Nobody Benefits from School Buildings Sitting Vacant

I joined Kelly Jackson and McGraw Milhaven on “The McGraw Show” this morning to discuss my new paper, “Vacant School Buildings: An Examination of Kansas City and Saint Louis.” Check out the discussion below.

After our on-air discussion, McGraw brought up the similarities between the district and the Saint Louis Land Reutilization Authority (LRA), or what I refer to in the segment as the Land Bank. He offered a good baseball analogy. It seems the LRA and the St. Louis Public School District are looking to hit home runs, but they need to focus on getting hits. The district regularly receives reasonable proposals from charter schools, which the district may not consider a home run, but they are certainly hits.

The district certainly needs to do something with these buildings, because nobody benefits from school buildings sitting vacant.