By Antonio D. French
Filed Monday, March 27 at 7:42 PM
Educate St. Louis, the committee which has spent tens of thousands of dollars over the last few weeks to support the two incumbents running for St. Louis school board, has been raising thousands of dollars over the past 30 days from local corporations.
Schnucks Markets, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Laclede Gas, Brown Shoe Company, Emerson Electric, Energizer, and Monsanto are just a few of the names appearing on the committee's latest campaign report released today. Click here to download it.
Emerson tops the list of corporate donors with $18,750. Enterprise and Monsanto come in next with $12,500 and $10,000 respectively.
But the largest single donation came from another committee called People Working for Excellence in Public Education. On Feb. 28, that committee, whose treasurer is Tom Schlafly, contributed $29,000.
As we reported earlier, Mayor Francis Slay's campaign committee made a no-interest loan of $40,000 to the Educate St. Louis committee last week.
The committee has paid out over $118,000 to defeat the three remaining independent candidates, Peter Downs, Donna Jones and Joe Clark. It is in debt for another $79,000.
20 Comments:
Educate St Louis is the defacto campaign committee for Clinkscale and Buford. Curiously, though, the MEC website still showed no filing, not even a Statement of Organization, for their actual candidate committees, People for Danetta Clinkscale and People Supporting James Buford. Those committees made significant joint expenditures for newspapers ads in the St Louis American, Arch City Chronicle and maybe others.
10:37 PM, March 27, 2006
Its great when corporations stomp out indepenedent candiates, who do not have access to those type of funds.
I am still going to drink Schlafly though.
5:19 AM, March 28, 2006
The Ethics commission actually does not want the individual campaigns to send them their info, they want the board of elections to take care of it. You can find the reports there Oracle. The PACs are a different story, so that is why you can find them on the internet.
6:00 AM, March 28, 2006
Oh if there are any questions, Buford and Clinckscale have now raised am total of: $90K and $82K respectively
6:05 AM, March 28, 2006
Hmmmm. Why would some of the region's largest employers think they ought to get involved in the direction of the region's largest public school district?
6:16 AM, March 28, 2006
Hmmmm. Why are the region's largest corporations always late to the party and wrong about who to dance with?
6:30 AM, March 28, 2006
Why is the teachers' union challenging our fresh new superintendent with their anti-reform slate of candidates? Seems to me like the teachers' union is the unwilling dancing partner.
7:25 AM, March 28, 2006
Anony: Since when is Creg Williams up for election?
I don't think that he's who the independents are challenging, no matter how hard the Texas PR boys try to make it seem otherwise.
7:54 AM, March 28, 2006
Perhaps the regions corporations are concerned about the type of workers that the region is producing.
It helps if the people you hire can read and write, maybe that's why they are concerned.
Or maybe, they are good St. Louisians just like the rest of us and want to help this city. Sounds naive, but if roles were reversed here and you guys wanted to use your power and position to help your hometown, what would you do?
9:07 AM, March 28, 2006
Clark and Jones would have a better shot than any slate with Downs. Downs is an angry white elitist that will vote the union agenda, instead of what's best for the children.
9:12 AM, March 28, 2006
It seems odd. When A-B withheld contributions for Holden when he was running, some people cried foul.
Now that corporations are endorsing candidates with their dollars, people are crying foul.
Some people just can't win. Get all donations out of politics? Worth taking a look at, but there just so many hurdles to get over.
To re-iterate something brought up earlier, does Enterprise Rent-A-Car [or other corporations] have malicious intentions or do they just have a different aspirations than most on this list?
10:22 AM, March 28, 2006
responding to bud fox: if whatshisname taylor, who I am pretty sure does not live in the city, or his leasing company, which has a corporate office in the city, but no leasing facilities (oh, unless you count the airport), wants to improve the quality of worker bees coming out of the public schools, why does he not just say so, instead of hiding behind some almost faceless committee, which uses his money to send out full-color pieces of innuendo and half-truths to attack a candidate who has almost nothing to spend, but who at least says what he stands for.
11:10 AM, March 28, 2006
Corporations have always endourced candiates, lets not forget the massive government subsidies that our textile, and agriculture industry recieves, plus the oil industry.
You can bet if a candiate ran against those subsidies, then the industries would throw massive amounts of money against the candiate, and he would loose horribly.
Lets not forget the medias role, and advertising dollars...
What is sad is that this type of crap occurs at even the lowest levels of government.
11:27 AM, March 28, 2006
So people are upset that people and companies with money are taking an interest in the St. Louis Public Schools? A few years ago, we didn't have this "problem."
Which candidates do you think will be able to bring more resources to bear on the challenges of urban education? Darnetta and Jim can make a few phone calls and come up with tens of thousands of dollars. Peter and Donna would have to hold a bake sale with a 50/50 raffle to raise $1,000.
I think it's hard for some "progressives" to admit that once in a while The Man does the right thing.
12:42 PM, March 28, 2006
Taylor is saying something. He is putting his money where his mouth is. Granted, it is probably less than his entertainment budget for the quarter. He is too busy to go out there and make stump speeches and such, if that is what is meant by saying so. However, he is trying to do something.
There are no guarantees that the Buford/Clinkscale slate will be good, but I am not going to fault a guy for spending his money to try and make the schools better.
1:17 PM, March 28, 2006
I think these campaign contributions are nothing more than favors to the mayor.
I know at least one of the corporations mentioned makes contributions to the SLPS system that directly affects students, so I can't rule out philanthropic intentions somewhere in the corporations. However, this mayor and these corporations scratch each others' backs and I think it all works because the corporations put their money where the mayor mouth is.
1:42 PM, March 28, 2006
Brian Marston wrote: "Peter and Donna would have to hold a bake sale with a 50/50 raffle to raise $1,000."
I think it is important to point out that Clinkscale, Buford, Creg Williams, and even Mayor Francis Slay himself always say that parental involvement is needed to turn the St. Louis Public Schools around. You know who sends their kids to SLPS? Poor people. Public school districts don't get to pick their parents. But if they did, I think they could do a lot worse than Peter Downs and Donna Jones.
These are two parents who are involved and who both feel like this district remains closed to parents and operates out of the public eye. These are not people who talk about public education in purely academic terms. They are betting a lot more than any St. Louis corporation or even Mayor Slay with his $40,000 loan to advertise his slate of candidates. They are betting the futures of their own children on this system. They want this district to succeed for reasons far more important that workforce competency or population sustainability.
And yes, Brian, they are poor and don't have the phone numbers of millionaires programmed in their cell phones. But parents like these have made a commitment to this District and this City that has lasted longer than the last 4 superintendents selected by this board majority. And they deserve more respect than what some people are showing them.
10:42 PM, March 28, 2006
Antonio:
"They are betting a lot more than any St. Louis corporation or even Mayor Slay with his $40,000 loan to advertise his slate of candidates. They are betting the futures of their own children on this system."
This is so true, and I do not believe that unless you have your kid in the system, should you be involved with administration.
When your child is attending private school, then you do not have a direct interest in the performance of the SLPS, because your child, and yourself, are not a member of this educational system, nor is your childs future determined by its performance.
5:36 AM, March 29, 2006
I think Ms. Clinkscale sent her children to public schools. I heard Mr. Downs kids didn't always go to Public Schools. And Antonio I am surprised at your strong stance on whom should run for the the school board since you did and I didn't think you had kids in the system. Also didn't you go to a private high school. I mean if only people in the system should care about the system what is the point of elections?
7:24 AM, March 29, 2006
Whoa, whoa, whoa! I never said people shouldn't sit on the school board unless they have kids in the public schools. I didn't say anything even close to that.
What I said was that Downs and Jones ARE parents and they're involvement as parents should not be overlooked or underappreciated.
I did run for school board in 2003. I ran on a platform (with Peter Downs and Mary Ann McGivern) that the problems facing the district need bottom-up solutions and warned that what Mayor Slay's slate offered was a top-down approach.
They denied that at the time, but I think it has proven correct.
I did go to private school and I thank God that my mother and three grandparents were able to scrape the money together each month to pay my elementary school tuition. I also thank the administrations at SLUH and CBC for the scholarships which allowed me to attend those fine high schools.
The fact is that at the time I attended high school, and in the neighborhood I grew up (and still live in today), I would have been sent to a school that offered an education that would not have afforded me the skills or opportunities that I have today.
My friends and neighbors, even the ones that went to private elementary school with me, unfortunately did not get nearly as much out of public high schools as I did SLUH and CBC.
At both of those schools, my classmates were sons of Jim Buford.
I don't fault Buford for his children attending private school. I fault both Buford and Clinkscale for their top-down approach to fixing the problems of SLPS. And I fault the Mayor for not believing it is important to have ANY SLPS parents on the school board.
7:49 AM, March 29, 2006
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