This is an update to School Privatizers Want Another STL Sales Tax for Child Care
Proposition B on the ballot in St. Louis City is a sketchy proposal. It most certainly would publicly fund some day care/pre-school services by charter schools, churches, and for profit companies.
Is your St. Louis City child guaranteed free or subsidized, quality early child education (ECE) by Prop B?
No.
That’s up to the private club, I mean the Mayor’s appointed Board, that will spend the money without Board of Aldermen oversight.
And most assuredly, Stephen Westbrooks, Mayor Cara Spencer director of St. Louis Development Corporation and a charter school supporter, will end up on that Board and some of the funds will become corporate welfare under the guise of workforce development.
Prop B proposes something similar to, but actually worse than, the Mayor’s appointed transparency fail Mental Health Board which manages the current ECE tax fund called Community Children’s Services Fund. It was sold as ECE but actually pays for ECE consultants, not ECE.
It also would certainly be a jobs creator for the nonprofit industrial complex. A lot of staffing positions with important titles will be created using the bloated bureaucracy role model of City’s Mental Health Board.
Like charter schools, private schools, nonprofit or for profit child care centers, there is no guarantee that your disabled child will be accepted for whatever type of funded ECE that the Prop B Board decides on.
It also appears that this St. Louis City tax money could go to child care outside St. Louis City.
The list of what’s wrong with this thing is very long. Very.
Joshua Lawrence provides more good insights Prop B.
Read the proposal here. Not just the ballot language, read what it really does beginning on page two. Read the whole thing.
Prop B’s campaign run by Best Start for Kids makes a lot of promises not backed up with the petition they circulated. “Increase wages and benefits for early educators” and “Improve quality of care” are just sales pitches. There is no guarantee that will happen. AND there is no sunset provision so that later down the road voters could decide to end the experiment and start over.
A better way would be public school-based ECE in every school across the City.
The campaign’s funding is my focus here. I only looked at the $1,000 and over donors. Plenty of other smaller donors related to child care centers, all tithing to the campaign in hopes of currying favor from the future Board that will make the rules and hand out money.
WePower Related Prop B Donors
WePower is the school privatization non profit and driving force behind the previous Proposition R for a St. Louis sales tax to fund early childhood education consultants. Also note, WePower Made Non-Committee Expenditures in 2023 for now Alders Daniela Velazquez, Shameem Clark Hubbard, Rasheen Aldridge but misspelled their names.
03/05/2026 $17,500 loan
03/12/2026 $30,000 loan
03/16/2026 $280 in kind
03/20/2026 $12,000 loan
03/28/2026 $1,500 in kind
04/02/2026 $2,015.35 in kind
04/06/2026 $460.88 in kind
05/21/2026 $31,712.02 in kind
06/02/2026 $6,440.50 in kind
07/01/2026 $19,189 in kind
09/01/2026 $1,458.84 in kind
09/14/2026 $720 in kind
09/18/2026 $4,451.37 in kind
09/21/2026 $526.80 in kind
09/22/2026 $335 in kind
10/01/2026 $21,052.74 in kind
10/02/2026 $6,102.81 in kind
10/20/2026 $11,027.06 in kind
Laura Horwitz, JF Roblee Foundation; Board member for WePower
12/02/2025 $5,000
03/30/2026 $5,000
Delmar Divine Related Donors
Robert Fox and Maxine Clark, founder of Build A Bear (a corporate welfare recipient) and queen mother of school privatization in St. Louis based at her Delmar Divine development.
10/14/2026 $25,000
11/10/2025 $10,000
Elizabeth Mannen Berges, Mannen Financial Group, and Jim Berges, former President of Emerson Electric. Berges Family Foundation (Delmar Divine tenant) supports the Opportunity Trust, St. Louis Police Foundation, Greater St. Louis, and charter schools.
02/03/2026 $25,000
09/17/2026 $25,000
Hank Webber, former Vice Chancellor for Washington University, charter school advocate (KIPP) and Board member of Maxine Clark’s Delmar Divine, and Dr. Christine Jacobs, Dean of St. Louis University Medical School
12/07/2025 $1,000
02/10/2026 $2,500
03/30/2026 $2,500: IFF (Delmar Divine tenant), previously known as Illinois Facilities Fund, ECE consultant
Other Dark Money Funders of Prop B
Nonprofits that should be PACs filing reports with Missouri Ethics Commission
Could not find where money comes from on their websites
Children’s Funding Accelerator
04/15/2026 $75,000
04/17/2026 $28,500 in kind
04/22/2026 $25,000
09/23/2026 $30,000
Missouri Action for Kids, same Baldwin address as Kids Win Missouri (which receives public funding)
01/30/2026 $50,000
03/30/2026 $50,000
10/07/2026 $50,000
Child Care Aware of Missouri, a child care referral nonprofit and member of Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Missouri
02/10/2026 $10,000
10/20/2026 $10,000
10/13/2026 $10,000: Community Change, DC
More Private/Charter School Supporter Related Prop B Donors
Alison Ferring, Ferring Family Foundation (funds charter schools, ECE); St. Louis Library Board member
04/14/2026 $50,000
09/30/2026 $50,000
$8,000: Anne Miller, education consultant, a charter school founder (North Side Community School)
11/17/2025 $5,000: Tony Thompson, Kwame Building Group CEO, St. Louis County Board of Police Commissioner, and charter school supporter 01/21/2026
04/10/2026 $5,000: Timothy Burke, former IT professional, now groundskeeper at Westminster Christian Academy, Town & Country
03/30/2026 $1,000: Linda Hunter, Hunter Family Foundation (funds charter school, ECE)
10/23/2026 $1,000: Mary Stillman, founder, Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls, charter school 2014-2023; husband Tom Stillman is chair of NHL St. Louis Blues
ECE/Day Care Related Donors Currently Not Affiliated With A School
03/31/2026 $10,000: Youth in Need, St. Charles but supports ECE providers in six counties including St. Louis City
05/29/2026 $10,000: Urban Sprouts Child Development Center, University City
SouthSide Early Childhood Center, Fox Park
03/30/2026 $4,000
05/26/2026 $1,000
09/18/2026 $2,000
Rochelle Bea, Beginning Futures Learning Center, Walnut Park
03/24/2026 $1,000
04/26/2026 $1,000
05/21/2026 $500
05/23/2026 $1,000
06/02/2026 $2,500: Mark Daly, Mary Margaret Day Care Centers (Auntie Margaret’s Day Care), St. Louis City and County
03/12/2026 $1,000: Lisa Sharp, Baden Christian Child Care Center, Baden
05/21/2026 $1,000: Lisa Scheer, Baden Christian Child Care Center, Baden
Angela Malone, Raggedy Ann N Andy Learning Center, Greater Ville
02/25/2026 $1,000
09/29/2026 $500
06/05/2026 $1,500: My Mother’s Roots, Baden
03/17/2026 $1,000: Saleetha Barbee, Creative Development Academy, Penrose
03/20/2026 $1,000: Mary Crockett Smith, founder The Christian Academy, North City and Florissant
03/26/2026 $1,000: Jeremy Brown, Smart Kids Child Development Center, Spanish Lake
03/26/2026 $1,000: Francene Mitchell, Precious Days Learning Academy, Berkeley
Other Donors of Note
John McDonnell, former chair of McDonnell Douglas
05/03/2026 $25,000
10/05/2026 $25,000
02/09/2026 $5,000 David Roberts, former management consultant and chair emeritus of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Jewish Reconstructionist Communities’ Board of Governors, and Sue Fischlowitz, former chair of St. Louis Hillel Board at Washington University and Hillel at Brandeis University
Amy Wilson, given that she makes her donations from historic Walter Hecker house in Clayton, I’m not sure she’s the same Amy Wilson who works for Wilson School (private ECE)
01/25/2026 $1,000
03/23/2026 $500
01/15/2026 $1,000: John Kalishman, President of Harcourt Group (investment and management), owns homes in St. Louis County and St. Louis and Steamboat Springs, Colorado
01/30/2026 $1,000: Gibron Jones, urban farmer, founder of HOSCO SHIFT (food co-op)
03/09/2026 $1,000: STL Metropolitan Clergy Coalition, a Christian organization that opposes gay marriage
03/24/2026 $1,000: Michael Todorovic, insurance broker at Lockton
03/24/2026 $1,000: Natalie Clay, program manager at BioSTL (oddly, MEC report says social worker)
03/29/2026 $1,000: Mary Wheeler Jones, retired director of the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners; serves on Senior Citizens’ Service Fund Board (tax district); co-founder of Fairground Park for All
04/06/2026 $1,000: Saffiyah Poole, St. Louis Integrated Health Network (nonprofit consultant)
09/18/2026 $1,000: Joyce Aboussie, Aboussie & Associates, the woman who tried twice to make US Representative Dick Gephardt a US President
