Tag: Mental Health Board

Vote NO, STL Prop B Child Care Sales Tax Grift

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 on 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; Treasurer for Best Start for Kids Prop B campaign

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

School Privatizers Want Another STL Sales Tax for Child Care

Man with giant green money bag

Updated 10/25/2026 Vote NO, STL Prop B Child Care Sales Tax Grift

Some people would like to raise the sales tax in City of St. Louis for early childhood education (ECE) in the City. Again. Don’t be fooled. Again.

Unlike in Boliver, where there is a $3 Million expansion underway for their ECE center on the public schools campus, this sales tax campaign is not for St. Louis Public Schools ECE. Again. It’s not for free ECE. Again.

Instead, it’s another sketchy way to publicly fund charter schools, church day care, for profit child care, and 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 MHB, which manages the current ECE tax fund called Community Children’s Services Fund, that pays for ECE consultants, not ECE, the new tax would be managed by another mayoral appointed board independent from the City of St. Louis, unaccountable to the Board of Alders, or anyone else really.

Read the proposal here, not just the ballot language, read the whole thing.

Note that Stephen Westbrooks, Mayor Cara Spencer’s new director of St. Louis Development Corporation, City corporate welfare umbrella agency, and a charter school supporter, is one of the ballot issue petitioners.

Note that the proposed sales tax is enabled by 67.547 RSMO and is a county sales tax, not a municipal sales tax. That’s because Best Start for Kids also wants a tax in St. Louis County. I don’t have any idea how the campaign it’s going in the County. I do know that when MAGA eventually bankrupts St. Louis City, sells off assets, forces annexation of City into County, the folks running this scam will still be well funded.

Best Start for Kids campaign makes a lot of promises not backed up with the petition they are circulating. Again. It’s not about funding free ECE at public schools.

“Increase wages and benefits for early educators” and “Improve quality of care” are just campaign 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.

Best Start for Kids filed with Missouri Ethics Commission last August as a ballot issue campaign committee for November 3rd, 2026, election in the City.

A lot of preachers think their churches are getting a piece of the pie but most of the money is coming from school privatizers.

The committee filed Limited Activity for August and October 2025 reports but then received $10,000 on November 10th from Robert Fox. He is the husband of 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.

Fox’s contribution appeared in the January 2026 Report with others including:

$5,000 (11/17/2025) Tony Thompson, Kwame Building Group CEO, St. Louis County Board of Police Commissioner, and charter school supporter

$5,000 (12/02/2025) Laura Horwitz, JF Roblee Foundation and Board member for WePower, the main proponent for Best Start for Kids sales tax hike campaign

$1,000 (12/07/2025) Hank Webber, part of the group seeking a Midtown Infrastructure TIF, former Vice Chancellor for Washington University, former chair of Cortex, charter school advocate, and Board member of Maxine Clark’s Delmar Divine. He also serves on

Starting in January, Best Starts for Kids started receiving donations requiring “48 Hour Report of Contribution Received Over $5000” and which will not appear on a quarterly Report until April. These contributions include:

$8,000 (01/21/2026) Anne Miller, education consultant, a charter school founder (North Side Community School)

$50,000 (01/30/2026) Missouri Action for Kids, same address as Kids Win Missouri (which receives public funding)

$25,000 (02/03/2026) Elizabeth Mannen Berges, Mannen Financial Group, and Jim Berges, former President of Emerson Electric. Berges Family Foundation supports the Opportunity Trust, St. Louis Police Foundation, Greater St. Louis, and charter schools.

$10,000 (02/10/2026) Child Care Aware of Missouri, a child care referral nonprofit and member of Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Missouri

$17,500 (03/05/2026) + $30,000 (03/12/2026) + $12,000 (03/20/2026) WePower, school privatization nonprofit, driving force behind the previous Proposition R for a St. Louis sales tax to fund early childhood education consultants, the fund managed by St. Louis Mental Health Board.

WePower is represented by a stable of lobbyists including David Sweeney, everyone’s friend at Board of Alders, and Nexus Group. WePower is located in Cortex Innovation District.

In 2020, The City’s Board of Alders passed an ordinance to send voters a tax hike to fund ECE. The BOA vote was 25-0 with two absent and one vacancy.

Unfortunately, it did not really fund ECE as in subsidizing costs to parents. It was money for training and marketing consultants and creating a large staff to award grants.

Like Alders, not many bothered to read the proposal. It was approved 56.26% (72,745) to 43.74% (56,554).

Proponents of the previous ballot issue like to say the issue drove voters to the polls but it was a Presidential and statewide office and ballot issues election. 6,170 fewer ballots were cast for Proposition R than the total votes cast for US President in that 66% turnout election.

Deputy Treasurer for Best Start for Kids is Mike Pridmore, who serves as treasurer or deputy treasurer for numerous campaign accounts including Mayor Spencer, City and State ballot issues, and political action committees (legal money laundries in Missouri).

There was previously a Best Starts for Kids, STL committee, not run by Pridmore, for a 2024 St. Louis County Charter Amendment to increase sales tax by for early childhood education. That ballot measure did not end up on the ballot.

Board President Megan Green and Alders Pam Boyd, Shameem Clark-Hubbard, Tom Oldenburg, and Daniela Velázquez have endorsed the ballot issue.

Board President Green unsuccessfully tried to organize a charter school before she was an Alder.

Saida Cornejo-Zuniga worked briefly as Legislative Assistant to Alder Velázquez before taking a position at WePower.

Rodney Hubbard, Alder Clark-Hubbard’s husband, is a lobbyist for Steven R. Carroll & Associates, which is lobbyist for St. Louis Public Schools, tho Hubbard is not registered to represent that client.

During the 2024-2025 session of the Board of Alders, Alder Clark-Hubbard sponsored Board Bill 7 for a second sales tax ballot issue, an additional one-half of one percent to go to the Mental Health Board’s Early Childhood Education Fund.

Board Bill 7 was very oddly assigned to the Transportation and Commerce Committee.

The St. Louis City Board of Education unanimously opposed the measure, saying the bill “directs taxpayer dollars to non-public entities with no oversight or accountability measures in place.”

Debate was cut off an hour into the hearing and Board Bill 7 advanced no further.

The major proponent for that bill was WePower, which seemed to be complaining that their previous tax hike that they wrote and won was flawed, basically the same argument this time.

We’ll talk later about how irresponsible it is for anyone to propose a new sales tax in Missouri as MAGA General Assmbly and Governor pushes to eliminate income tax and replace with sales taxes.