The CITY REFORM origin story:
Eight years ago, I ran for school board and my life hasn’t been the same since. Through months of campaigning, I saw the city in a way I hadn’t before. I got to know the geography of St. Louis, the 78 neighborhoods and (then) 28 wards people call home. My big dreams for St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) came out of the conversations I had in church basements, bars, and community centers all over the city as I listened to people’s experiences with the school district, both good and bad. I wanted to build up neighborhood schools and community education sites; allow teachers the freedom to be the professionals they are; and improve communication from the district to families.
But only a few months after the election, I had to set aside that policy agenda to begin work on a new one. SLPS faced series of more urgent and unavoidable challenges including the transition from appointed-to-elected governance, the Covid-19 pandemic, an ideological war over public education, and permanent school closures.
All of these policy issues coincided over the three years I served as President of the Board of Education of the City of St. Louis. Addressing any one of these challenges in isolation would have demanded considerable time, energy, and attention; that they happened nearly at the same time is unbelievable. For me, it was a powerful lesson in leadership and perseverance. I felt a relentless pressure — some self-imposed, some political — to make the right decisions on behalf of SLPS and the residents of the City of St. Louis.
Now I’m a Ph.D. candidate of education policy and equity at Saint Louis University. Through coursework and research, I’m attempting to untangle the complexities of education policy, public policy, and the local St. Louis context. As a scholar with firsthand experience as a policy maker and teacher, my perspective is valuable and I look for opportunities to bring together all facets of my professional identity to bridge the gaps between research, policy, and practice. Everything I study, research, and write is with the express intent of improving the policy process for others so that policy decisions are more sound and just.
CITY REFORM was born out of my background and hopes for the City of St. Louis. We cannot have a great city without great schools. And we cannot have great schools if we focus only on what happens inside school walls. We owe it to ourselves to tell the real story of public education in St. Louis.
On the surface, it appears our current system of public schools was created by accident — singular decisions made haphazardly over time without regard for the big picture. While it is true that decisions were made in isolation, they were enabled by the creation and implementation of policies that span education, economic development, housing, and electoral politics. Policies that were, in most cases, racist. In short, our school system was intentionally created through policy whether or not that was the stated goal. Reversing the existing inequities will require equally intentional policy making, only this time the goal is to finally produce a high-quality system of schools that actually serves the needs of the people who use it.
It is my deep belief that good policy requires good data. Right now that data is missing or not accessible to decision-makers, both elected and unelected. CITY REFORM exists not only to produce that data but also to tell the story of how we got here and to dream of where we can go in the future.
City reform is education reform.
