Fellow Board Members:
It appears that it is necessary to clarify the idea of renaming the Mehlville School District, as well as provide additional information for the board to take in to consideration when thinking about this issue. It is important to have a clear understanding of the challenges we face regarding communication, branding, and acquiring resources to educate the children of our community in ways that are conducive to success in the early part of the 21st century. It is no longer enough just to say that we are doing what is best for our children and therefore expect a largely apathetic community (in relation to American public education) to come to our rescue. Communications and public relations are essential to the success of the children of the Mehlville School District, and in that, we must further define our role in communicating our message. Abraham Lincoln said, “Good leaders take people where they want to go, great leaders take them where they ought to go.” While renaming the Mehlville School District seems trivial on the surface, I believe it is an important and essential element in reinventing our image in the eyes of our community, requiring leadership.
Statement of the Problem
It is no secret that the Mehlville School District has always had a problem communicating its successes and needs to the community that we exist to serve. While there are many reasons for this, the major cause is the combination of the many “micro-communities” that make up our larger self, consisting of every lifestyle, socio-economic status, and creed, among other things. It is not news to any of us when a person speaks to the board about our diversity. As a part of unincorporated St. Louis County, the fact that our community does not have an easily definable identity is a major disability. Perhaps, if we discussed it for a while, we might develop an abstract definition of our rich history that could possibly pass as a description representing the majority of our community. However, it will be difficult to express it in a couple of words. That said, unfortunately, a couple of words are exactly what we need.
The Solution
The solution is to invest the time required to create those couple of words necessary to help us identify a genuine identity for our community. The criteria for doing this is wide-open, therefore it needs to be a community driven process; however, there are some potential problems and roadblocks, such as lobbying efforts of small groups, disproportionally pushing for a particular name. Because of this, it is imperative that we, as the board of education and elected representatives of our community to the Mehlville School District, maintain our right to have the final say. If successful, we might not only reinvent the image of the Mehlville School District, but also become innovators in how we educate our children and communicate with our community. Ultimately, the goal is to create a sense of pride in our district that would potentially allow our constituents to use our version of public education as the very institution that defines the way they identify themselves within our community.
Why is renaming the Mehlville School District a solution?
As previously mentioned at other venues, the name of our district does not represent our community as a whole, only one of the many “micro-communities” that make up our district. At almost every district function that I have been a part of, when the discussion boils down to communications, the name of our district, as it relates to the various townships that it serves, usually surfaces as a roadblock standing in our way, preventing us from effectively communicating with our stakeholders. COMPASS was the latest example of this communication conundrum. Identifying a name that better encompasses the many idiosyncrasies and diversities of our community is essential to providing us a hazard free conduit for projecting our message to the residents of our district. Once again, there is really nothing stopping us from becoming the very thing that our community identifies with.
Don’t we have more important things to worry about?
The short, oversimplified, on-the-surface answer is, “Yes.” The real, more complicated, but correct answer is, “Absolutely not!” If we were operating in a vacuum, with no extenuating circumstances, with a community that supported our efforts at 100%, and lived only to see American public education succeed, then yes, we would have to tend to more pressing matters. However, since educational utopia is not a reality for Mehlville, since we operate in the real world, and since we have more to overcome than what is made easy for us, something that seems as trivial as the name of the institution we are a part of becomes essential to the success of the children that pass through our doors. We should not let the perception of triviality hinder us from being effective leaders, making tough, but beneficial decisions for our district; taking our district where it “ought to go.” As Mr. Noble says, “It is only a matter of educating our community.” Remember, the goal is ultimately to unite our community behind something that everyone can identify with.
What’s in a name?
It appears that the biggest debate in this matter may be the outcome, not the decision to move forward. There have been some examples/suggestions recently, but if it is going to be a community driven process, it is probably best to hold off most of that debate until all of the suggestions are in. The names Truman and Grant were mentioned only as possibilities, not as something decided. What I would hope for is that some member of our community would come up with something that is so obvious that we would be bewildered as to why we did not think of it ourselves.
But what about the Mehlville-Oakville District?
I am looking at this as a 100% project. Mehlville-Oakville is better than nothing, but it only serves about 50% of the purpose of changing the name. Since it does include Mehlville and Oakville High Schools, it is more inclusive of the community, but it still does not grasp the essence of it. It is also more open to stigma and outside prejudice. As an example, how much passion does Ferguson-Florissant School District stir in you? It identifies the location of the school district in the St. Louis County area, but it does little to market its product.
There is a school of thought that says if a school district is innovative and creative enough, and if it does a good job branding itself, it will attract more pro-public education residents to the community, making it easier to implement the types of programs necessary to allow our children to compete with the rest of the city, state, nation, and world. When an institution goes beyond a community’s expectations to turn out an above average product, people want to be a part of it. Subconsciously, the name of an entity makes a big difference in a person’s impression of that entity, whether it is a city, a school, or even another person. A progressive, forward leaning name, similar to some charter schools around the country, would satisfy the other fifty percent. A name for a district can be progressive as it relates to the naming of an educational institution, yet still portray the conservative values of a community such as ours. While a name like the Mehlville-Oakville District would help us to define our entity to our community, it is just a little less than disingenuous and somewhat banal. That being said, if after all of the suggestions came in from our community, and the Mehlville-Oakville School District stood above the rest, then so be it; I could certainly live with it.
In Conclusion
While there are some, not many families in this community have the history in the Mehlville School District that my family has. My grandfather graduated from Mehlville in the 40’s, my father and mother in the early 70’s, myself in the early 90’s and my sons will graduate in the 20’s. I only mention this because it is important to know that the Mehlville School District and our community are part of me; they are in my blood. However, I graduated from Oakville High School, and that is where my emotional attachments lie. I have a “gut feeling” that the majority of the rest of this community feels the same way. However, I am not naïve enough to believe that there will not be exceptions. The bottom-line is that if we are going to do it, we should take the opportunity to do it right. This is an opportunity for us to be creative, imaginative, and innovative. Most of all, this is an opportunity for us to be the kind of leaders that Lincoln was speaking of. Renaming the Mehlville School District is by no means a trivial matter, and is certainly worthy of our time.
