This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 10 2011 - The man chosen to lead Imagine schools in St. Louis to higher levels of achievement, in the face of withering criticism from the mayor and a recommendation from Missouri's top education officials that they shut down, doesn't view his job as a turnaround situation.
Instead, Alan Olkes told the Beacon in an interview Thursday at the Imagine Academy of Environmental Science and Math at 1008 S. Spring, he needs to take a vehicle that has simply slowed down a little on its way up the hill and give it a little push.
"They've been on this road," Olkes said, "and we're moving along, and we've slowed down. We haven't run out of gas, but we're chugging a little. We need that boost."
At age 75, Olkes says he has retired three times but has always returned to education. A music teacher by training, he worked his way up through the Miami-Dade County school system in Florida, serving as a principal in middle school and high school, then as chief of staff to the superintendent. When his boss decided to leave, the school board asked Olkes to take his place.
"I didn't like being superintendent," he said, "because there was too much politics. So after six months I asked them to find someone to replace me."
He retired, but after Hurricane Andrew hit the area, he came back to help get the schools back on their feet. Then he retired again and began a consulting firm and a small charter school business that eventually was bought out by Imagine. That was when he retired a third time, but that didn't stick either.
Instead, Imagine head Dennis Bakke asked him back to become an executive vice president, and he has served in that position since 2004. He said he was chosen for the St. Louis spot because of his experience in dealing with crisis situations, and Bakke expected him to get up to speed right away.
"Dennis Bakke is an impetuous person," he said. "The next day he called and said, 'I'm here; why aren't you?' I took that as the clue I was supposed to be here."
Stepping into a bad situation
Olkes said he has spent the past several days meeting with all the principals at Imagine's six schools in St. Louis as well as with education officials at Missouri Baptist University, sponsor of the Imagine schools. The university has come under criticism for not addressing chronically substandard student achievement at Imagine.
That situation led to Mayor Francis Slay's harsh assessment of the company as poorly serving its 3,800 students in St. Louis. Last week, Chris Nicastro, Missouri's commissioner for elementary and secondary education, joined in the chorus of criticism, recommending to Missouri Baptist officials that they close the schools down at the end of the current school year.
Olkes acknowledged that achievement has been less than stellar if it is judged by state tests that compare Imagine students to everyone else in Missouri in the same grade. But he said that because students at the charters typically come in below grade level for their age, a more valid comparison would be not to other students their age but the students' own performance at the end of a school year compared to where they started.
Even if students progress one year for every year they are in an Imagine school, Olkes said, they will still be behind. If they gain more than one year for every year in class, they will still need time to catch up to where they are supposed to be.
"Most of the students we are enrolling are coming more than two years behind," he said. "Our testing methods and teaching methods try to push them beyond a year each year, so by the time we have had them for three years, they will show up better on the tests."
For students who have been with Imagine that long, he added, such results are occurring. But because of the transient population of St. Louis' students, many students don't stay in the system that long.
In St. Louis, Olkes was named to replace Sam Howard, who was placed on administrative leave by Imagine, pending the results of an internal investigation, after reports of his role in the company's financial dealings.
After those revelations, the Missouri Charter Public School Association called on the state auditor to look into Imagine's financial situation in St. Louis.
Asked about reports that while Imagine's corporate bottom line was helped by payments from St. Louis, students were forced to learn without adequate textbooks or materials, Olkes replied:
"The first thing I did when I got here was go through all the schools. I don't know where that came from. I have not found a school missing anything. There are books in every classroom. There are materials in every classroom. I ran a school district with 332 schools, and this is as well-equipped a group of schools as I have seen."
He said the company has brought auditors in to look at the financial situation. But he noted that while public school districts may pass bond issues when they need to raise money for facilities, charter schools may not; they need to use the funds allotted to them by the state based on enrollment to pay rent on their buildings as well as salaries, supplies and other needs.
"Every penny that comes in is used for the schools," Olkes said. "Is it used for rent? Is it used for the fees that they pay? Yes. But in paying for the building, paying for the materials, that goes toward the education of the students.
"I know the perception is bad. But the money goes back to the students."
Imagine has been criticized for being a for-profit school management company. Olkes said it is looking to move to nonprofit status, but as far as its financial health goes, it has always been nonprofit.
"We have lost money every years we have been in business, large amounts of money," he said. "Fortunately, Dennis Bakke has covered those losses."
Back to basics -- student achievement
He hopes to shift the focus away from finances and political fights and back to where he says it belongs -- student achievement. He said Imagine schools keep close track of how each student is performing and develop individual learning plans to make sure every child is taught in the most effective way.
"Each child learns differently," he said. "If a doctor had 30 patients in front of him and gave all of them the same prescription and said go home and come back in a month -- if I had a doctor like that, I'd walk out and never come back. You have to give each child what he needs.
"They were doing this all along. The problem existed because though we were doing this all along, we have slipped up in not observing it as closely as we should have. When you do that, sometimes you just don't get the push you should have."
Olkes said that he has sat down with officials at Missouri Baptist and from now on, instead of the university's education officials meeting among themselves and the people from Imagine meeting separately, both groups will be convening together.
"They have great resources and we have great resources," he said. "We have to work as a team. I don't know why people think it's a proprietary matter. The only way you can really get things done is to bring everybody together."
Missouri Baptist plans to measure progress by Imagine students three times during the school and decide based on those numbers whether to renew its sponsorship of the schools beyond this year. Olkes said he is "very confident" that come next November, the schools will be open and improving. He thinks real progress will be evident by this coming February.
"I think they have every intention of staying with us as long as we are doing a good job with the students," he said. "They're under a lot of pressure, and rightly so. We owe it to them to do all we can."
He plans to shuttle back and forth to St. Louis every week to make sure that the renewed push for achievement is getting the support it needs. He said based on what he has seen in the Imagine schools so far -- from principals, from teachers and from students -- his job will end in success.
"When there's a problem," Olkes said, "most of the time it involves people. I feel very strongly that the problem here centers on getting the best we can for kids. There is a lot of good teaching go on. The kids are happy, the kids are learning. What we've go to do is find the right structure to continue making sure these kids are getting best education they can.
"I've only been here since Monday. But our goal is to take each child and take him as far as we can push him. I'm not a miracle worker. But we are using every resource we have on this problem."