st. louis
What’s the best high school in Missouri? The results from U.S. News & World Report are in, and … no, they didn’t use PwC, the firm that gave out the wrong Best Picture envelope at the Academy Awards this year, so we’re good to go, confident to announce that it’s Metro Academic and Classical High School in the City of St. Louis! Hold your applause, please … thank you. No. 2 is Ladue Horton Watkins High School. What?! Hey! Kanye West, sit down! Schools are ranked by performance on state-required tests and how well they prepare students for college. In our Show-Me state, Metro and Ladue really showed ’em: Metro was one of only two Missouri schools awarded a gold medal—the other was Ladue Horton Watkins. Missouri high schoolers must earn at least 24 credits to graduate, including a half credit in personal finance. Students also may join the state’s LifeSmarts program, which develops consumer and marketplace skills. LifeSmarts teams can compete online and then in person in Jeff City; this year, 22 received silver medals and 122 took bronze. Metro ranked No. 133 nationally. Schools throughout the metro rounded out Missouri’s top five: Clayton High School took No. 3 and was awarded a silver medal, as were No. 4, Lafayette Senior High in Wildwood, and No. 5, Kirkwood High School. At Metro, 96 percent if students graduate; 97 percent of Ladue seniors get to toss their mortarboards in the air. The big difference between the two, according to U.S. News & World Report, is readiness for college: Metro: 77.5 percent; Ladue Horton Watkins: 61.5 percent. Clayton also boasts a graduation rate of 97 percent, although the survey ranks its readiness for college at 55.8 percent. Only one high school outside of the metro snuck into the top 10, a KC school that nobody in these parts cares about, anyhow, was ranked No. 6. Ahem. No. 7 is Marquette Senior High in Chesterfield, No. 8 is Lindbergh Senior High in South County, No. 9 is McKinley Classical Leadership Academy in St. Louis, and last but not least, No. 10 is Francis Howell High School in St. Charles. Now it’s time for a standing ovation! These are our kids and grandchildren, after all; they’re the fine folks who will be choosing our nursing homes.
fenton
Things are getting all sewn up in the former garment district—after a fashion—at the fabulous St. Louis Fashion Incubator (SLFI). Tacony Corp., a 70-year-old family-owned Fenton business, donated $10,000 worth of Baby Lock sewing machines to SLFI—newfangled gadgetry that does much more than just stitch up seams and attach buttons, although high-speed straight stitch machines are also in the collection. And there’s an eight-thread serger with advanced auto-threading capability (try saying that five times fast) and cover stitch machines that professionally finish tees, sweatshirts and wovens. The six new machines are housed in the incubator’s newly built-out, 2,500-square-foot Berges Family Foundation Fashion Technology Center (FTC), located on the second floor of the incubator. This generous workspace also includes cutting tables, steamers and buttonhole machines purchased as part of a grant from the foundation. The six SLFI designers—who moved from several places on the map to St. Louis in January for a two-year residency—have use of the space five days a week. The incubator, 1533 Washington Ave., will soon be able to make the FTC available to other St. Louis-based fashion designers, as well as college students studying fashion and design. Educational opportunities are in the works at SLFI as well, including sewing, pattern-making and draping classes, and seminars and workshops with industry professionals.
chesterfield
The St. Louis area is known as a major medical center, and even our popular western ’burb shares in the kudos. St. Luke’s Hospital in Chesterfield has earned a solid ‘A’ based on patient experience, having received a 2017 Outstanding Patient Experience Award from Healthgrades, an independent health care organization that places the hospital in the top 5 percent nationwide based on an analysis of patient experience data. This is the seventh year in a row that the hospital has been so honored (2011-2017). Healthgrades evaluated facilities coast to coast that submitted patient surveys from April 2015 to March 2016 to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Participating hospitals must: meet thresholds for survey response size and clinical quality in order to be considered for the award; not opt out of Healthgrades analysis; and not pay to be evaluated. The 493-bed hospital, with more than 26 additional locations throughout the metro, is no stranger to plaudits from Healthgrades: In an October report from the organization, St. Luke’s received 2017 awards for excellence in the areas of cardiac care, cardiac surgery, coronary intervention and general surgery. According to the same national study, the hospital achieved five-star ratings for the quality of its treatment for stroke, pneumonia and respiratory failure. What’s more, St. Luke’s is the St. Louis affiliate of the nation’s No. 1 heart hospital, Cleveland Clinic’s Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute. Congrats!
maryland heights
Let’s all paws for a moment to announce … and barking is permitted if not encouraged … that the new Humane Society of Missouri complex in Maryland Heights opened last week. Now, sit. Stay. Settle down; maybe you’ll get a treat in just a minute. The innovative new center pulls together an adoption center and veterinary hospital that fulfills the vision of president Kathy Warnick, who has sought to transform animal welfare in the Midwest by combining animal sheltering and rescue, vet services, and humane education programs all in the same place. From the bright, inviting atmosphere of the Best Buddy Adoption Center to the state-of-the-art Pain Management Center within the Animal Medical Center of Mid-America, the complex was designed to offer exceptional care for animals while also providing a comfortable environment for people and prospective pets to get to know one another. Designed for the comfort, care and rehabilitation of animals in need, the new center opened for business a week ago today (April 26) at the intersection of Page Avenue and Schuetz Road (postal workers and the GPS-dependent can find it at 11660 Administration Drive). The center is so modern and innovative, we even imagined it might include many of the same features as a typical new hospital for us humans. Well, although we sniffed around, no helipad is on site.
university city
When the old television set conks out, you don’t just throw it in the trash … do you? Many municipalities make it easy and environmentally conscientious to recycle old electronics and other electrical appliances—practically anything with an electrical cord attached. U. City is holding an electronics recycling event this Saturday (May 6) from 9 a.m. to noon, rain or shine, at Heman Park Community Center, 975 Pennsylvania Ave. Is your toaster toast? They’ll take it. Laptops, power tools, printers, keyboards, stereo speakers and microwaves are on the list. Busted extension cords and computer cables can go. So can VCR players and fax machines. (Don’t know what either of those are, or what the heck they did? Gotcha, you little millennial.) These items and others will be accepted, free of charge. But there’ll be a $15 charge for cathode-ray tube (CRT) television sets and monitors or broken flat-screen TVs and monitors; cash or check acceptable. What’s the big deal? Well, it’s pretty heavy: CRT monitors and TVs contain between 4 to 8 pounds of toxic lead that can leach into the ground if not disposed of properly. Styrofoam also will be accepted at the event, if it’s not covered with food waste or tape. Now, if you were taken aback by the amount of lead contained in a typical CRT television or computer monitor, city officials have some other statistics that show why it’s important to recycle electronics rather than toss them in the garbage: First off, Americans throw away 9.4 million tons of used electronics (‘e-waste’) every year; only 12.5 percent of e-waste is recycled. Isn’t that pathetic? Recycling 1 million laptops saves the same energy used yearly by 3,657 U.S. homes. What about cell phones? You’ll wish you had a million of them to recycle, because maybe they should be stored in Fort Knox: 35,274 pounds of copper are recycled, 772 pounds of silver, and 75 pounds of gold. That’s about $60 million worth of gold and silver alone!
