Schools

Patch Asks Ladue Schools Chief About Class Sizes, "Turner" and Twitter

Part two of our back to school interview with the Ladue school superintendent.

This is second part of the interview with Marsha Chappelow. the new early childhood education center, working with new teachers and maintaining the new budget. Here, she addresses a number of new subjects including social media, and the waiting game over unaccredited transfer students.

Patch: What are the plans to reduce the size of number of students in each classroom?

Marsha Chappelow: Our class sizes this year are larger than people want to see. We’re about two over in each classroom, and especially in elementary, that’s not what parents want. Parents have expectations of smaller classrooms for their children. In the science area, you have to have equipment for your students, so we are limited in what we can do there.

Patch: Could the high school be revamped to more of a collegiate environment?

Marsha Chappelow: We actually visited one high school, West Side High School in Omaha (NE) that is similar to us, and they have a modular schedule. They have two, three larger classes together, then they break them out for smaller lab classes. They can vary their instructions depending on what sizes their classes are. Technology can help us with that, too. Stopping and taking a good look at where we want to go in the future is a good thing for us.

Patch: About taking transfers from nonaccredited districts.

Marsha Chappelow: We are looking at that and in consultation with our legal advisers. We are taking names and numbers and information from any students who want to come in (to our district), but right now we are not allowing that to happen until we get some procedures in place. There is a court date (, I believe Sept. 26, and hopefully some guidance will be given. There is a need for more procedures, especially for a district like us who is growing.

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We don't want to be in a situation where we take a transfer student one year, then have to eliminate them the next because we are over our size limit at a certain class level. That could happen.

Patch: Newsweek ranked Ladue in the top 500 best high schools in the nation once again. Obviously, it takes a total school district commitment to get there and stay there.

Marsha Chappelow: The key to our total commitment is we hire good people to teach each year, and they care about about students' success. And you blend that with kids who come from good homes where education is important, and it is important to have good resources, too. We’ve had to cut back, but we’re fortunate to have resources to help students, and it takes a whole team to do that.

Patch: Does it take a lot of communication to be successful?

Marsha Chappelow: I talked about that with our new teachers. They cannot come in here and know everything they are supposed to know in five days. But they should know how they are going to communicate with their parents.

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How are you (teachers) going to develop that home-school connection? That will add to your success as a new teacher, and more importantly, to the success you are going to have with your students.

That home-school connection is key and sometimes, something we overlook. We never overlook parents, but sometimes we take them for granted.

Patch: Any new, major changes for the district this year?

Marsha Chappelow: We are updating our communications. We are going to the Google platform for emails. We also have updated our website. For all of our district employees, we have our employees intranet operational. We’ve been working on that for two years now. We are going to save time for teachers and administers. They won’t be scrambling for papers. There is one place to find out all about their benefits, and they can go for just about everything else. And we think that is real peace of mind.

We are looking to do a master plan. Not just for our high school, but where all our other facilities stand. This is good planning for a community. We don’t want to plan for a building that down the road, in five to 10 years, that building could become obsolete. If not, you could sink money into a building you did not have to do.This district needs to look for a happy medium. We need to be more proactive than reactive.

Older school buildings are just like your homes. You have to do things to stay updated. We’ve added some new carpeting at the high school.

Going from industrial technology to the information age, older buildings can become obsolete.

City halls are starting to find that out. Because their buildings are old, governments are not able to give the services that their people expect.

Buildings were built not to last forever. Unfortunately, we have the economy that we have. I really believe you pay for what you get.

Patch: And lastly, the word is out that you will have a new Twitter account.

Marsha Chappelow: I have heard that, but I have not started yet. One thing, we could get the word out very fast when we have a snow day. We do board docs (an online resource for school board meeting documents) in real time for people who cannot come to board meetings. You can Twitter one line, like “Board approves new Westminster (purchase)." And that’s all people are really interested in at first.

I think its a great way to highlight what kids do. There are a lot of concerts, and games and we have a lot of clubs, and sports and this is a way for people to broaden their view of the community. Even if they don’t have children in our district. People might say, "Oh, I didn’t know they did that."


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