For the first time, to our knowledge, a superintendent of schools is coming to our community to talk to us about our school problems. And do we have school problems: an overcrowded school located in a badly deteriorated area — an all black school in an integrated community.
Last year this community under the leadership of the Skinker-DeBaliviere Education Committee set out to solve some of these unsolvable problems. (They had already spent a futile year trying to get the Board to lease space in the community.) Out of a series of well-attended meetings, two things became evident. The community felt that the Board of Education had not seriously tried to solve the problem of overcrowding at Hamilton; the Board had not looked for alternatives. The other thing that was evident was that there was a very serious lack of communication between the school and the community, between the parents and the school. To this end the committee proposed a liaison committee (majority to be parents) to work with the faculty and the school in increasing community-parent involvement and communication with the school. Although the Council found a donation to finance the proposal, the school rejected it.
It was also evident that the superintendent of this district considered that racism was the motive for these moves — that whites wanted special favors for their children. He dismissed the blacks who said they wanted the same thing by implying they were “uncle toms.” He made many people, black and white, furious and he seriously underestimated the commitment of this community to integration and the desire for a school which fairly reflects this. This district superintendent, like many others, has difficulty imagining a community with an elected council which is integrated; a community (majority black) where white families are moving back in at the rate of one a month; a community which says no to the loan companies and real estate people who would write it off, a community committed to building a decent place to live and ending the myth that urban blight is inevitable.
Underlying the suspicion which school administrators greeted the committee’s proposals, was one central attitude. The St. Louis Board of Education and the schools, from the district superintendent down to the principals (most of whom live in surburbia) do not consider the schools a part of the community. In none of the decisions which they (the administrators) make and which so drastically affect us all, is the community considered, much less consulted. The schools operate apart from the community — except of course at election time. Yet we in the community feel the effect of Hamilton almost every day in attracting new families, in property values, in the divisions that an all-black school in an integrated neighborhood causes. All the education committee had tried to do was to begin to bridge this gap. Mr Miller must forgive us if we appear skeptical.
But hope springs eternal Recently the Board agreed to provide the money to keep Hamilton Branch III open in the evenings for a much-needed recreation program. And now Mr Miller visits us. We hope that his visit means that the Board is willing to consider us as a community and to work with us in creating a school which reflects our community and its goals That’s all we want, Mr. Miller,
Originally published in The Paper, October–November 1972.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1972_10.pdf, printed page 2.
