Parents and Teachers Win!
Peter Downs and Donna Jones were elected to the St Louis Board of Education yesterday! I am elated.
While the challenges facing SLPS have not changed, I still believe that Downs and Jones will add important perspectives to the board.
It also goes to show that grassroots organizing really can work, especially in a low-turnout local race like this. And perhaps the negative campaign mailings by the Clinkscale/Buford "Educate St Louis" committee that had weak, cruddy portrayals of Downs as anti-reform, did backfire by providing him with more name recognition.
And I do believe Downs and Jones will support Dr. Creg Williams - just not blindly. Many of the superintendent's reforms are not at all new ideas. Also, if you implement a whole bunch of dramatic changes like 9th-grade-centers and single-sex schools all at the same time, how can you ever prove statistically which ones worked and which didn't?
I wouldn't necessarily call this a referendum on Mayor Slay's performance. Many voters are still pretty satisfied with him (for whatever reasons), and he won re-election last year quite handily.
But also recall that last year, only one of the three candidates endorsed by the mayor actually won. Who remembers Joe Moramarco and Joe Keaveny now, except for their neighbors? Veronica O'Brien (a parent with kids in Clayton via deseg) and Bill Purdy (a district retiree) were elected along with Flint Fowler, who has exceptional name recognition as head of Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club.
So this does represent a pretty dramatic rebuke of some of the strategies employed by the (up to now) current board majority of Clinkscale, Jackson, Archibald, and Schoemehl/Buford.
What will be very interesting to see is what happens next year, when Bob Archibald and Ron Jackson are up for reelection. I kinda wonder whether Archibald will bow out early like Schoemehl did this time around.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Touch This Screen
Touch This Screen
About 8:45 this morning at Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, I had my first encounter with a Diebold Election Systems touch-screen voting machine, courtesy of the Board of Election Commissioners for the City of St. Louis.
It wasn't as bad as I had feared. After signing in, a poll worker gave me a control card to insert into the machine. Then I simply followed the on-screen instructions and pressed the active areas of the screen as appropriate.
I was able to print out my ballot results, but the printout was behind a plastic cover and then a clear plastic screen. I didn't quite get that at first; but I guess that's the "paper record" everybody talks about. However, I didn't get a copy to keep for myself; it just looped back into the machine.
I was generally satisfied, although I wish there were some taller screens on the sides of the machine. I felt like anybody could stand behind me or next to me and see how I was voting. At least with the old punch-card voting booths, I felt like I had a little more privacy, even if I wasn't actually behind a curtain.
Touch-screen seems like the better option than optical scan. If I want to fill in bubbles, I'll go back to high school and take the MMAT!
About 8:45 this morning at Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, I had my first encounter with a Diebold Election Systems touch-screen voting machine, courtesy of the Board of Election Commissioners for the City of St. Louis.
It wasn't as bad as I had feared. After signing in, a poll worker gave me a control card to insert into the machine. Then I simply followed the on-screen instructions and pressed the active areas of the screen as appropriate.
I was able to print out my ballot results, but the printout was behind a plastic cover and then a clear plastic screen. I didn't quite get that at first; but I guess that's the "paper record" everybody talks about. However, I didn't get a copy to keep for myself; it just looped back into the machine.
I was generally satisfied, although I wish there were some taller screens on the sides of the machine. I felt like anybody could stand behind me or next to me and see how I was voting. At least with the old punch-card voting booths, I felt like I had a little more privacy, even if I wasn't actually behind a curtain.
Touch-screen seems like the better option than optical scan. If I want to fill in bubbles, I'll go back to high school and take the MMAT!
Monday, April 03, 2006
Storm Damage
Storm Damage
The collapse of the K & G Fashion Superstore at 10865 Lincoln Trail in Fairview Heights IL is both tragic and surreal. At least one person was killed: Delancey Moore, a 54-year-old customer, a former St. Clair County Sheriff's Department jail superintendent, and an active resident of East St. Louis. He may have also been kin to SIU prof Debra Moore, but I'm not absolutely sure.
At first glance, I thought this may have been a case of a newly-constructed building failing under adverse conditions.
But actually, now I realize that building is probably about 25 years old, because it has the tell-tale appearance of a St. Louis-area Kroger store. Indeed, the glass-and-steel front entryway looks almost the same as the store built in 1981 as part of South Lakeview Plaza on Lemay Ferry and Forder Roads where my family sometimes shopped during my childhood.
Kroger left St. Louis in 1986, and many of these stores were taken over by National Supermarkets. National, of course, was bought out by Schnucks in 1995. This store probably had a temporary Schnucks banner for a brief time, but then was divested to the "new" National (Family Company of America). It probably closed in 1999 when the new National went belly-up.
Schnucks has a store less than one mile east, at 625 Lincoln Highway.
Since 2001 - and, at least until yesterday - the 10865 Lincoln Trail property was known as Commerce Plaza Center, managed by Koman Properties.
The collapse of the K & G Fashion Superstore at 10865 Lincoln Trail in Fairview Heights IL is both tragic and surreal. At least one person was killed: Delancey Moore, a 54-year-old customer, a former St. Clair County Sheriff's Department jail superintendent, and an active resident of East St. Louis. He may have also been kin to SIU prof Debra Moore, but I'm not absolutely sure.
At first glance, I thought this may have been a case of a newly-constructed building failing under adverse conditions.
But actually, now I realize that building is probably about 25 years old, because it has the tell-tale appearance of a St. Louis-area Kroger store. Indeed, the glass-and-steel front entryway looks almost the same as the store built in 1981 as part of South Lakeview Plaza on Lemay Ferry and Forder Roads where my family sometimes shopped during my childhood.
Kroger left St. Louis in 1986, and many of these stores were taken over by National Supermarkets. National, of course, was bought out by Schnucks in 1995. This store probably had a temporary Schnucks banner for a brief time, but then was divested to the "new" National (Family Company of America). It probably closed in 1999 when the new National went belly-up.
Schnucks has a store less than one mile east, at 625 Lincoln Highway.
Since 2001 - and, at least until yesterday - the 10865 Lincoln Trail property was known as Commerce Plaza Center, managed by Koman Properties.
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