There was so much bad news in St Louis over the weekend that it wouldn’t all fit on the front page.

Above the fold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Saturday was a photo of the swollen Mississippi River, still roiling after it breached levies near the towns of Foley and Winfield, and threatened Clarksville and the River City itself.

Threatened also, was one of St. Louis’ proudest industries, Anheuser-Busch, the target of a hostile takeover attempt by the Belgium brewing giant, InBev.

And did I mention the public schools? You had to go to Section B to read about them. The story, in Sunday’s paper, was titled: “In St. Louis, the 4th R is Reform.”

If that sounds like déjà vu, you are an astute (and longtime) reader of ASBJ. I’ve written about reform attempts in my hometown twice: in December 2003, when the district was being run by management firm and again in July 2006, when an energetic new superintendent was brought in from Philadelphia. We barely got the issue out before he was ousted by a bitterly divided school board.

Rough times have continued since then. For the past year the troubled -- and shrinking -- school district has been run by state-appointed Special Administrative Board.

The new board’s first job, the Post said, was to stabilize the district. Now it’s faced with closing 15 to 20 underutilized schools (on top of the 31 closed since 2003), finding a superintendent, and operating the schools on a budget that is 4.5 percent leaner than the one before.

On a more promising note: This new board, whatever its provenance, seems serious about improving student achievement for the long term, and it’s doing its best to weed out ineffective teachers. One promising reform is its introduction of The Toledo Plan for peer evaluation of teachers.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor