NEWS
Hartsburg wife accused of sex with teen boy – Columbia Daily Tribune, Jan. 16, 2009
Progress goals only tell part of MAP story – Columbia Daily Tribune, Aug. 18, 2009
Safety failures cited in fatal school accident – Columbia Daily Tribune, June 22, 2009
For school audit, familiarity trumps savings – Columbia Daily Tribune, March 4, 2010
Schools fall short on achievement – Columbia Daily Tribune, Dec. 15, 2009
Bond gets thanks at Thompson – Columbia Daily Tribune, Feb. 18, 2010
Hartsburg wife accused of sex with teen boy
By JONATHON BRADEN
Of the Tribune’s staff
Wanda Leach didn’t think anything strange was going on at her neighbor’s house near Hickman High School, even though she has seen teenage boys come and go from the residence on a regular basis for months.
But Columbia police say the residence at 200 E. Forest Ave. was a hangout for high school students to drink alcohol, smoke marijuana and, for at least one teenager, to have sex with a 47-year-old married Hartsburg woman.
“I thought maybe students lived there and these kids were just going there, maybe visiting,” said the 71-year-old Leach.
Melody Link, 47, of 5740 E. Eagle Trace, was charged this morning with three counts of second-degree statutory rape and one count of second-degree statutory sodomy after police alleged she engaged in sexual acts with a 16-year-old boy at least 50 times. She was arrested at her home yesterday and released from the Boone County Jail on $27,000 bond.
Each count is a Class C felony punishable by up to seven years in prison and a $5,000 fine, Boone County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Andy Scholz said.
Police were notified in mid-December of the alleged activity, Columbia police Sgt. Ken Hammond said, when the father of a 16-year-old boy told police that he suspected his son was having an “ongoing sexual relationship” with Link.
In an interview with police, the 16-year-old said the relationship included intercourse and oral sex and occurred on near-daily basis since August at the Forest Avenue house Link was renting near Hickman High, according to a probable cause statement written by Detective Joseph Jackson.
Scholz said he thought the most recent alleged sexual activity took place on Dec. 12. Link is married to Columbia dentist Brian Link.
Hammond said the 16-year-old boy had a key to Link’s rental house. “They pretty much had free rein of the residence – food, alcohol present, satellite TV,” Hammond said this morning. Link’s residence was “basically a squat house where they would come and hang out and do as they please,” he said.
The 16-year-old told police Link provided him and his friends with “food, cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana as well as providing them with the capabilities to view adult movies,” the probable cause statement says.
When police interviewed witnesses, two of them said they observed Link and the 16-year-old boy having sexual intercourse at the Forest Avenue residence, the probable cause statement says.
The owner of the residence, Steve Wenger, declined to comment this morning. The house now has a “for lease” sign in front of it.
Leach, who has lived at 106 E. Forest Ave. for 21 years, said she would sometimes see four or five boys go to the residence during the noon hour. “But I never thought anything was going on,” she said. She thought the boys were probably Hickman students. The residence is about 400 feet from Hickman.
Link has been accused of illegal activity with minors in the past. According to the Tribune’s archives, in September 1999, she was accused by Southern Boone County Middle School parents of serving alcohol at a 14-year-old’s birthday party. No criminal charges were filed.
Reach Jonathon Braden at 573-815-1711 or e-mail jbraden@columbiatribune.com.
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Progress goals only tell part of MAP story
By JONATHON BRADEN
jbraden@columbiatribune.com | 815-1711
West Boulevard Elementary is the most improved school in the district, according to Missouri Assessment Program scores from 2006 to 2009.
Yet the federal government has placed the school on improvement level 1, meaning students have public school choice and the school must create a two-year improvement plan. The school’s rising performance hasn’t been enough to meet federal progress goals.
“You can’t just go by what the MAP score is,” said Ines Segert, a member of the Columbia Board of Education.
An examination of individual school data reveals the false simplicity of judging a school purely based on whether its students met annual yearly progress, or AYP, goals set by the federal government. Some schools that have continually reached federal goals have declined more in the past three years than sanctioned schools. Other schools that failed to achieve the federal benchmarks continue to show a steady rise in test scores.
“You definitely have to look at growth over time,” Segert said.
This year’s MAP scores, released last week, measure how many students score proficient or better in a subject according to the MAP standards. If one subgroup at a school does not meet the federally set goals for communication arts or math, the entire school fails to meet its progress goal. This year, those goals were for 59.2 percent of students to score proficient or better in communication arts and 54.1 percent proficient or better in math.
At West Boulevard, 14.8 percent of students scored proficient or better in math in 2006, compared with 22.2 percent this year. The school experienced similar improvement in communication arts, improving from 17 percent in 2006 to 25.6 percent in 2009.
“Even though you’re not meeting AYP,” Chief Academic Officer Sally Beth Lyon said, “you’re still seeing growth.”
Lyon said administrators were happy but cautious about the improvement because MAP scores don’t measure year-to-year student growth.
Other Columbia schools that escaped federal sanctions have shown declines. New Haven Elementary received no sanctions this year, but its math and communication arts scores have fallen 10.3 percentage points and 12 percentage points, respectively, from 2006 to 2009.
Some of the school district’s high-achieving schools, according to MAP scores, also have experienced setbacks, including Ridgeway Elementary. The school’s math and communication arts scores have fallen 9.8 and 8.7 percentage points, respectively, since 2006. But the school still scored the third-highest of all elementary schools in math and the highest in communication arts.
And then there’s Mill Creek Elementary, a top-performing anomaly. The school’s math scores have jumped 4.7 percentage points, and its communication arts scores have dipped just 0.6 percentage points. In 2009, 63 percent of its students scored proficient or better in communication arts, and 65 percent of its students scored proficient or better in math, making it the district’s best-performing elementary school in math MAP scores.
Safety failures cited in fatal school accident
BY JONATHON BRADEN
jbraden@columbiatribune.com | 815-1711
The scaffolding collapse that killed a man at a Columbia school construction site in November was the result of two parts failing within 1 to 1½ seconds, according to a report filed with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Accident investigators placed no negligence on any party, calling the collapse “a typical wear and tear failure,” said Gene Robertson, a senior engineering consultant with Siebert Engineers Inc., a company with offices in Illinois and Kansas City that investigated the accident report for OSHA. But Robertson said the type of hydraulic scaffolding used at the school should be avoided because of its safety devices.
He and Conrad Joanis, vice president of the company, inspected the scaffolding for three days. The scaffolding was used at the construction site of Alpha Hart Lewis Elementary School, which is expected to open in January in north Columbia. On Nov. 10, Alan Hildebrand, a 53-year-old bricklayer, died after the scaffolding collapsed during work on walls for the school gym.
OSHA closed its case file on the accident Jan. 28. The Tribune obtained a copy of the 152-page report through a Freedom of Information Act request.
“First of all, they need to do away with that design,” Robertson said last week in a phone interview. He said the collapse happened because of two independent system failures.
First, on the hydraulic scaffolding, a cylinder with a hook runs perpendicular to the scaffolding’s length. That hook normally latches onto slots as the scaffolding rises and lowers. But because of typical wear and tear on the equipment at the school, Robertson said, the hook rested on the edge of a slot instead of inside it.
“It could have operated that way for a long time, and they never noticed,” he said. “If they did a safety check on this thing and ran through it, they would not have noticed that problem.”
In addition, the scaffolding’s safety devices include safety dogs — metal plates that alternately engage a support section that the platform rides up and down.
For fractions of seconds, the safety devices might not be engaged, and as the hook hung on the edge of the slot, Robertson said, the safety dogs on the right side failed.
Engineers determined 1/32-inch of debris had built up on the safety devices. This meant the safety dog could not fit into the mast, and the safety devices did nothing, creating no pressure for the right-side lifting system. “They just sit there,” Robertson said.
Nowhere in the manufacturer’s manual does it suggest that operators of the scaffolding should clean or perform maintenance on the safety dogs, Robertson said.
About 3 p.m. Nov. 10, workers heard a loud pop — the sound of the hook slipping off the scaffolding. With the right-side safety devices not engaged, the scaffolding collapsed, leading to the death of Hildebrand and injuries to two others.
“Either one of those without the other,” Robertson said, “there would have been no accident.”
Because the scaffolding doesn’t always have a safety device engaged, he said, he thinks it shouldn’t be used. “I wouldn’t want to be on anything where you’re having your safety mechanism come in and out,” he said. “There should always be some type of safety mechanism engaged.”
Bennu Innovation Inc., the Canadian company that manufactured the scaffolding, filed for bankruptcy in 2003, Robertson said. In 2004, Jerry Castle of Bennu Parts & Service Inc. bought the rights to the Bennu name and to manufacture spare parts for Bennu products. Since then, Robertson said, Castle has been working on a safer scaffolding design.
“I didn’t manufacture that,” Castle said of the collapsed scaffolding last week. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.” He declined to comment further.
Dean Hathman of Dean Hathman Masonry Co., the subcontractor building the school, also declined to comment.
Hildebrand’s relatives have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit alleging the scaffolding was defective. Bennu Innovation, Illinois-based Bennu Parts & Service Inc. and Summit Specialty Products Inc. of Grandview — which sold the equipment to Hathman Masonry — are listed as defendants.
The lawsuit filed in Boone County Circuit Court claims the scaffolding lacked adequate rails and guards to prevent workers from being thrown off, proper interlocks to prevent collapse and a warning system to alert workers before a collapse. In the OSHA report, investigators wrote the “appropriate guarding was in the vicinity of the lift.” Some sections of the guarding were in place on the platform during the site inspection, it said. Other sections had been picked up and put against a wall, the report said.
Alan Vinson of Professional Contractors and Engineers Inc., the general contractor for the school, said the only hydraulic scaffolding Hathman used on the site was the one that collapsed. Hathman used the hydraulic scaffolding, which can rise above 35 feet, to build the gym walls of the school. “That was one of the few places where that type of scaffolding made sense,” Vinson said.
After the collapse, the scaffolding was taken to Elk Grove Village, Ill., where Bennu Parts and Services is located, for testing. Once OSHA investigators completed their study at the accident site, Vinson said, Hathman installed a stick scaffolding unit and finished the gym walls.
For school audit, familiarity trumps savings
BY JONATHON BRADEN
jbraden@columbiatribune.com | 815-1711
A school committee suggested yesterday that Columbia Public Schools keeps its current auditor, a move poised to cost the district tens of thousands of dollars more than if it hired other firms that applied for the job.
The Columbia Board of Education’s finance committee recommended the board retain Gerding, Korte & Chitwood of Columbia to audit the district’s budget rather than going with a less expensive St. Louis firm. District administrators and board members said the consistency of working with the same firm and the known quality of that firm’s audits would be worth the extra cost over the next five years even as the district trims millions of dollars from its budget in other areas.
“There’s a lot of value to us continuing with people who have such a great handle on how we do things,” Chief Financial Officer Linda Quinley said.
Administrators asked 19 Missouri firms to apply for the job, and four sent back proposals: Gerding, Korte & Chitwood; LarsonAllen of St. Louis; McGladrey & Pullen of Kansas City; and Schowalter & Jabouri of St. Louis.
LarsonAllen estimated auditing the district’s $202 million budget would take 250 hours. It was the only firm that said the audit would consume fewer than 400 hours, the minimal time Quinley said the audit takes to complete.
McGladrey & Pullen proposed 490 hours and submitted the costliest proposal, starting at $49,000 for the 2010 fiscal year and increasing to $53,000 for the 2014 audit, totaling $255,000.
The finance committee narrowed its choices to Gerding, Korte & Chitwood and Schowalter & Jabouri. Schowalter & Jabouri estimated the audit would take 480 hours, and it listed experience with multiple Missouri school districts and a five-year cost of $155,000. That quote was $40,500 less than Gerding, Korte & Chitwood proposed: $195,500 for five years, and 412 hours per audit.
The proposal from Gerding, Korte & Chitwood includes yearly fees of between $37,900 and $40,300. To put the costs in perspective, a first-year Columbia teacher with a bachelor’s degree makes a minimum salary of $34,353. Both paying the auditor and paying teachers comes out of the district’s operating budget.
The committee cited the job Gerding, Korte & Chitwood has done in the past 10 years of auditing the district and the firm’s knowledge of what the district needs to work on. “In the past, their audits have been so thorough,” said Ines Segert, a member of the finance committee and the school board.
At its meeting Monday, the board will be asked to OK the audit recommendation. It is not listed as a separate item that could receive public comment on its own, but that could change if the board agrees to make the auditor suggestion its own agenda item.
Officials have consistently talked about their poor budget situation. Administration has proposed cuts that would save less money than the $40,500 difference between audit proposals, including employing three fewer school resource officers to save $40,000.
But yesterday the district left tens of thousands of dollars on the table in favor of familiarity. “It’s not just as simple as looking at the numbers,” Deputy Superintendent Nick Boren said.
Schools fall short on achievement
BY JONATHON BRADEN
jbraden@columbiatribune.com | 815-1711
The Columbia Board of Education was almost unanimous in its displeasure last night as the seven-member body sifted through Columbia Public Schools’ achievement data since 2003.
But Superintendent Chris Belcher said it was member Ines Segert who offered a good summary: “We clearly still have a lot of work to do,” Segert said after listing the categories in which district scores had slipped.
Sharon Schattgen, director of the district’s Research, Assessment, and Accountability office, had just presented a sobering 41-page report to the board on how well the district had met its three goals and eight objectives as described during the 2003-04 school year — the last time the district formed its Comprehensive School Improvement Plan, or CSIP.
The district scores were the centerpiece of a board discussion on what’s gone wrong in the past seven years and how the school district can move past the days of subpar achievement on some standardized test scores. At times, the discussion delved into philosophical differences of management styles, such as a top-down model or more autonomy for school buildings and what Belcher wants to avoid in the future.
The discussion often had a serious tone as the school board faced pages of unmet goals. And this time the goals had not been dictated by the federal government or the state. Instead, the district set these goals themselves.
“We’ve got seven years of data that basically says we haven’t made a whole lot of progress,” board member Jim Whitt said.
Schattgen reported results from state and national tests as well as data from the district, including the schools’ dropout and graduation rates, which both fared better than the state’s marks in 2009.
The board saw scores from the 2006-09 Missouri Assessment Program Communication Arts section, in which scores in grades 3-7 have fallen; only eighth-grade scores improved in that span.
The board viewed cohort data that follows groups of students for a three- or four-grade stretch. Of four cohorts, only one showed improvement over a four-year period in the 2006-09 Missouri Assessment Program Communication Arts section.
All four cohorts on the state level during the same period showed gains of at least 4 percent.
Math MAP scores for cohorts showed some improvement, however, as two of the four district groups improved or stayed the same during the same three- or four-year period, though three of four state cohort groups showed gains of at least 3 percent.
Board Vice President Tom Rose sought to highlight the positives of the report, such as the district’s average ACT score of 23 or better since 2003 — more than two points above the state average, which has consistently hovered around 21.6 since 2003.
But Board President Jan Mees denounced the data. “This is not what’s truly going on in the classroom every day,” she said. “I truly believe that.”
Mees, who worked in the school district for 21 years, said whenever she sees data like this, she remembers a teacher who told Mees that the teacher sees growth with her students from the time they enter her classroom to the time they leave.
Whitt mentioned how successful programs in the district are spread to other schools in a process known as “best practices.” He suggested the district have a centralized model that all buildings follow.
But Belcher said, “Our past data represents a centralized model.”
Belcher has offered school buildings more autonomy in how they achieve high scores as long as building administrators can show positive results. “We’re all disappointed with those scores,” he said.
Bond gets thanks at Thompson
BY JONATHON BRADEN
jbraden@columbiatribune.com | 815-1711
U.S. Sen. Kit Bond visited Columbia yesterday, championing federal dollars slated to help the Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders at the University of Missouri.
Bond said he helped secure $750,000 in the 2010 fiscal year omnibus spending bill that could help build a new facility for the Thompson Center in Columbia and upgrade equipment used by staff. He toured the center yesterday during an event to thank him for his support.
In the end, Bond did not vote for the bill, which Republicans criticized as laden with special projects for legislators’ districts. He and seven other senators abstained from voting on the bill that passed 57-35, with support from 52 Democrats, three Republicans and two independents, Senate voting records show. The nonpartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense said the $447 billion spending bill had 5,244 earmarks, or a little under $4 billion worth.
At the Thompson Center yesterday, after a reporter questioned him on his abstention, Bond said he had voted for the bill. “I voted for the omnibus appropriations bill; I voted against the stimulus bill,” Bond said.
A Bond staff member interjected, saying Bond had voted for cloture on the spending bill, a motion to quickly end debate, but not on the final bill. But voting records show Bond abstained from the cloture vote as well, which passed in the Senate, 60-34.
Bond did support the Thompson Center funding through the committee process.
President Barack Obama signed the legislation, HR 3288, into law Dec. 16. It funds the operation of six non-defense federal government agencies until Sept. 30.
Thompson Center officials said they were grateful for the chance to improve their services with the federal funds.
“Because of the appropriation allocated for the Thompson Center, we now have an even greater capacity to serve children and families in Missouri with exceptional care,” said Jim Poehling, the center’s executive director.
Poehling said the center serves more than 2,200 families.
One in every 110 children is diagnosed with some form of autism, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Our ability to respond to these needs will be so much better because of the appropriation that Senator Bond has helped us attain,” said Janet Farmer, the Thompson Center’s director of academic programs.
Farmer said the center has not received the money yet and will start the application process March 1.