SLACO has launched a new initiative with Hickey Elementary School in St. Louis to strengthen the community and support education.
In 2021, the SLACO Advocacy Committee began exploring ways of addressing hyper-vacancy in the city. This emerging strategy emphasized tactics to improve the built environment’s physical appearance, the neighborhood school’s quality, the community services’ effectiveness, the residents’ safety, and the local groups’ organizational capacity. For SLACO, the neighborhood school and its surrounding community are the optimal levels to address their challenges and to bring about change. Since the inception of this project, SLACO has worked with several St. Louis organizations to partner with Hickey Elementary School to develop an intervention strategy for highly-distressed communities like the one surrounding the school. Targeting the eighteen blocks abutting the school, an area straddling Kingsway East and the Greater Ville, SLACO and its partners have used this designated area as a pilot model to replicate the approach in similar communities in North St. Louis.
The basic premise of SLACO’s B.E.S.T. Approach is that in areas like the one encompassing Hickey, the community must be stabilized before new housing and economic development can be introduced. This involves making the neighborhoods more attractive and livable (B=Beautification), strengthening the neighborhood school (E=Education), ensuring security and meeting basic needs (S=Safety and Services), and providing support to local organizations (T=Technical). In short, the B.E.S.T. Approach emphasizes revitalizing blighted neighborhoods through a comprehensive strategy that involves rebuilding the community from the ground up. It outlines actions and potential collaborations to transform underserved communities, making them more attractive places to live and improving residents’ quality of life.
To launch the program, SLACO has sought out community partners to support the initiative called the Hickey B.E.S.T. Collective. Formed in the fall of 2022, the initial members were SLACO, the St. Louis Public Schools, the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, Harris-Stowe State University, and Washington University in St. Louis.
The B.E.S.T. Approach, a testament to the power of collaboration, has already produced significant tangible results. In terms of beautification, a generous grant from the City’s Community Development Agency Neighborhood Transformation program has enabled the expansion of SLACO’s Keeping It Clean (KIC) initiative. In addition the city’s Office of Neighborhood Stabilization in 2023 conducted extensive alley cleanups, board ups, demolitions, tree removals, and sidewalk repairs. Other programs that have furthered beautification efforts include Operation Clean Sweep, Proposition NS program, and Project Clear St. Louis. SLACO is also collaborating with St. Louis City and Forest ReLeaf to increase the tree canopy around the school and along St. Louis Ave.
In terms of education, attendance and test scores are major concerns. Through the support of the Urban League, the collective has dramatically increased the after-school program capacity at Hickey. Utilizing Harris-Stowe interns to triple the number of scholars served. Because of the interns, after-school faculty can have more one-on-one contact with students, resulting in higher rates of assignment completion and increasing the students’ exposure to reading opportunities. In addition, through a generous donation of 800 books, Hickey library enlarged its holdings of literature by African American authors and that featured non-white characters. Moreover, this summer, a Claver House Little Library will be installed on the school premises to nurture summer reading. To increase students’ attendance, SLACO has been working with SLPS authorities to explore options for providing additional bus services.
To better address the needs of Hickey families and nearby residents, Washington University funded a report by one of its faculty, Catalina Freixas, an associate professor of architecture at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, to acquire a deeper understanding of the resources available to meet community challenges. In addition, professor Freixas conducted an extensive survey in conjunction with focus groups to identify specific needs to generate a comprehensive roadmap to the community by outlining specific actions and potential partnerships to help achieve their goals.
Additionally, Freixas, through her Segregation by Design course, has overseen her students developing traffic calming strategies aimed at enhancing students’ ability to walk to school safely. Street humps have been installed in proximity to HES as part of these efforts. Other technical support provided by the collective members includes various forms of assistance by SLACO to build organizational capacity in the community.
During the next year, SLACO and its collective partners plan to expand beautification initiatives, continue recruiting Harris-Stowe interns for the after-school program through generous support from InverstSTL, and seek funding to enhance the program through a Twenty-First Community Learning Center grant from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), as well as seeking new partners and resources. Because of the significant progress that has already been made, the collective feels that the B.E.S.T. Approach can be replicated in similar communities in the near future. The progress shown is a testament to the community’s resilience and the effectiveness of the B.E.S.T. Approach in the face of challenges.
#SLACO #education #communitypartnership
