(Getty Images).

A complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

A fired school superintendent and an interim leader without proper state certification.

Two government audits, and a shortage of school buses and bus drivers.

The start of the 2024-2025 school year has been anything but routine for the St. Louis Public School District.

Two months into the school year, questions continue to swirl around the district.

Concerns about the district’s finances, including an operating budget with a $17 million surplus and a projected $35 million deficit, prompted public calls for a state audit, which began in August.

Around the same time — as test scores continued to show a disproportionate number of Black students in metro St. Louis unable to read at grade level — the St. Louis City NAACP filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights against 34 public and charter schools in St. Louis city and county, the St. Louis Special District and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

“Low reading proficiency rates for St. Louis Black students underscore the urgent need for targeted interventions in the region’s schools,” the local NAACP chapter said in a news release.

Meanwhile, after placing Superintendent Keisha Scarlett on paid administrative leave in the summer of 2024 and hiring an outside firm to review hiring, spending and other practices, the SLPS board fired Scarlett in September and named Millicent Borishade as the interim superintendent.

Borishade, who was deputy superintendent, does not hold Missouri superintendent credentials. And Scarlett told St. Louis Public Radio she plans to contest the board’s decision to terminate her contract and will request a hearing before the board.

This week, two more district administrators resigned.

The St. Louis school district, which enrolls about 18,000 students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade,  employs nearly 2,000 teachers,  according to Byron Clemens, spokesperson for the American Federation of Teachers St. Louis Local 420, the union representing local teachers.

Clemens said the teacher’s union continues to have confidence in the elected school board to “make any corrections and see that the administration will follow board policy and procedures.”

Scarlett, Clemens said, “is entitled to due process.”

In addition to a review of the district’s operations by the Missouri Auditor’s Office, St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office will also oversee a local audit.

Conner Kerrigan, Jones’ spokesman, said public concerns about the district “have forced us to increase the scope of the audit to include SLPS contracting practices, conflicts of interest and whistleblower claims, as well as the Board of Education’s oversight and approval of practices pertaining to the hiring and firing of district employees.”

E-mails and calls to the St. Louis Public School District and school board seeking comment were not returned.

Literacy rates

For the St. Louis NAACP, a major concern long term is the wide gap in reading achievement between white and Black students.

Education experts say third-grade reading proficiency is a bellwether for future academic success as students proceed through elementary and secondary grades.

Data for Missouri schools suggest about 42% of  Missouri third-graders are proficient readers, with the rate dropping to 21% for Black third-graders. In the St. Louis Public Schools, about 14% of Black third-graders are proficient readers, compared to 61% of White students.

“The St. Louis City NAACP was brave in filing the complaint with the U.S. Department of Education and Civil Rights,” said Ayanna Shivers, education committee chair for the Missouri NAACP. “There is a literary crisis in our country, and being able to read is a civil right.”

There’s no single solution to helping students become skilled readers, but “research indicates that more than 90% of all students could become proficient readers if they were taught by teachers employing scientifically-based reading instruction,” according to a study conducted by the National Council on Teacher Quality.

Evidence-based reading instruction, reading assessments, individualized reading plans for students struggling with reading and money to help pay for teacher training in evidence-based instruction were included in recent literacy legislation approved by the Missouri General Assembly.

“The most significant impact is the implementation of a statewide foundational reading assessment administered at the beginning and end of each school year for students in grades K-3 and for any newly enrolled students in grades 1-5,” a spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said in an email to The Independent.

These assessments, the department spokesperson said, “are not standardized assessments. They are adaptive diagnostic assessments that provide detailed information on students’ skills in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Previously, there was no available state-wide data that provided a consistent measure of these foundational reading skills.”

Reading assessments for the 2023-2024 school year are expected to be announced at an Oct. 22 meeting of the State Board of Education.

In January, the St. Louis Public School District launched “Literacy in the Lou,” which found the district providing new books to students to read at school and home. Missouri state appellate judges gathered at a St. Louis Head Start school in September to read to the preschoolers, color pictures, and mold clay letters.

Literacy is a civil right, crucial to democracy, employment and success in life, said Jane Brady, a retired Delaware judge and former attorney general who researches public policy, including efforts across the nation to improve literacy.

Brady says she and the president of the St. Louis NAACP, Adolphus Pruitt, have discussed approaches to teaching reading and improving literacy in Missouri.

“You have to have goal-setting and accountability,” Brady said, citing Mississippi as an example of a state with high poverty levels that saw reading test scores dramatically jump after modernizing curriculum to include science-based reading instruction and provide consequences.