By Antonio D. French
Filed Monday, May 08, 2006 at 4:12 PM
Three members of the St. Louis school board and two city aldermen took it upon themselves to tour Cleveland NJROTC High School on the eve of a vote on whether to close the 93-year-old school. Labels: Schools
Superintendent Creg Williams, who has proposed closing Cleveland and moving its students to Madison Elementary, took several representatives of the media on a tour of Cleveland last week. He did not, however, invite all the members of the board of education or the alderman representing the ward in which Cleveland is located.
A day before the board is scheduled to vote on Williams' request, board members Bill Purdy, Peter Downs and Donna Jones went to the high school to see for themselves the state of the "Old Castle."
The board members were joined by Aldermen Dorothy Kirner (25th Ward) and Craig Schmid (20th Ward). Schmid graduated from Cleveland in 1977. Kirner, whose ward the school is in, said she would like to see Cleveland remain open -- or at the very least, not abandoned and left to further decay.
Click here to see more photos of Cleveland and of today's tour.
6 Comments:
How did you manage to be on the scene to snap those pictures?
5/08/2006 4:46 PM
The shot of Craig Schmid and Peter Downs looking down the sewer is hilarious.
5/08/2006 4:47 PM
Because they called me and told me they were going to be there, Anony #1. Same way Sharon Stevens from Channel 5 and Steve Giegerich of the Post-Dispatch knew that Creg Williams was giving tours last week.
No conspiracies. Just good reporting (if I do say so myself).
5/08/2006 8:09 PM
27 years? Would that mean it was part of the original round of renos which came about with deseg? I simply can't recall. The timeline is close, but I could be incorrect. Regardless, this amount of deterioration in such a short timespan is heartbreaking. SLPS really dropped the ball on this one. Incompetent bunch of village idiots we have running our schools, don't we?
5/09/2006 5:40 AM
Let's see, low test scores for over 7 years, crumbling schools that look like they have not been touched in years, declining enrollment for years.
Somebody tell me what Cleveland Hammonds did while he was the Superintendent and why does the black community let him off the hook!He drove the schools into the ground and noone black says anything about it.
5/09/2006 9:12 PM
When the lateral sewer line under the boiler is broken, when the roof has been defective, when the down-spouts are in poor to terrible condition, when gutters are not annually cleaned, when the exterior tuckpointing is never attended to ... water damage will happpen.
The inside was renovated when it bcame Cleveland NJROTC some many years ago ... and that renovation was not wonderful.
The solution to this current problem requires coordiation with architects, engineers, public patience and Board wisdom.
5/22/2006 9:16 PM
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