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St. LouiS AmericAn The
CAC Audited NOVEMBER 21 – 27, 2019
91 years serving, empowering and advocating equity in St. Louis
COMPLIMENTARY
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Jennings Schools buys minivans to transport homeless kids Enterprise Holdings Foundation funds district purchases that also cut costs, boost attendance By Ryan Delaney Of St. Louis Public Radio Jennings school students who are homeless and need a ride to school are arriving the way many suburban kids do: by minivan. The small North St. Louis Country district of about 2,500 students began using minivans this fall to transport about two dozen homeless students to school. In the past, Jennings ordered up a fleet of taxi cabs. By switching to vans it owns, the district
Vol. 91 No. 35
n “We got a van, we get there immediately on day one of school, and those make the difference between one to two points of attendance.” – Superintendent Art McCoy
cut its transportation budget in half, improved
attendance and reduced the stigma of showing up to school in a cab, administrators said. Superintendent Art McCoy said now those students will “not be seen as different because they’re coming in in a yellow cab versus everybody else who’s coming in by a parent. Now you look like everybody else because you’re coming in in the same type of model — nice, new Dodge minivan — just like other parents are.” “That’s the real benefit, that the kids are kind of inconspicuous,” he said. The district owns only one school bus See JENNINGS, A6
Page appoints two black women from North County to police board Dr. Laurie Punch and Thomasina Hassler have records of community advocacy By Chris King Of The St. Louis American
Team turkey drawing
St. Louis County Executive Sam Page appointed two North County AfricanAmerican women with track records of community advocacy to the St. Louis County Board of Police Commissioners on Thursday, November 14. His appointees are Laurie Punch, MD, an associate professor of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine, and Thomasina Hassler, an assistant professor at HarrisDr. Laurie Stowe State University and Punch a scholar in residence at University of Missouri-St. Louis. Pending County Council approval, they would replace current board members Bishop Lawrence Wooten and Art Johnson. Dr. Punch, who lives Ferguson, focuses on resident education in gun violence management and prevention.
Raya Slater, Kendrae’a Dupree and Tony Hayes, 2nd grade students at Bryan Hill Elementary in the Saint Louis Public School District, worked as a team on a turkey drawing on Tuesday, November 19.
Thomasina Hassler
Photo by Wiley Price
City picks three sites for Cure Violence ‘We can’t do this alone. We need help,’ says city health director who will lead project By Rebecca Rivas Of The St. Louis American Many elected officials and organizers now agree that violence is a public health concern. On November 8, Mayor Lyda Krewson announced that the City of St. Louis Department of Health will lead the violenceprevention program Cure Violence, which is set to receive $8 million in city funds over the next three years. The Cure Violence model — which treats violence as an epidemic outbreak and therefore a public health issue — is active in more than
25 cities throughout the world. The idea is to employ local residents who have respect on the streets (often ex-convicts) to prevent gun violence by de-escalating potentially violent situations before they happen. Supporters of the program have been waiting to hear where the Cure Violence sites — which target areas of about 15,000 people — will be located and how many there will be. On November 8, the mayor also announced that there will be three sites in three areas of the city. The sites will focus on crime within approximately 10-by-10 blocks in the Wells Goodfellow/Hamilton Heights, Walnut Park
and Dutchtown neighborhoods. The sites were selected using crime data, said Fred Echols, MD, director of the city’s health department, who is now leading the Cure Violence effort. “The sites that had the highest number of incidents were the sites that were selected for the violence prevention project,” Dr. Echols said. The goal is to have the program up and running in the second quarter of 2020, he said. Dr. Echols said the community and stakeholders must be involved in the planning over the next few months in order for the program to be sustainable. A big part of the planning is making sure that all those involved understand the history of St. Louis, he said. “What we are seeing now is just a See CURE, A6
See BOARD, A7
Democracy in crisis Deaconess Foundation sparks conversation about preparing for 2020 election By Chris King Of The St. Louis American What can civil society do to sustain and strengthen American democracy in the next year before voters go to the polls to choose a president? This was the core question posed by the Deaconess Foundation in its most recent Just for Kids Community Conversation at the Deaconess Center for Child WellBeing on Monday, November 18. Joe Goldman, president of the Democracy See DEACONESS, A7