Why splitting ISD 2142 makes sense

There are dozens of solid reasons for splitting the St. Louis County School District. Here are just a few:

1) The two separate halves have nothing in common. Keep in mind, this school district is unlike other any in the state, with two separate portions, one located in a rural hinterland in southern St. Louis County and the other in the northern third of the county.

Patterns of development, ethnic backgrounds, and tax base are distinctly different between the two halves. In the north, the schools have long existed within small cities and their locations are critical to the economic base of those cities.

In the south, the schools are located in rural areas (Cotton is a commercial cluster along Hwy. 53, but not a city), and there are no main streets or city services that will suffer if schools move. The ISD 2142 plan made no distinction between the north and south, which was just one of its many serious flaws.

The difference in tax base is especially profound, and it's interesting to think of it in terms of repayment of the school bond. Over the next 20 years, taxpayers in the district will pay out roughly $100 million to repay the school bonds. Of that, communities in the north will pay approximately $83-$85 million. The south portion will pay about $15-$17 million.

For that, the south obtains $40 million in school improvements that have minimal impact on communities. In the south, everyone rides the bus, so the exact location of a school is not much of an issue. It's no wonder, the south voted heavily for this plan. It's a huge transfer of tax base to benefit the south.

2) The district is already divided

The plan and the vote have laid bare the fact that school board members (with a couple exceptions) vote based on parochial interests, not the interests of the whole. Bob Larson and former board member Darrell Bjerklie, both from the south, engineered this grossly inequitable plan and Larson is now clearly retaliating against the north for its failure to support it. Unfortunately, Larson has virtually total control over three other board members who allow him to dictate.

The vote on the plan demonstrated that the north and the south have little common interest. While the vote in the south was overwhelmingly in favor, the vote in the north was strongly against. In Tower-Soudan, the vote was 87 percent against.

3) Both halves will do better financially as separate districts. Each half would have roughly 1,000 students, which would put each district in the middle of pack compared to other districts in the state. With two brand new schools, paid for by the north, residents of the south should be fully supportive of a split. While the south has no property value, that won't really matter since they are starting out with new buildings and won't need a new bond measure for decades. In either case, why should the north be held hostage indefinitely just to pay for facilities improvements that might be needed in the south in the future?

While people have long assumed that the consolidation of administration under ISD 2142 is efficient, it is the opposite. Administrative costs in ISD 2142 are the highest in the state (per student) and it's because district officials stopped thinking like a collection of small schools and started thinking like a big district (with a bloated administration).

Breaking up the district would provide the opportunity for both halves to implement a smaller, more efficient administrative structure, which would put more resources into the classroom. A break-up would also give both new districts the opportunity to renegotiate the teacher contract, which has not served the district well. The district-wide bumping rights have encouraged teachers to live outside the district (mostly in the Virginia area). Separate districts would keep teachers living within the district boundaries and encourage them to be part of the local community. As it is, too many of them arrive ten minutes before the start of classes and heading out of town ten minutes after the final bell sounds. That's not healthy. It's dysfunctional.

4) A breakup would allow the north to revisit the plan and make the kind of modifications needed to benefit students and communities in this region. This won't happen if the district remains intact.

What we hope to achieve by a division of the district is an opportunity to remake the culture from top to bottom, implement a more efficient administrative model, and use innovation to provide students more opportunities in schools in their own communities.