By Kevin Lavery, KWMU
St. Louis, MO. – St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay devoted part of his annual State of the City address Friday to his plans for investing in education.
Slay said he'll ask the city school board to return to a K-through-8 neighborhood school system and said he'll soon announce plans to add three new charter schools.
That proposal concerns 1st ward alderman Charles Quincy Troupe. He says siphoning the public school budget to fund more charter schools is simply a back door approach to funding private education.
"I think that that's wrong because more money is appropriated for charter schools than the kids would actually get if they went to public school," Troupe said. "So that creates a drain on the public schools."
Slay says his goal is to double the number of students graduating from high school over the next four years.