Room 200 Revolving Door

Dionne Garrett-Castor formerly Director of Communications for Mayor Francis Slay, is now doing PR at Grace Hill Neighborhood Services.

Chris Dornfeld formerly Chief Information Officer/Director of Technology in the Mayor's Office, is now the principal of a consulting firm called Dornfeld Management Group LLC.

City Arsons

According to crime statistics on the Ninth District Business Association web site, arson is up dramatically in both McRee Town in South St. Louis and JeffVanderLou in North St. Louis.

Arson is up 1700% in the McRee Town neighborhood, from this time last year. In 2003, there were four arsons the entire year. In 2004, there have already been 18.

Arson is up 700% in the JeffVanderLou neighborhood, from this time last year. In 2003, there were 10 arsons the entire year. In 2004, there have already been eight.

A quick search on the Safe City web site and a Channel 11 news report from January suggest the arson wave may be expanding across I-44 into the Shaw neighborhood.

According to the four-month snapshot of data available on Safe City, these are not the only areas in which a large number of arson cases have occurred:

McRee Town
April 26 - 3900 blk Folsom and 4000 blk McRee
May 19 - 4100 blk McRee

Shaw
May 17 - 3900 blk Castleman
June 2 - 3800 blk Shaw

JeffVanderLou
Mar 28 - 3700 blk Lincoln
June 2 - 3100 blk N Grand
June 10 - 2400 blk Bacon

The Greater Ville
Feb 28 - 4100 blk E Lexington
Mar 18 - 4100 blk W Lexington
Apr 11 - 4200 blk W Lexington
Apr 28 - 3900 blk Greer

Mark Twain
Mar 30 - 5000 blk Claxton
Apr 18 - 4900 blk Harney
Apr 28 - 5300 blk Union
Apr 28 - 4900 blk Arlington
May 16 - 4900 blk Rosalie
May 28 - 5300 blk Arlington
May 31 - 5300 blk Arlington

Although these figures may pale in comparison to the number of burglaries happening in the City, they are still an indicator of blight and distress in many neighborhoods.

McRee Town has gotten much of the attention given the suspicious nature of these fires in a proposed redevelopment area. One wonders if arsons will start to break out at the new houses under construction, or if instead, there is a more nefarious plot with tacit approval of the developer and its supporters.

"Required Reading"

The final draft of "Raising Student Achievement in the St Louis Public Schools" was posted on the SLPS web site on Thursday, June 10th.

In a press release dated May 5th, Mayor Slay called this very report "required reading for anyone who cares about the education of children."

Funny how long it takes for such an important document to reach the reading public.

Also worth a look is the SLPS MAPattack web site set up for the priority schools that need the most improvement in test scores. Oddly the web pages for each school are not linked from the main list of schools. Indeed, many of the priority schools have only very basic information on their regular web pages.

Also very interesting:

School Report Cards for SLPS and St. Louis charter schools;

GreatSchools.net, a national site including parent reviews of some SLPS and charter schools.