G N MO TAE the
TAX TIME IS NEAR
A LEGACY IN DESIGN
Meramec students offer free tax service.
What’s new at the Meramec Art Gallery?
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SOFTBALL UPDATE
NEED A COFFEE FIX?
Softball season is in full swing.
The best coffee spots around campus.
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April 2025
Volume 60 Issue 7
STLCC ’s Grades Have Posted College Remains Stagnant in 2nd Best Place to Work Survey JACOB POLITTE
MANAGING EDITOR
S
TLCC once again participated in the St. Louis Business Journal’s “Best Place To Work” survey and much like the last survey, it appears that the college has some things to address despite some visible improvements. The college managed an overall score of 70.14, down nearly a full percentage point from the 2023 score of 70.93. In a message to faculty and staff on the day of the report’s release, Chancellor Jeff Pittman said, “Our leadership team and I are committed to addressing the areas for improvement highlighted in the survey.” Speaking to The Montage late last week, Pittman said that he doesn’t dwell on the overall score, instead focusing on the rest of the survey, which he considered to be an overall improvement from two years ago. “It looks like we’re making progress,” he said. “Not only with our metrics of student enrollment and completion and other metrics. I was also encouraged by the higher level of engagement that we saw from the employees. And that can be hard getting engagement, because we’re spread across four campuses. So I thought the results of it went pretty well.” While the 637 faculty and staff who participated in the survey left over 2,000 comments, those highlighted in the survey mostly centered around two main criticisms. Pathways and Re-Org face criticism A recurring frustration from a sample of the responses provided in the report centers around the college’s new Pathways initiative and the overall nature of the recent reorganization of Academic Affairs across college campuses. One anonymous comment reads, “The
recent re-org has left many faculty feeling confused and undervalued. We have never been offered a clear explanation for why the extremely disruptive re-org was necessary, and now, not even having our own dean on our campus leaves us feeling unsupported at a time when we need lots of support (especially with all of the construction). Not having a physical dean on our campus is a major detriment to faculty.”
Ferguson-Florissant Budget Shortfall Puts STLCC Board Chair in Hot Seat Kevin Martin leads two school boards, one of which has seen controversy
That particular commenter also lamented the elimination of courses like poetry and creative writing in favor of “Pathways” required courses.
JACOB POLITTE
They said that it “goes against the very heart of the community college model: a place to explore, to find a love for learning, a place where education is not a “means to an end”. The myopic focus on “Pathways” makes it clear that STLCC sees education as a means to an end getting a job. I would venture to guess that no instructor on campus believes that this is the sole point of post-secondary education.”
STLCC Board of Trustee Chair Kevin Martin’s involvement as the President of the Board of Education at the Ferguson-Florissant School District is now raising some eyebrows in the local education scene.
They continued, “We are a place where students can take time to explore who they are, often at a critical time in their identity development (early adulthood). Asking them to foreclose early on this identity development by being so outcome-focused flies in the face of all that we know about what benefits young adults’ identity development.” Another comment that also addressed senior leadership focused on the reorganization, echoing the comments above. “The college decided to go through a reorganization process,” they said. “Reorganization is not necessarily a bad thing, but no empirical data or cogent reasoning was provided, other than we should be aligned with Pathways. ‘Listening sessions’ were held, but when people voiced true worries and concerns,
MANAGING EDITOR
This comes after news broke in early March that the Ferguson-Florissant School Board announced a $7.7 million budget shortfall that will lead to cuts to resources and staffing. This comes after that same Board had already slashed $1.4 million from their budget in late February. There are financial reasons for the shortfall. In a letter to parents obtained by The Montage and published by KSDK, the district claims that years of declining enrollment since before the COVID-19 pandemic, higher costs, changes in state funding and a reduced amount of local tax revenue contributed to the issue. Another big issue is the depletion of their “fund balance” without yet having a strategic plan to address the shortfall. Martin told The Montage that the shortfall did not come out of nowhere, noting that these claims from the district as well as turnover
in the district’s financial and human resources offices the past few years helped lead to the oversight. “While these challenges had been discussed, the extent of the shortfall became more apparent as we continued to monitor our financial situation over time,” Martin said. “While the district did anticipate some financial challenges,” he continued, “the full scope was more significant than expected, and we did not have a fully developed contingency plan in place to address it.” When pressed on the lack of a strategic plan, Martin said that the board recognizes that a more proactive, strategic plan could have been developed earlier to better prepare for such financial challenges. “It is the Board as a whole who is only allowed to take action and not a single member,” he said. The shortfall, as well as an investigation into the district’s former superintendent over sexual harassment allegations that led to his dismissal in mid-March, happened under Martin’s watch. That former superintendent, Joseph Davis, even formally accused Martin of discrimination, something Martin himself denies.
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meramecmontage.com S er ving the St. L ouis Communi ty Colle ge - Me ra me c Ca mpus c o m m u n i t y s in c e 1 96 4
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