Word: websterisms
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What keeps the place from feeling like North Korea, though, is the genuinely benevolent interest the school's adults take in the lives of their students--on and off campus. Teachers at Webster know a remarkable amount about which girl's parents are breaking up and which boy chafes at his big sister's accomplishments. And they get involved. Last year teachers noticed that one girl was suddenly doing poorly in school: she was often tardy, slept through class, didn't do her homework and dyed her hair wild colors. Counselors made a visit to the address listed...
...Webster Groves Board of Education is convening in the one-story school-district building tucked into the shadow of the high school. Had out-of-town visitors driven to that meeting by way of Elm Street, with its lovingly restored Victorian homes valued at as much as $700,000, they might have assumed that the board's major task this evening was figuring out how best to invest all those tax revenues that must roll in from such a prosperous community. They would be wrong...
...fact, the Webster Groves public schools are facing a $1.2 million deficit in their $30 million annual operating budget, 80% of which goes to salaries and benefits. And the district faces millions of dollars in deferred repairs on the high school building, which dates from 1907. A close inspection of Webster Groves beyond its wealthiest avenues reveals the reasons for the deficit. To the north and south are neighborhoods of modest, well-kept homes that sell for less than $200,000 and bring in lower tax revenues. In short supply anywhere in town are land parcels given over to commercial...
There is not much difference of opinion in Webster Groves over whether teachers deserve more money. At $42,400, their average pay is slightly lower than the St. Louis County average. But it's notably below that of peer schools in some other suburbs in the county, which are luring some of the best teachers and prospects away from Webster. Just a month ago, a 14-day job action, in which teachers refused to participate in after-school activities to protest their paltry pay scale, ended with a tentative agreement that earmarks $5 million more for teacher salaries over...
...Webster Groves' taxes, which pay three-quarters of the school's budget, are not that out of line with those of neighboring districts like Kirkwood or Clayton. (A 58-year-old, 5-bedroom home that sold recently for $289,000 has an annual property tax of $2,914.) But because of the community's historic resistance to commercial development, and thus the limited options for raising new revenues, the board has little choice but to count on the district's voters to see them through to fiscal equilibrium...