By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A long-range plan proposed by the administration for the St. Joseph School District would make drastic changes throughout the district in an effort to recruit teachers, shore up academics, and better use buildings.
St. Joseph School Superintendent Gabe Edgar states in the introduction of the long-range plan that the district stands on the brink of opportunity.
“We have issues with academics. We have issues with attendance rates. We have issues with graduation rates,” Edgar tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post during an interview in his office. “What I meant was, on the brink of opportunity was, something has to give or it’s time for change. So, I think we’re right there to make good things happen here in St. Joseph.”
This is the first of a two-part series on the St. Joseph School District long-range plan.
Edgar says the long-range plan grew out of eight straight months of discussing school boundaries without reaching a conclusion. Edgar says it also grew out of the Vision Forward process in which the district sought public input on its future.
“Recruiting and retaining quality staff was something that was talked about the whole time, throughout the Vision Forward process, all 18 months,” Edgar says. “So that’s the first piece of this document, the long-range plan document. The second piece was the academic challenges that we face.”
The long-range plan highlights some challenges the St. Joseph School District faces in educating approximately 10,500 students. Nearly three-quarters of the students attending St. Joseph schools qualify for free or reduced lunch, a poverty rate of 73.4%, far above the average of 47.4% for Missouri schools. The St. Joseph School District has a growing Hispanic population. The long-range plan document pegs the percentage of Hispanic students at 9.4%, but Edgar tells us that has grown to more than 10% since that plan was printed. Slightly more than 65% of the student population is white with 7.1% black. More than 13% of the student population is multi-racial.
The document contains three objectives: retaining and hiring high-quality staff, improving student performance, and supporting facilities for learning.
One aspect of the long-range plan sure to stand out in St. Joseph is Edgar’s call to switch from the three high school system under which the district currently operates to a two high school system. Each high school, under the plan, would educate an equal number of students.
“It right-sizes the district all the way down,” according to Edgar.
And, Edgar says, it makes sense.
“Right now we have 13 elementary schools. We don’t need 13 elementary schools. We need 10,” Edgar says. “But we can’t get to 10 without right sizing the problem at the top.”
The long-range plan also has proposals to help get and keep quality teachers, which Edgar says is vital to the district raising academic scores.
Click HERE for a link to the long-range plan.
We explore those and more during part two of this two-part series.
You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.