A bill proposed at the St. Louis Board of Aldermen would ask voters to raise sales taxes to fund early childhood education programs. This bill has led to contentious debate and, yesterday, was unanimously opposed by the St. Louis Public Schools Board.

Board Bill 7, sponsored by Ward 10 Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard, would add a question to the November 2024 ballot asking voters to approve a levy that would increase the city’s sales tax by 0.5 percent. The funding would be used to support early childhood education programs for children who are not yet in kindergarten.

If approved, the revenue generated from this tax would go into an “early childhood education fund,” to be administered by the City of St. Louis Mental Health Board of Trustees.

There was a public hearing for the bill before the Transportation and Commerce Committee on Monday. Public speakers were cut off after an hour during the hearing due to another aldermanic committee meeting beginning at 3 p.m. that could not be rescheduled due to STL TV’s ongoing budget problems. 

Clark Hubbard said before the hearing that she wanted to answer the question of who could access the potential revenue from the bill. 

“The funds may be used for early education and care for children ages 0 to 5 provided by public — as a proud SLPS parent I’m glad that’s first — public, private, not for profit, and for profit entities licensed, license exempt, or registered by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education,” Clark Hubbard says.

She says she wanted to share that information with the media and those present from the public because a “different narrative” was shared online.

WEPOWER, a nonprofit organization, previously acknowledged to the RFT that in order for public programs to receive any funding, state law would have to change. A spokesperson for the organization said, “The way the Community Children’s Services Fund currently exists creates limitations. As a result, there are efforts underway to amend the structure of the Community Children’s Services Fund. At the state level, a bill was voted out of the Select Committee on Empowering Missouri Parents & Children that would allow funds to also become available to public schools. Additionally, the bill would allow Children’s Services Funds to administer dollars to improve the quality, affordability, and access to early childhood development programs. This could include but not be limited to increasing educator wages and benefits.”

WEPOWER has not yet responded to requests to provide more information about the state bill they’re referring to. We will update this story when we hear back.

SLPS’ board passed a resolution opposing the bill 7-0 in a special meeting Monday morning. The resolution says, among other criticisms of the bill: “Board Bill 7 directs taxpayer dollars to non-public entities with no oversight or accountability measures in place.”

Matt Davis, vice president of the school board, spoke at the hearing, citing the board’s similar opposition to Proposition R, a property tax increase that city voters approved in 2020. He said it also included funds for early childhood education that would be distributed by the Mental Health Board. None of the money from Prop R has gone directly into services or to increase capacity and wages for childcare centers and instead it has gone to nonprofits, he said.

“It’s really unclear where that money has gone and most importantly, whether that’s been effective,” Davis said. “To increase the money by tenfold at this point seems to be a little premature. In addition we also do oppose the addition of a regressive sales tax.”

This sentiment was echoed by community members speaking in opposition to the bill, who alleged that WEPOWER, the organization that helped draft the bill, may not have the intention of supporting public programs.

Gloria Nolan, a former WEPOWER employee and the campaign coordinator for Prop R, says the nonprofit has failed to deliver on any of its promises regarding early childhood education. Nolan has been public about how she believes WEPOWER is being used by proponents of charter schools like the Opportunity Trust. 

“WEPOWER and their affiliates have been working hard at requesting funding from every stream available starting with their funder the Opportunity Trust, then moving on to proposition R, they’ve asked for ARPA funding, now they’re asking for this regressive sales tax, they’re asking for Rams settlement funds, and they’re even rolling baby strollers through the halls of Congress asking for more funding to undermine democratically run public education,” Nolan says. “Everything that has been said sounds lovely but nothing has been proven, nothing has been shown and we have to stop this now.”

As Nolan spoke, a row of supporters for the bill laughed, smiled, whispered and shook their heads at her comments. One of these supporters was WEPOWER’s Director of Early Childhood Power Building, Paula-Breonne Vickers, who spoke after Nolan.

“I was actually that parent that pushed my stroller through Congress because there is a crisis at all levels, local, state and federal, where funding that existed before is coming to an end and without stabilization at all levels, it will be a crisis that harms us all,” she says. 

Vickers shared her experiences as a mother living in north city, saying that she was on a two-year waitlist for childcare as of 2020. She says she was encouraged to move out of the city to position her family near more resources.

She stresses that she believes in SLPS but says spaces in its early childhood programs are not readily available to parents. She argues that Board Bill 7 would be a progressive opportunity to set young children up for success.

“I ask you to move this Board Bill 7 forward so that voters can decide if this is something we want for St. Louis City,” Vickers says. 

Local public school advocacy group Solidarity with SLPS started a letter-writing campaign against the bill.

“This bill is a naked attempt by known proponents of education privatization to trick the public into funding their and their friends’ consulting operations under the guise of childcare or early childhood education,” Ben Conover, an activist with the group, said at the hearing. “Let’s be clear, the funds for this bill cannot go towards increasing the affordability or the accessibility of early childhood education. None of the state statutes that pertain to this bill allow for the funds to be spent towards either purpose.”

There will be additional public hearings before the committee in the future. No vote was taken Monday.

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Loud booing and chanting punctuated some of the speakers at the commencement for Washington University this morning — most often Chancellor Andrew Martin, who has become the focal point of anger from activists after mass arrests on campus April 27.

Administrators had ordered a temporary encampment erected on campus that day to disperse, and when protestors refused to do so, 100 were arrested, including 23 students and at least four faculty members.

Martin later begged students not to protest at this year’s commencement and presided over fencing going up around campus. In recent weeks, anyone entering the Danforth Campus has had to produce university-issued ID. 

As a result, protests were mostly limited to the streets around campus, although some students at commencement booed, others stood to protest and some even walked out, as St. Louis Public Radio reported:
Graduating students at @WUSTL protest and walk out of Chancellor Andrew Martin’s graduation remarks. The university has been under fire for its response to campus protests against the war in Gaza. Stay tuned for more from my colleagues and I at @stlpublicradio. pic.twitter.com/UV5cq5my4v— Brian Munoz (@brianmmunoz) May 13, 2024 And even beyond the boos that could be heard during the ceremony, there were also references to the recent unrest — some more direct than others. 

Alejandro Ramirez, who was wearing a Keffiyeh, took the stage as the university’s undergraduate speaker and cheers erupted at the end of their speech as they expressed their support for the Palestinian people, and Pro-Palestine protestors beyond the fence, saying: “Today, I stand in solidarity with my peers, faculty, and community members who have experienced hardship during this last semester, who found their why and used it to express solidarity with the Palestinians around the world.”

As for the keynote speaker, actress Jennifer Coolidge, she danced around the topic of protests, saying she is proud of the young people for using their voices and rolling comments of “war and famine” into calls for action about climate change, women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights. She did not say the word “Palestine.”

Coolidge made jokes about her manager trashing parts of her speech before commencement. She read part of what they told her to delete saying:

“When I think about your generation and I see all the wonderful things you’re doing, and how passionate and vocal you are and engaged you are about your futures — our future actually — it makes me feel so happy, because this is progress. Seriously, in all seriousness, we need you. And we need your strength, we need your truth.”
click to enlarge KALLIE COX Police keep a close eye on protestors near Wash U’s campus on the morning of commencment, May 13, 2024.

Protesting Outside the Fence

Ironically, during the ceremony Martin welcomed the class of 1974 to commencement as they celebrated their 50th anniversary. The majority of these students would have been freshmen in 1970, when Washington University became a flashpoint in protesting the war in Vietnam after students burned its ROTC building on May 5. (That act led to felony charges — and one activist going on the lam for years.)

Protesters this morning relied on speech, not fire.Dozens gathered on the four corners of the intersection of Big Bend and Forsyth just outside Wash U’s campus on Monday morning. Hundreds of cars and pedestrians passed them as they made their way to the ceremonies.

The activists were on the outside of the temporary fence enclosing the campus, but that didn’t stop them from raising their signs high above the barricades and calling on the university to divest from Boeing and disclose its financial ties with the company.

The protestors chanted and handed out fliers to those walking past, using megaphones and speakers while they held homemade banners and posters. 

“Kill yourselves,” one passerby shouted at them while laughing and shoving a phone in their faces while walking with a group of parents and other students. “Bomb Palestine,” one man screamed from the window of his car before peeling off. The activists ignored them.

A little over an hour into commencement, police threatened to arrest protestors using voice amplifiers as commencement began, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Reporter Monica Obradovic reported from the scene. One person who was driving by and honking was detained.

Sarah Nixon, one of the protestors, tells RFT that in addition to divesting from Boeing, Wash U needs to disclose where its investments are going, and drop the charges against all of the protestors who have been arrested. 

“I think some are like, ‘Why can’t you let us enjoy our graduation?’” Nixon says. “To that I say, ‘We wish that this is a moment that everyone can celebrate but we know that all 12 of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed, over 6,000 university students killed, over 100 professors — these were future aid workers, doctors, artists, who had every hope of getting to celebrate […] like our Wash U community, but instead they’re fighting for their lives.”

Earlier today, Democracy Now reported that the death toll in Gaza has exceeded 35,000 people, including more than 14,500 children.

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St. Louis Police have arrested a teenage girl that they say shot a woman to death on a crowded MetroLink platform on Saturday afternoon.The shooting took place at the DeBaliviere Avenue MetroLink station on Saturday, May 11, around 3:30 p.m. The platform is near Forest Park and the Missouri History Museum. The victim has been identified only as a Black female and is believed to be in her 20s. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department described the suspect only as a 17-year-old Black female. They say she was taken to a Juvenile Detention facility in St. Louis County, where she is being held on charges of Murder 2nd Degree and Armed Criminal Action.”Investigators were able to quickly identify a suspect in this case, aided by the robust surveillance system of Metro and the quick assistance provided by Metro Public Safety,” police reported in a statement. Anyone with information about the shooting is urged to call the Homicide Division directly at 314-444-5371, or anyone with a tip who wants to remain anonymous and is interested in a reward can contact CrimeStoppers at 866-371-TIPS (8477).As the RFT recently reported, the number of youth accused of homicide has more than tripled in the past decade, but still comprises less than one percent of all juvenile charges. Like the student charged in a near-fatal beating outside Hazelwood East, the teenager in this case will likely face a hearing where a judge will determine whether she should be tried as an adult.

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