New Spirit in St. Louis

When he was elected to the St. Louis board of education in 1953, mild-mannered Daniel L. Schlafly seemed an unlikely man for the job. Vice president of a family business (bottled water), Dan Schlafly, 47, is a Roman Catholic who never attended a public school* and never sent his three children to one. As it turned out, Schlafly has done more to clean up graft in public schools than anyone in the history of the city.

In St. Louis, as in every big city, public education is big business, big money, and big temptations. The twelve-man St. Louis board has long been controlled by ward politicians, who value the patronage of 1,500 nonteaching jobs in the school system. St. Louis is also cursed with an archaic administrative system. Instead of a single superintendent, four coequal executives run separate departments of instruction, building, auditing and finance. This leaves the classrooms to the teachers and the money to the politicians.

Featherbedding. In the early 1950s a reform group was elected, ordered a survey of the schools' business practices. A topflight management firm found colossal waste, no proper accounting, and a great deal of featherbedding in the buildings department. The experts estimated that nearly one-fourth of the nonteaching budget was wasted, but their report was highly technical and the voters missed the point; the old group successfully pinned the label of penny pinchers on the reformers. Anti-reformers swept the 1955 elections. A grand jury has since called the next two years "as corrupt as any in the history of the board."

Dan Schlafly survived the 1955 election, and kept at it. He got the building commissioner to admit that he was hiring surplus workers to please politicians. Paying court expenses themselves, Schlafly and two other board members got the commissioner ousted. Then Schlafly got a tip that Dentist James J. McCaffery, the board president, was using school employees and materials to renovate a house for his son. Schlafly hired a private detective, who filmed the proceedings. With this evidence, Schlafly went to court.

Faith Building. Out went McCaffery. He has since been indicted for perjury and also charged with accepting a $2,000 campaign contribution from an officer of the school custodians' union (unbeknownst to the union members). A grand jury also found that three other board members were guilty of impropriety, suggested that they resign. One did; the other two face ouster suits. Dan Schlafly has also gone to court to oust another building commissioner, who went from board member to the $15,000-a-year commissioner's job, a maneuver that Schlafly considers poor policy.

All of this has done much to restore faith in the school system. St. Louisans used to vote down school bond issues in helpless rage. But the board is now actively moving to overhaul the administrative system, and in next spring's election, Dan Schlafly hopes to get a reform majority for the first time. The way things are going, he will.

* His all-Catholic education: St. Louis' Barat Hall School, St. Louis University High School, Georgetown University ('33).

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