The keynote speaker was Fredrika Newton, Huey P. Newton’s widow. Her talk about being committed, body and soul, to the well-being of a community hit me hard. Afterwards, I made myself useful by taking group photos for people and got a chance to thank Fredrika. She wished me luck on my school board run.
If you had plucked my alter ego Mosh Hard out of the pit at an Urge concert at Kennedy’s in the early 90s and told me that in 30-something years I’d be running for school board and Steve Ewing would endorse me, I’d be like, “Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” Steve’s brought so much joy to my life. Four Years of Flavor, the photography book about him, is dropping in about a week.
Photo by my campaign manager, SLPS fifth grader Molly Marston
I attended the school board meeting on January 14 at Yeatman Middle School. The meeting made headlines for other reasons (fast forward the YouTube video to 2:33), but this large assemblage of principals has a lot to be proud of.
On January 15, I was in the basement of Oak Hill Presbyterian Church for a Tower Grove South Neighborhood Association meeting and captured this snapshot of peak retail politics in River City: Mayor Tishaura Jones at the mic, opposite Alderwoman Daniela Velázquez who recently introduced a city charter amendment that would shift the mayor’s authority to a non-elected city administrator, with TGSNA board member Dan Pearson in the middle, making a friendship bracelet.
Of the 12 school board candidates, I was the only one to file a January Quarterly Report with the Missouri Ethics Commission. It was due on January 15. I’m committed to transparency, ethics, and accurate accounting.
On January 15 and 16, I stopped by Commerce Bank on South Grand for what have become regular visits with Joey Reyes and Dave Barber. They put the “personal” in “personal banker.” They’ve been trying to get online banking set up on my candidate committee account since December 13. We’re going to crack the code eventually.
I’ve got 500 two-sided, three-color yard signs to move from my living room to in front of your city home or business. Pick one up this Saturday, January 18, between 3 and 5 at Steve’s Hot Dogs (3145 South Grand Blvd / 63118). If Saturday doesn’t work for you, get in touch, and we can make other arrangements.
Help spread the word by taking a picture of you with your sign and posting it on social media with the hashtag #marstonforschoolboard.
Thanks again to Ken Zarecki for the design. They were silkscreen printed by union sign shop O.R. Pechman.
It took some work to condense the data into these two tables. The racial (and ethnic) categories, ages, and years for the two data sources don’t align perfectly, but I don’t think that significantly impacts the summary statistics.
Back in 1996, when the web was young and so was I, I was a research associate at the Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis. It was my job to post the underlying data for the first table above on the web for MO DESE.
Putting the two tables together and doing a little additional calculation reveals that 55% of Black kids in the city between the ages of five and 19 attend an SLPS school, but only 19% of white kids do. Overall, only 40% of kids age five to 19 are enrolled in SLPS.
Another way to look at it is that there are 2.2 times as many Black school-age kids in the city as white kids, but there are 6.3 times as many Black kids in SLPS.
I have 1,000 campaign business cards in hand from union printer The Ink Spot. They were designed by the one, Z only, Ken Zarecki. Let me know if you’d like some to pass out to city voters.
My list of individual endorsements is coming along. I’m grateful to be backed by such a stellar crew.
To help aggregate posts about my campaign and elevate their visibility on social media, use the hashtag #marstonforschoolboard.
I closed out 2024 with a total of $2,331 in campaign contributions (thank you!) and 1,084 page views on this site. 79% of the website traffic has been from people on mobile devices (phones). Something no one except Google and I care about is that the site is rocking it on PageSpeed Insights. (I’ve never seen a site get 4 x 100% before.)
I’m Brian Henry Marston. My dad is Richard Henry. His dad was Henry Arnold. His dad was Henry Joseph. My son is Milo Henry. The “H” is a reminder of those who came before me and those coming after me. It also helps disambiguate me from the other Brian Marstons out there in search results.
Three Henrys: My grandpa, dad, and me. New Year’s Day 2003.
