24:1 Community, Missouri

On a map, 24 contiguous municipalities just northwest of St. Louis resemble nothing more than a crazy quilt. And for decades, their governance and services were a patchwork, too. Each municipality—from the tiny, two-street Village of Glen Echo Park, population 160, to the neighborhood-sized City of Normandy, population 5,008—has its own government. That’s two dozen mayors and city councils and almost as many police departments in an area that spans almost 11 square miles, is home to 36,250 people, and is served by one school district.

More than half a decade ago, city leaders rose above their individual municipal identities and city charters, embracing an “all-for-one” approach. Calling themselves “24:1,” they first came together in the midst of the nationwide mortgage foreclosure crisis that threatened the health of individuals, families, neighborhoods, and entire communities. Today, the 24:1 municipalities strive to realize a unified vision: strong communities, engaged families, and successful children.

 “If one community fails, we all fail,” says James W. McGee, mayor of the City of Vinita Park on the western edge of the 24:1 footprint. “To start healing the community, you have to have everybody involved. If everybody takes ownership, then you’re going to have a healthier community.”

For this unique spirit of collaboration and healing, the 24:1 Community has been honored with the RWJF Culture of Health Prize.

The 24:1 municipalities, whose total populations are 80 percent black, are tackling deep challenges to health and well-being. More than nine in 10 of their public school students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The unemployment rate is three times the county norm. People in the area live, on average, 15 fewer years than residents of Clayton, a more affluent community just three miles away. To cap it all off, four years ago the school district lost its state accreditation after 18 years of struggling under “provisional accreditation.”

Shared concern about the community’s ills brought the municipalities together in 2008, when more than half of their mayors first gathered. They were convened by Beyond Housing, a neighborhood development organization that was already building and maintaining affordable housing with supportive social services in the City of Pagedale. With the foreclosure crisis eroding some of Pagedale’s success in increasing property values and improving children’s school performance, Chris Krehmeyer, Beyond Housing’s president and CEO, wanted to spark a wide-ranging conversation: How do we make the community better? How do we make it whole?

The answer was to collaborate. “At the end of the day, housing alone won't fix our community,” Krehmeyer says. “Education alone won't fix our community.  Jobs alone, health alone, economic development alone won't help our community, but we think having all of them together and intentionally integrating them to make the fabric of a place healthy is going to give us long-term economic success.”

With just four screens and an unassuming Art Deco marquee, the 24:1 Cinema in Pagedale, Mo., may not seem like much to an outside observer. But to Alderwoman Marla Smith, the one-year-old movie theater’s lights are “eye candy” and a herald of the renaissance she fervently wants for her city.

“When I was a little girl, Pagedale was popping,” says the 44-year-old mother of three. People owned their homes and lived in them, she says. Big employers such as the Lever Brothers soap factory and the Stix, Baer and Fuller department-store warehouse anchored the community.

But by the mid-1980s, many Pagedale businesses were in decline or had shuttered. Unemployment rose, and X-rated movies were showing at the Olympic Drive-in. There hadn’t been a grocery store since the 1960s. Houses went dark when homeowners lost their jobs and mortgages.

In the 1990s, Mayor Mary Louise Carter and the neighborhood development group Beyond Housing began working together to replace dilapidated homes and vacant lots with affordable housing. Then about 10 years ago, they began meeting with residents to ask what else would make their lives better.

“Everybody agreed that a grocery store they could walk to and get fresh fruits and vegetables and get healthy meals was one of the first things they wanted,” Carter says.

Over homemade turkey ribs and peach cobbler, a dozen North St. Louis County mayors and city representatives discuss matters large and small at their monthly gathering: their struggling school district, whether they should jointly bid on computer networking and security services, the cost of road salt.

A mayor’s job isn’t always exciting. But for 24:1’s tiny municipalities, which range from fewer than 200 people to about 5,000, every dollar and efficiency counts. The cities share contracts, best practices, and monthly conversations in the quest to bring better services, health, and well-being to residents. Six of the municipalities now also share a police department, the North County Police Cooperative.

Viola Murphy, mayor of the City of Cool Valley, says 24:1’s collaborative governance started when one of the other mayors asked what she paid for salt. “I told her what we paid and she was like, ‘I pay much more than that,’” she says. “So we started to look at how could we save money for our communities and get things done.” 

It’s no exaggeration to say the 24:1 community was shocked to its core four years ago when Missouri stripped its school district of provisional accreditation, citing years of stagnant test scores and poor performance. Alumna Pamela Westbrooks-Hodge, now a state-appointed member of the Joint Executive Governing Board that runs the schools, says hearing news of the de-accreditation was “like experiencing death.”

In 2014, the state created a new governing body for the district, the Normandy Schools Collaborative, with a mandate to meet accreditation standards by 2017. The community moved swiftly to action. “It wasn’t just the state that said, ‘Make it right,’” says Superintendent Charles Pearson. “Community members said, ‘Make it right, and we’ll work with you.’”

Normandy’s path forward has not been easy. A state law enabling students to transfer from a de-accredited school to one with accreditation has drained millions of dollars in tuition and transportation fees paid to other, more affluent districts with higher costs. Meanwhile, nearly every Normandy student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch.

“Our families are struggling around literacy, family structure, employment, and housing,” Pearson says. “When students come from poverty, they need a ton of wraparound services.”

Chris Krehmeyer, president and CEO of the neighborhood development group Beyond Housing, estimates that the 24:1 community lost 6 or 7 percent of its 15,000 households during the 2008 foreclosure crisis. And eight years later, he says, “We’re still struggling.”

Property values haven’t rebounded, and 24:1 now has more renters than ever, he says. “That doesn’t have to be bad, but there’s strength in homeownership.” Homeowners create stability in a neighborhood because they generally move less than renters, and often they are more invested in the property and the community. Their children are more likely to stay in the same school, and that continuity can benefit students academically and socially.

One can see the decline in homeownership on the street where Pagedale Alderwoman Marla Smith lives. Seven houses on her block are Beyond Housing subsidized rental homes. Three belong to the Housing Authority of St. Louis County. Six houses are vacant. Two have been torn down by the city.

“That leaves maybe six homeowners,” Smith says.

For Tina Mosley, owner and director of Our Daycare and Learning Center, caring for children and enriching their lives is a round-the-clock job. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, her preschool caters to parents who juggle two jobs or work and school. Most of the families can’t pay much, if anything, for childcare, but their children get high-quality care nonetheless.

That’s the goal of Programs Achieving Quality, or PAQ, run by the St. Louis nonprofit United 4 Children in the 24:1 footprint: give childcare providers, whether center- or home-based, the resources to create the best learning environment possible for young children.

Because Our Daycare and Learning Center and the three-dozen other preschools PAQ works with serve mainly families who receive childcare subsidies, the schools are unable to raise tuition rates, says Director Alleta Kyd. They can’t afford to pay their staff more than $10 to $10.50 an hour, let alone invest in professional development or new playground equipment. Some of the owners are so strapped they can’t even buy toys, Kyd says.