Making an election data visualization hits differently when you’re one of the candidates.
Flourish isn’t letting me change the number formatting for votes in the popups, which is annoying.
On average, voters chose 2.3 school board candidates. (You could pick up to three.)
| Race | SLPS K-12 Enrollment |
|---|---|
| Black | 12,525 |
| White | 1,976 |
| Hispanic | 1,328 |
| Asian | 459 |
| Multiracial | 210 |
| Indian | 34 |
| Pacific Islander | 10 |
| 16,542 |
| Race | City Population, Age 5-19 |
|---|---|
| Black or African American Alone | 22,787 |
| White alone | 10,292 |
| Asian Alone | 2,240 |
| Two or More Races | 4,483 |
| American Indian and Alaska Native Alone | 142 |
| Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Alone | 14 |
| Some Other Race Alone | 1,109 |
| 41,067 |
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.