Based on an interview by R. Craig Sautter
Mobilia has been superintendent of District 2142, St. Louis County Schools, for six years, where his main priority is keeping the rural schools within his district, which covers almost 5,000 square miles, operational and competitive.
"We have a rural K-12 high school in our district that declined in enrollment to the point that it became difficult to provide financial or academic services for the kids. So we decided to close it. This school only has 160 students with a graduating class of about 10 kids. As with the closing of any school, but particularly a high school, people were very upset. However, the new Charter School legislation gave them an option to try to run the school themselves.
"The advantage, of course, is that as a Charter School they are exempt from the majority of the rules that our district has to follow, other than fire, safety, and health issues. Thus, they can pursue different types of organizational options.
"For example, the state mandates the type of curriculum public high schools must follow, including foreign language and elective components. For a small rural school, it is very difficult to meet those criteria.
"Another example is the certification of teachers. Our district is required to have certified teachers. Charter Schools are exempt from this as well. Nor is the Charter School required to have a principal. So they have a lot of leeway that public schools don't have. Given these exemptions, I agreed that maybe they could make a go of the Charter School, where we couldn't make it go as a traditional public school.
"Right now it is impossible to say if this is a good thing or not, because we simply don't know yet. The Toivola-Meadowlands Charter School is only now in the process of hiring their teachers. The core group is made up of parents and community leaders. I do not see much innovation about the school. They basically adopted the outcomes we have for our school system.
"The law allows teachers employed by the district to gain a leave of absence if they want to teach in the Charter School. But not one of my teachers chose to participate. They would have to take a cut in pay, and why would they do that? And many of them see nonprofessionals making key decisions that should be made by professionals. They feel that it is more like a private school than a public school. Many feel that this is just another step toward privatizing public education. I don't know if that is true or not. How can you project at this point?
"To me, Charter Schools are like the choice option. These are gimmicks that are trying to fix the system of public education without getting at the core problems, which are societal problems. Adding a few Charter Schools is not going to fix public education.
"The biggest plus in the case of Toivola-Meadowlands Charter School is that it has mobilized a community that was very complacent and had allowed their school system to erode. This brought them together and they worked very, very hard to save their school. It was very healthy in that sense because it brought their community together. The old saying used by our Governor, 'It takes a whole community to educate a child,' is happening there in this case.
"On the other side of the coin, I see a Charter School being developed in an area that is very economically depressed. It will be very difficult to maintain enrollment. I see some hard times ahead for them."
Posted on March 6, 1995
URL: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/envrnmnt/go/93-2RURL.HTM