Louis
Downtown
MayorSlay.com
City personnel department
Post-Dispatch editorial cartoons
Cardinals pitching
Downtown St. Louis Partnership
E H Lyle Academy
Auto theft task force
Do you think that means that the mayor thinks ONSL is more important than downtown or the car theft rate?
I was just about to post about that other list when someone knocked on my door....
I don't think that he put us above Downtown or auto theft, but I suppose it just strikes me that lists of priorities tend to be written in order of importance, so that other list struck me as a little weird. That might have just been my interpretation, but I'd already been thinking about the silly island versus the condition of the schools, and upon seeing that, I decided to write the post that was already mostly written in my head. Whether or not I was reading too much into that particular list on the Slay blog, overall I still think that we need to get serious about the schools before we talk about constructing an entire island in the Mississippi.
I wish the mayor well on both fronts, believing both efforts will take much support from the public.
Question for anyone reading here...
In the last ten neighborhood meetings you've attended, has your alderman brought up or has anyone asked a question about the schools or the riverfront.
I wonder how an alderman would answer.
Hizzoner certainly has more influence through Barb Geisman over Tom Reeves (and even through Mike Murray over David Fisher) to push for Riverfront plans faster than he has influence over the Schools through Darnetta Clinkscale over Creg Williams.
But the order of the listing certainly was odd, and fortunately for Room 200, not posted closer to a school board election.
"In the last ten neighborhood meetings you've attended, has your alderman brought up or has anyone asked a question about the schools or the riverfront."
Are you kidding?
When I lived in Ward 17, all my alderman talked about at community meetings was development in the ward, street repavings and such. Citywide issues never entered into his presentations, and no one brought the issues up.
Both aldermen and constituents seem to think that the role of the alderman is merely to make the ward look better -- never mind that every bill about everything goes through the Board of Aldermen, and each alderman has one vote over legislation that impacts the whole city and other wards.
The version of the Mayor's Top 10 List for 2006 posted on Newsgram online has a little more detail. It's not written in complete sentences though, which makes it a little hard to follow.
Anybody else notice the Suburban Journals article about Lacy Clay sponsoring a bill to make the Soliders' Memorial a federal (National Parks Service) facility?
I have lots of questions about that one - but maybe it's an ok idea, I don't know. Certainly, the City is trying to off-load as much as possible.
"Island"??
From your followup comments, it sounds like this is something someone somewhere is actually thinking about?
WTF??
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