By Antonio D. French
Filed Tuesday, November 21, 2006 at 11:59 PM
A PUB DEF VIDEO REPORT Labels: Schools, Video_Reports
The St. Louis City School Board heard a report tonight by Chief Operating Officer Deanna Anderson on the costs and benefits of ending the district's contract with Sodexho and bringing back in-house many of the maintenance operations that the contractor oversees.
Watch our special video report from the meeting:
8 Comments:
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11/22/2006 2:29 AM
Is this the same Board that I'm seeing! Downs and Purdy were loving O'Brien. This is really not about the children in the District it's a political power struggle were only the children suffer.
11/22/2006 8:35 AM
The school board has to find some common ground. Personally, I think that the school board should be appointed by the mayor with approval from the various wards. Education should be taken just as seriously as homeland security.
School boards should be comprised of people who are experts in the education field. Unfortunately, none of the school board members have such credentials in managing education systems.
11/22/2006 10:24 AM
The school board should be appointed? The appointed member we have now is O'Brien, and that isn't turning out so well, is it. I disagree that Boards need to be education professionals. The Superintendent needs to be. The Board needs to be comprised of rational people who can provide a base from which the expert, the Superintendent can do her job.
And anon 2, Downs and Purdy weren't ever in love with O'Brien, they just happened to have the same opinions before, and now O'Brien has gone nuts. Downs and Purdy haven't changed.
11/22/2006 10:45 AM
Anon at 10:24am, the mayor did pick several of the people still on the board, and they are far from "experts in the education field". Purdy, on the other hand, is a retired life long educator. He managed one of the the largest high schools in the state as principal. His credentials are far superior to the mayor's hand picked slate of four who took us from being within a few points of full accreditation to the huge loss of points that makes even provisional accreditation out of reach. Their lack of educational expertise led them to dismantle dropout prevention teams and close alternative high schools. If the mayor is given the power to apoint the entire board, the district will be run by people learning about managing education at the expense of the children in our district.
11/22/2006 10:59 AM
If the bldgs and grounds org chart dated 2003 and 2003 is an inaccurate as it was when it was created, the numbers are skewed. Ever since Schoemel and Co were initiating the privitazation they used phony numbers to justify their case. We will never get an accurate picture as long as we use inaccurate data to start with. They purposeley included capital improvement amounts into the maintenance column. This was a seperate line item and must be addressed as such. All of the current players had nothing to do with the old B&G operations. They only people who really know how it worked are either gone or so far down the totem pole that they are only allowed to speak when spoken to. Common sense will dictate that there is no way that adding layers of cost can be cheaper. I am not advocating dumping Sodexho until someone can come up with a plan of what to do next.
11/22/2006 11:46 AM
CLARIFICATION: I should have said the 2002/2003 org chart that Ms Anderson is using for her 2006 presentation!!!!!!!!!
11/22/2006 12:00 PM
OK, let's just think here everyone. Do we really believe that Sodexho is in the business for any reason other than to earn a profit running our cleaning services? It's like when I worked as a lab manager and hired from a temp agency. The lab temps only made about $15/hour, but I paid $25/hour for their services, so the agency made a tidy profit, and I got mediocre workers, instead of the quality that $25/hour would have attracted to the positions.
11/23/2006 12:01 AM
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