Missouri Supreme Court building

Members and supporters of the elected St. Louis Board of Education have been scrapping to regain control of the district ever since state regulators stripped the board of its authority in June 2007. Today, they are scheduled to make their final legal argument on the matter as the Missouri Supreme Court hears their appeal of rulings against them at the trial level.

The state’s high court should act quickly to affirm the lower court decision and bring this sorry legal matter to an end.

The elected board members are asking the Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional the state law that shifted power to an administrative board when the district lost accreditation.

They argue that state regulators were wrong to consider “turnover in the superintendent position” and news reports of the “turmoil amongst board members and the district’s financial performance” when assessing the district’s fitness for accreditation.

The case arose out of the Missouri State Board of Education’s 2007 decision denying accreditation to the St. Louis Public Schools system. Under state law, the ruling effectively shifted control of the district from the seven-member elected school board to a three-member appointed special administrative board.

Five of the elected board’s seven members have refused to accept this reality and have challenged it in court. The copious court filings prepared by the St. Louis law firm Lashley & Baer — to which the board paid $11 million in fees over the four years preceding its removal — have little to say about the condition of public education in St. Louis or about the prospects of children who attended school on their watch and that of their predecessors.

The St. Louis Public Schools suffered profound leadership instability for more than a decade, its finances have been unstable and chaotically managed and the district could not make sustained progress in a broad range of academic and administrative matters.

This is what led to the district’s loss of accreditation, and the trial court’s ruling presented a picture of a district with bleak prospects for the education of St. Louis children.

Yet the filings on behalf of the elected school board members focus not on children but on how the board members were aggrieved and that their due-process rights were denied when the district lost accreditation and the public’s right to vote for them was violated when the state supplanted their control.

Cole County Circuit Judge Richard G. Callahan rejected the elected board’s arguments in short order. The high court should do the same. The era of self-absorbed school boards in St. Louis must end.

The St. Louis Public Schools desperately needs a new system of governance, one that ensures competent and accountable oversight. The community should begin immediately to develop such a system to ensure a smooth transition when the special administrative board completes its work.