Fighting for Students in St. Louis

St. Louis — One recent Saturday morning, the leader of a school not yet open began knocking on doors, searching for his future students.

Jeremy Esposito stopped everyone he saw there on Pennsylvania Avenue in south St. Louis — children playing with hoses, teens on bikes, a man with a flask.

Esposito, incoming principal of KIPP Inspire Academy, knows that dozens of schools in St. Louis are fighting for just such children. His meetings with families, then, often end with a hard sell, a contract and a request: Sign here.

St. Louis schools, both public and private, have long fought to capture city students. But never quite like this.


"There's more competition for city school kids, for all kids, than ever before," said Sue Brown, director of marketing and community relations for the Catholic Education Office at the St. Louis Archdiocese. "We're fighting for every one."

A rise in the number of charter schools, such as KIPP, has put new schools or their billboards in nearly every neighborhood and stolen thousands of students from the public district. And for that matter, even Catholic schools have had to compete to not lose students to charter schools...

Public schools fight back:

By the start of this school year, charters enrolled nearly 10,000 students, about one-third as many as are enrolled in St. Louis Public Schools.

The district, now with an appointed board and a new superintendent, is seeking to turn that tide. The first moves this year streamlined a scattered district budget, with leaders agreeing two months ago to close 14 of the district's 85 schools this summer, and, last week, budgeting to cut $53 million from the $342 million spent this year.

At the same time, and with much less public debate, leaders have begun to focus on improving schools and singing their praises.

In February, Superintendent Kelvin Adams asked the board to approve $1 million for marketing.

The first $100,000 would probably go to area firm TOKY Branding + Design — now in negotiations with the district — to recreate the St. Louis Public Schools' image.

It would be an expensive, high-class project for a public district — TOKY designed a recruiting book for the $21,000-a-year Whitfield School in Creve Coeur, for instance, that won a national award.

The contract would include reworking logos, developing scientific surveys, building advertising strategies and redesigning letterhead, posters, newsletters and recruiting brochures.

District communications director Patrick Wallace said TOKY would find out why families did not enroll in district schools and what it would take to get them to. Then the firm would recommend how to get the message out...

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