Let’s do better for our kids
By Alonzo Weston
As the St. Joseph School district searches for a superintendent yet again, I see deja vu.
Current superintendent Gabe Edgar has announced his intent to retire after the end of the current school year.
I’ve lost count of how many superintendents we’ve been through since the 2015 Fred Czerwonka-Dan Colgan disaster that ended with Colgan in prison. All of that followed a scathing state audit that uncovered the distribution of up to $40 million in unapproved stipends, nepotism, no-bid contracts and a pattern of Missouri Sunshine Law violations. The FBI and a federal grand jury also investigated the district during this time.
This fiasco further eroded an ever-sliding public trust in the district that continues to this day.
A St. Joseph woman who admitted to being inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, not long ago ran for a seat on the St. Joseph Board of Education, a group that until the last election included Ken Reeder. That Reeder, a vehement school district opposed, got elected to the board at all befuddles me to this day.
The dysfunction continues. In February of this year, an incident among two board members led to a charge of second-degree harassment being filed against one of them.
All of this shows me that our school district is still in trouble regarding public trust. Many people are sending their children to private schools or other districts as a result.
Bullying and suicides are also issues of public concern. Both have been reported in our schools.
Recent statistics show a rise in suicides across the U.S. In 2021, 1,177 people died by suicide in Missouri, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For every 100,000 people, 18.7 died by suicide in Missouri that year, well above the 2021 national average of 14 per 100,000.
All of this says to me that we need to do better for our children. First and foremost, we need to be adults in educating our students. We need to be adults if we want to get public funding for our schools through levies and bonds.
We also need to take care of our teachers with so many of our good ones leaving for jobs in other districts. We must retain our good teachers if we want to have good students. Teachers need support from parents as well.
We need discipline and common sense to run our schools.
