Teacher eager to join a union at the Grand Center Arts Academy have to take slower steps toward their goal due to several procedural steps the school's operator is requiring. If the teachers succeed, the academy would be the first charter school in St. Louis to be unionized.

Last month, about 80 percent of the staff at the charter school signed cards saying they wanted to be part of a local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.

Missouri hospitals have seen a drastic increase in prescription painkiller abuse over the past decade. According to a study from the Missouri Hospital Association, the rate of hospitalization due to the abuse of prescription opioids has increased by 137 percent since 2005.

The numbers localize a problem usually shown through national statistics. For instance, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 44 people die every day in the United States from prescription painkiller overdoses.

Brightly-colored tires simulating flower beds popped-up along a two-block stretch of Gasconade Street Saturday in the Dutchtown neighborhood of south St. Louis.

Bicycle and pedestrian advocacy group Trailnet set the tires up to block the corners of intersections leading up to Marquette Park, shortening the distance people crossing the road were exposed to traffic. Other tires formed a zig-zag route for drivers to navigate.

Jackie McNett has been a St. Louis Cardinals fan for as long as she can remember. Growing up, her family named their canine member Wrigley, because, as she put it, “at the time, the Chicago Cubs were the dogs of the National League.”

Then, in 2008, as a student at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Jackie met Bob. Spotting a Cubs poster in his dorm room, Jackie called it “disgusting.” But that didn’t stop her from wanting to get to know him better.

“I thought he was cute,” Jackie said in a telephone interview Friday. “So we kept talking.”

The City of St. Louis would be the first stop on a proposed national trail to mark historic sites in the struggle for African American civil rights, if Congressman Lacy Clay, D-University City, is successful in his efforts to preserve “precious historic waypoints along the routes of that largely untold story.”  

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay has announced a new commission to help him implement his anti-crime strategy.

The mayor wants the Commission on Violent Crime to be operational by the end of the year, though many of the details, including who the members of the commission will be, are unclear. He unveiled the plans to revive the commission on his website on Thursday: