St. Louis Community College at ... Grover?

St. Louis Community College at ... Grover?

The following statement from today's Post-Dispatch just makes me say "Ugh!"

"For years, St. Louis Community College has dreamed of following the urban migration to west St. Louis County..."

Yes, this has been a long time in the making, and it is not necessarily a bad thing to establish a community college campus in FAR FAR West County - off Highway 109 in Wildwood, in fact - but, still, that opening sentence for this article is annoying.

St. Louis Community College has long had a significant connection to the City of St. Louis, but still, their facility on Natural Bridge Avenue in The Greater Ville, called the William J. Harrison Northside Education Center, is quite tiny. It was originally built in the mid 1970s as the Julia Davis Branch of the St. Louis Public Library; but by 1994, the library had really outgrown the facility, and moved to a new, larger building several blocks east.

Obviously, SLCC-Forest Park is a major educational resource for the city; and both Meramec and Flo Valley have good programs, with Meramec generally considered the largest campus with the largest array of offerings. There's not really any kind of extension center serving South City directly, but Forest Park is not that far away; although many white South City residents, perhaps because of racism or perhaps just because it has a wider array of transfer-degree programs, shlep out to Meramec instead.

I realize SLCC serves both the City and the County (and Pacific, MO too), so they have an obligation to expand their services into areas with growing demand.

At the same time, there is always a significant need for their services in the City of St. Louis. The six Junior College District board members are elected by us, the voters, to six-year terms, representing four sub-districts. These elections usually go very much unnoticed. But perhaps it's time for that to change.