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THE DECADE, pg 6
Support for medical marijuana growing
Clayton High School
1 Mark Twain Circle
I do not understand why in this late age of the twenty-first century we are still fighting wars. I think that’s the central question of the human condition. Rebecca Taylor English teacher
Volume 81, Issue 5
Clayton, MO 63105
Two options proposed for WMS renovations Eby by Noah Editor
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Cheer squad doubles in size
‘Brundibar’ opera honors Holocaust
Multiple APs challenge students
After a five-month investigation, Wydown Tomorrow presented its findings to the Board of Education last month. The 16-member committee drafted two options that it believes will adequately address Wydown Middle School’s issues, namely a lack of space. The first option involves reusing parts of the current building and building additions. The plan would cost $35.4 million, result in a four percent increase in green space, and include 98 parking spots. However, it would take the auditorium offline for 29 months and the field and track offline for 19 months. The fine arts program and administration would have to be relocated for 29 months and 15 months, respectively. “For me, one of the cons is the fact that we would be without a theatre and it would greatly impact our performing arts program,” said Wydown Principal Mary Ann Goldberg, who was part of the Wydown Tomorrow committee. The second option proposed by Wydown Tomorrow is to build a completely new school on the existing site, which would be accomplished by building on the current playing field. Option two would cost $38.3 million, increase the green space by 19 percent, and include 108 parking spaces. It would cause the field and track to be offline for 31 months and the gym and locker room to be offline for 15 months. Goldberg said that though this is the most expensive option, it is the one she would rather see carried out. “The pro of course for the new school is that it will be a new school, everything will be new, it will be probably be a building that will be built for 50 to 75 years, and it’s one of the [op-
Courtesy of Bond & Wolfe Architects
TOP: Option One for the renovation of WMS involves renovating and building additions on the current building. BOTTOM: Option Two is to build a completely new building by flipping the locations of the current school and field. Though it would cost about $3 million more than Option One, Option Two would have a lesser impact on WMS’s performing arts program. tions] that least impacts our schedule here,” Goldberg said. “Every principal’s dream is building a new school.” Building a new school or renovating the current building will be no easy task. As students have seen at CHS, even minor construction can be a hassle, and Clayton School District Direc-
tor of Communications Chris Tennill said that the process of renovating or rebuilding Wydown will be no walk in the park. “You can’t do any construction like that on a campus, I mean, even with what we’re doing at Clayton High School right now, without creating
some minor inconveniences in terms of parking and everything,” Tennill said. “With the situation at Wydown, we’re actually looking at, one way or another, recreating a whole school. It’s going to be inconvenient, it’s going to be tough.” Students and staff will undoubtedly
Ten best movies of the year
Staff Photo
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American Girl discontinues doll
Current Clayton Superintendent Don Senti plans to retire following the 2009-2010 school year. The search for a replacement has resumed after one of the three finalists dropped out because of personal reasons just weeks before a decision was to be made.
District restarts superintendent search as candidate drops out Colagiovanni by Ben Reporter
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‘Snow Angel’ receives praise
Index: 2 World
4 Community 6 InDepth 9 Sports 13 Features 17 Arts 21 Forum 24 InFocus
The Clayton School District Board of Education has decided to begin searching for a new superintendent… again. The open administrative position, caused by current superintendent Don Senti’s decision to retire following the 2009-2010 school year, has yet to be filled despite the school board’s ability to narrow the search for a replacement to three finalists. A few weeks before a decision was to be made, one of the top three candidates dropped out of contention for personal reasons. Instead of choosing from one of the remaining two finalists, the school board decided to restart the search process completely. “The superintendent is considered to be the CEO of the district,” school board President Omri Praiss said. “The superintendent is responsible for overseeing the effective overall management and operation of the district. That would include things such as curriculum matters, financial matters and hiring administrators. I think we all knew going in that this is the most important decision the school board makes. We make a lot of decisions but this is the one that you want to get right. The Board, recognizing the significance of this decision, felt that it was in everyone’s best interest to start the process all over.” The importance of the decision is heightened in light of the fact that the school district has had just three superintendents in the last 39 years. While restarting the search may seem like a daunting task, a unique leadership profile, compiled by consulting firm Hazard, Young, Attea (HYA), should help to make the new process move more quickly. The leadership profile, which outlines the characteristics desired in the new super-
intendent, was compiled following four “focus groups,” held by HYA consultants and the school board, conducted over the course of 12 days in April and May. According to Praiss, these focus groups were “meetings to get input from a significant number of students from Clayton, parents, other community members, teachers, staff, and the school board.” At each of these focus groups, a survey was handed out to every individual in attendance. The survey entailed ranking a number of criteria on a scale of 1-10. HYA then categorized the responses by affiliation with the district, which ranged from board members to community members, into a leadership profile. The profile showed that 164 people completed surveys and submitted them to HYA. The result was a clear, cohesive picture of what attributes all stakeholders in the district wanted in the new superintendent. “There was a lot of alignment between all of the different groups in terms of the general qualities that we’re looking for and what’s important to us,” Praiss said. According to the profile, characteristics that consistently received high priority rankings from all participants, regardless of the category to which they belonged, included “backbone, communication skills, ethical, experienced, and visionary.” Praiss emphasized the importance that the leadership profile will play in speeding up the process. “We have a leadership profile and we plan to take advantage of that, and it will allow us to move the process much more expeditiously,” Praiss said. Despite the open nature of the focus groups, the rest of the search process is confidential.
Superintendent search pg. 4
be faced with a challenge once the construction gets underway, and it remains to be seen whether they will be able to adjust to such a major disturbance. “I think they’ll adapt to it, it’s just how much you can adapt to it…” Goldberg said. “If you don’t have a theatre to perform in, there’s only so much adapting that you can do.” According to the Clayton School District’s website, “The committee carefully considered the need to continue to educate Wydown students during construction” and “explored temporarily relocating all or part of Wydown’s programs to an alternate site….” Goldberg said that the committee did not look too deeply into how exactly programs would be adjusted to accommodate construction. Tennill also said that the district has some “general ideas” of how programs would be relocated and that they would be refined after the plans for Wydown are finalized. The BOE will make a decision on Wydown’s future by Jan. 25 so that a bond issue can be placed on the April ballot. However, the bond issue would not raise the property tax rate as Proposition S did. Once the BOE decides, the district will begin to campaign as they did for Prop. S last year. After the election, if the bond issue passes, the district would begin to draw up detailed plans for construction. “If they have a bond issue, if the bond issue passes, then what they have to do is sit down with the architects and actually plan out the whole thing,” Goldberg said. “What they have in front of them now in the options are the concepts of how it would be.” Goldberg said that if the bond issue passes, construction would likely begin in the spring of 2011. Construction for both options would be completed in November 2013.
Plans drafted for public library move to CHS campus Praiss by Zachary Reporter
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Dec. 16, 2009
Imagine the potential synergy of three different entities coming together to create something greater than their sum. That is the vision behind the MidCounty Library Joint Use Facility conceptual study, which would connect Clayton High School, the Center of Clayton and the Mid-County Library in collaboration between the School District of Clayton, the City of Clayton and the St. Louis County Library (SLCL) to greater serve the members of the community and CHS. The idea of a joint use library connected to both CHS and the Center was inspired by the success of the Center. Today, CHS students and members of the community are often found working out next to one another in the Center, since they share the joint use facility. Following the completion of the Center, some discussion began between the School District, the City of Clayton, and the SLCL concerning the benefits of adding the Mid-County Library to this unique connected facility in the future. “The same synergy that happened when the school district and the city put together a community center, something that neither governmental entity could have done alone,” said Don Senti, Clayton School District Superintendent. “And we actually proved through that, that governments can work together.” Consequently, Senti believes that a similar synergy and collaboration to that of the Center would be necessary for the Mid-County Library Joint Use Facility, but furthermore, the benefits of such a synergy would be tremendous. Craig Owens, the City Manager for the City of Clayton, explained how the library is an important aspect of the community where people can read, learn and gather together. Owens said the joint use library would be a national model library that would have multigenerational use between members of the community and CHS, in addition to a high level of service and resources for Clayton residents and students. “[The library] would be situated in a geographic position in the community center combination high school plan, so that it would be very convenient to the community center, and the Center of Clayton, and it would also be very accessible to the high school class-
rooms,” said Ted Christner, the Chairman Emeritus of Christner Inc., the architectural firm which presented the designs of the conceptual study. “[Our] goal was to allow all of the resources in that library to be available to all generations but to have it configured and managed in a way that the individual generations could kind of have a place of their own.” The proposed three-story library would be located on the northwestern corner of the CHS campus at the southern end of the Center of Clayton. It would be connected to the Center on the second floor near the running track and there would be a bridge on the third floor connecting it to the future addition of CHS. The third floor of the library would be specifically for CHS students both before and during the school day. “Pretty much everyone thinks it is a good idea… it seems like it would be in everybody’s best interest,” Senti said. “It would give us a better library, a bigger library, and a library that is accessible for our [students’] expanded hours.” The third floor of the library would accommodate the high school collection and include tables and study rooms for the use of the students. In addition, the CHS floor of the library would have a few classrooms and computer labs as well as a video production studio. “[CHS] would get a world class library, a library that is light-years ahead of other libraries,” said Tim Wadham, the Assistant Director of Youth and Community Services for the SLCL. In addition, students would have free access to the materials of the MidCounty Library, including their general collection, located on the second floor. “I think our program would improve because we would have more access to resources…. I think they have a really wonderful collection that we could certainly benefit from… and also they have a huge number of databases compared to us,” said Victoria Jones, the Head Librarian of the School District of Clayton. Unlike the CHS library today, the joint use library would also be open to students during all of its regular operating hours. “I think it sounds fantastic in a lot of ways because it would just open up the doors to more resources for our students,” said Lauran DeRigne, the
Public library pg. 4