The withdrawal of accreditation imposes a severe sanction on an historical school district, one that no longer exists; one that in the past hindered the education of our children for years, but one that departed last year. For nearly three years, the KCMSD was led by short-sighted people, selected by a flawed process, who actively hindered the implementation of the district's new curriculum. That curriculum was the first in Missouri to meet your Show-Me standards and be aligned with the Department's Curriculum Frameworks, a curriculum written before the last superintendent's tenure, but a curriculum still not widely implemented in the KCMSD. The people who failed to implement that curriculum also failed to reform professional development and change classroom practices to accommodate the curriculum or to integrate new assessments into teaching. They are no longer in the KCMSD. But the consequences they put into motion now threaten the very survival of the newly led District.

For the first time in the KCMSD's history, a superintendent was selected for the KCMSD under the auspices of an outside organization, the Monitoring Committee, the only duty of which is to assist the school district in complying with court orders, primarily to improve teaching and learning. With the new superintendent's leadership, for the first time, personnel decisions are now being made on the basis of academic merit and teaching ability. For the first time, the superintendent himself is both contractually bound to improve, and financially rewarded for improving, student performance. For the first time, personnel decisions involving teachers and principals have been removed from the school board and vested in the superintendent. For the first time in memory, the superintendent has a close and positive relationship with the Monitoring Committee which he regards as a resource and ally, not an opponent. These institutional reforms make this a wholly new school district, distinguishable from its predecessors. To withdraw accreditation for the acknowledged failures of earlier administration, imposes hardships on the children while undermining efforts of this administration, newly appointed and focused on the very educational reforms we all recognize as essential to improve student achievement.

Loss of accreditation will exacerbate the huge problem created this year when 3,800 students, disproportionately higher achieving kids, left to attend charter schools. Charter schools, of course, are not a concern, except for the two urban, minority school districts, in Missouri. Loss of accreditation will accelerate that brain drain, making it nearly impossible to meet some of the achievement standards required for restoration of accreditation and the KCMSD will lapse. The perception that charter schools unfairly burden only minority school districts becomes reality when they contribute either to the loss of accreditation or make its restoration unattainable.

For a school district that has recently cut $55 million to balance its budget and now faces further huge and abrupt cuts because of the charter schools, the loss of additional millions because of accreditation loss induced flight will make achieving the district's academic goals beyond reach and reason.

Loss of accreditation will cripple the district's ability to recruit and retain talented teachers and other staff. It will likely cripple its important use of student teachers. And it will make recruiting to Kansas City talented administrators a near impossibility. How, we ask, under those circumstances, can Ben Demps be expected to improve student performance dramatically when his hands are tied by the stigma of an unaccredited school district?

This consequence, once invoked, becomes irreversible, causing the district to spiral downward in a cycle it will lack the means to break because in large part of this consequence itself.

The mere threat of this consequence has already prompted Judge Whipple in the federal case to set a hearing for Tuesday at 9:00 a.m., citizens to initiate a petition drive to dissolve the district, and parents to panic. The consequence itself, if levied by you, will unleash forces none of us can foresee, with outcomes for children and our city none of us can predict.

For our children, we ask for one concession of you, and promise three significant steps in return. Our 32,000 children deserve a district that has a chance to bring them home to a good education. Eighty percent come from homes in deep poverty; eighty percent are racial minorities; many of them changes residences - and schools - more than once a year; many of them have never held a book before they come to school but all of them have been raised by television. For these kids we ask you to table the withdrawal of accreditation. Bring it up again whenever you determine that progress is not being made toward improving teaching and learning and performance.

In return, we have asked the KCMSD for three promises, and you should require the same:

First, that KCMSD request continued court supervision and guidance toward achieving the improved student performance standards that are both court-mandated goals and state-accreditation standards.

Second, that KCMSD agree to waive its objection to the clock running on the two-year period provided by statute before which the state may dissolve the district. In other words, the state will lose not a single day in imposing its ultimate sanction if the KCMSD does not make strong progress toward gaining its permanent accreditation if you today continue provisional accreditation.

Third, the KCMSD must submit to DESE and be approved by the Commissioner or by you concrete steps and short-duration timelines for implementing specific actions to a) implement the new curriculum, b) improve classroom teaching practices, c) reform professional development to make it research-based, effective, and integrated with curriculum and assessment, d) make new assessment and especially MAP objectives an integral part of everyday teaching and learning in every classroom, e) implement an accountability plan, already drafted, that will assure attainment of items A to D; and, f) assure that all personnel decisions are based on teaching and learning criteria.

With these actions, you will assure that the goals of the statute are met, without sacrificing your ability to impose timely sanctions if they are not. At the same time, you will avoid imposing further burdens on a school district just now emerging from years of wasted opportunities under the leadership of a new superintendent whose only goal and only focus are helping students find their way to deep understanding of all that will enable them to be productive citizens in the coming century. Thanks to Judge Russell Clark, the KCMSD has done all the expensive but easy things such as new schools and equipment. Now it is on the verge of doing the inexpensive but supremely difficult things, such as changing how teachers teach and children learn. Those huge efforts, so long neglected, have only just begun under the encouraging leadership of Ben Demps. Don't make a difficult task for him an impossible task for the school district. Please, keep the doors of the school district open and inviting, while we re-make what goes on inside so that our children may finally come home. What Tennyson wrote of Ulysses is true of our students. They are "made weak by time and fate, but [are]strong of will/To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." To the boys and girls in Kansas City, we are unseen Olympian gods, hurling unfathomable obstacles in their path. Withdrawing accreditation hinders, it does not promote, their efforts "to strive, to seek, to find", to learn and to understand.