Michael Thomas
In 2014, Michael Brown’s alma mater, Normandy High School, fell under intense public scrutiny. The district had lost accreditation two years earlier, and the state had taken control. Because it was unaccredited, students were allowed to transfer to higher-performing school districts, and the Normandy School District (now the Normandy Schools Collaborative) had to foot the bill. It cost millions, and the district was headed toward insolvency. Five years on, there are signs of change, though there’s still a long way to go.
Normandy’s accreditation troubles started in 2010, when the state closed Wellston, Missouri’s only all-black school system. State board officials would not move students into nearby high-performing white districts because, according to Michael Jones, then–vice president of the Missouri State Board of Education, “you’d have civil war.” Instead, the students were folded into Normandy, an under-resourced district that was already struggling.
Two years later, the district lost accreditation. The state took over, and all of the teachers had to reapply for their jobs. Half of them left, and those remaining were seriously demoralized. “There was a lot of shock at losing my colleagues,” recalls Duane Foster, the drama and choir teacher at Normandy High School. “I’m one of the few at the high school who kids know when they come back to visit.”
Students were allowed to transfer to accredited school districts, with Normandy footing the bill. As a result, the district had to shut down its gifted, honors, and AP programs. Just a month after Michael Brown was killed, the middle school and high school suspended around 20 percent of students for behavioral issues.
“We’ve had our struggles,” says Foster. “And that’s all the press seems to want to write about. People focus on the negative.”
Normandy has seen some bright spots, though. In 2014, Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis performed with the high school jazz band. That same year, Foster took his students to perform at Carnegie Hall. The school has also partnered with Operation Food Search to start an agribusiness education program, with students growing food used in school lunches. And Normandy graduated 127 students this spring, which interim principal Pablo Flinn says was the largest class of the past five years. One reason? The school’s accreditation was reinstated last January, ending its transfer program.
“I had a great experience at Normandy,” says Tori Foster, who was the school’s salutatorian when she graduated, in 2017. “I had so many opportunities there.” Tori was on the cheerleading squad, in AP and honors classes (which were restarted in 2015), and heavily involved in the fashion-design career path offered at the school. She was even working with a fashion designer and competing in design competitions. “We really supported each other at Normandy,” Tori recalls. “Students always came together to support the band, or if somebody had a play we’d make sure to buy tickets, stuff like that.”
Although Normandy High School has started doing better in state performance reports, it’s still well below state averages in English language arts, math, science, and social studies. The district’s elementary schools are faring better academically, which has led the district to revamp its structure. It’s building an early childhood education center for preschool, pre-kindergarten, and kindergarten, and it’s combining first through eighth grades into “ele-middle” schools—the first district in the state to try the model.
Today, Normandy students and staff are also still recovering from the trauma of Brown’s death. The district partners with youth development organization Wyman to offer students, staff, and faculty help spotting and dealing with trauma. Attendance is still volatile, especially at the high school, and test scores for the SAT and ACT continue to lag behind those in other districts.
“We’re not naïve,” says Normandy Schools Collaborative communications director Sharifah Sims-Williams. “We know there are huge challenges. Public education is a microcosm of the world we live in. We can’t leave it at the door. We bring it in with us, and it’s complicated. But we care about those students, and we’re doing our best.”
