Home » Barriers & Blessings—How Commercial Prosperity Shapes School Success

Barriers & Blessings—

How Commercial Prosperity Shapes School Success

Barriers & Blessings - How Commercial Prosperity Shapes School Success ,  is a continuation of FTF’s Still Separate, Still Unequal advocacy & accountability tool for Education Equity. Follow along with us for this latest series, where we’ll detail the central relationship between commercial property development and education outcomes, and the disproportionate impact that relationship has on students across the St. Louis region.

Take a look at all of the the five episodes below of the Barriers & Blessings series.

Barriers & Blessings Episodes

Episode 1: The Parable of Commercial Property Taxes

The stories that we tell ourselves & that we pass on about education inequity often ignore the historical trends & present-day structural factors that can make or break student success. Instead, blame is typically forced onto the shoulders of individual Black & Brown students. Follow along with Cristian Vargas, MPH, and Karishma Furtado, PhD, MPH, as, in our series intro and beyond as Barriers & Blessings details the central relationship between commercial property development & education outcomes, and shows how we can correct the flawed narratives around Education Equity.

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Episode 2: How the Golden Era of Shopping in St. Louis (and School Fortunes) Moved West

From funding models to education outcomes, our region’s education landscape is shaped largely by commercial forces from our past. In Barriers & Blessings Episode 2 we trace the historic flow of commercial wealth into West County, and out of St. Louis urban core.

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Episode 3: Famous-Barr Falters As it Heads North, Signaling Woes for School Funding

Schools rise and fall with their communities. The decisions made by Famous-Barr and other retailers, land developers, and the populations they are trying to entice have profound implications for the school districts they are in. Learn more in Episode 3 of Barriers & Blessings.

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Episode 4: South County Struggles and the Opportunity of Aligned Interest

Our journey around the St. Louis region continues with Episode 4 of our Barriers & Blessings series. In this episode, we discuss the differences, and the striking resemblances between the Education Equity impact of White Flight for North County (as described in Episode 3) as compared to South County.

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Episode 5: The Stories We Tell Ourselves

For the Barriers & Blessings series closing, we reflect on the lessons that we’ve uncovered about how the world around us shapes our stories of self, and underscore the importance on transforming the traditional narratives that bind our victories to our individual merits, and our losses to perceived individual failures. We end this episode by issuing direct calls to action for impacting change toward Education Equity on individual, cultural, and institutional levels.

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