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Thanks so much for joining us for Last Call.

Alvin, we're going to kick things off with you.

These are the topics we couldn't get to in the first half hour.

The state of Missouri sometime this month is going to start assigning letter grades A, B, C, D, or F to schools and school districts.

But some parents and educators are complaining it's too simplistic, even though it's kind of simple.

What do you think?

Well, I would agree.

Let's take SLPS.

The state would give them an F, and then when you get an F, that's like saying, like, everybody who works in the district, all the students, the whole thing is an F, and that's just simply not fair.

It may not be where it should be, but there are, just like with our ICE, there are hardworking, dedicated people in every school district that are doing a good job, and they turn out students that go to college and become successes, no matter how bad the district is.

So as a result, I don't think any school district should be labeled with an F. I don't think this is going to change a thing if they do it, because we already know who the F's are, we know who the A's are, and we understand that there are more exceptions to the overall district rankings than you can drive a truck through.

Like, let's take Metro High School, the number one top-rated high school in Missouri that happens to be within SLPS.

And so you're going to give SLPS an F, and then you're going to be like, oh, this hurts Metro.

Metro is still number one.

These rankings are both, like, they're too simple, and they won't even matter.

Yeah, I agree with Sarah.

I think that people will, it's sort of a clickbait sort of story.

People will find their district and their cousin's district, and they'll go, oh, wow, they got a B and we got a C. And they're going to forget about it.

But I do like the simplicity in this case.

When I was the film critic at The Post, and I would talk to people, and they said, and I always thought that the genius of Siskel and Ebert was thumbs up, thumbs down.

It gave you in very short order, should I go pay money to see this movie or not?

And as opposed to four stars, three stars, two-and-a-half stars, thumbs up, thumbs down.

And if it was thumbs up, give it a whirl.

If thumbs down, don't.

And I think this here at least will give you an idea, in a general sense, of where the good districts, the performing districts are, and the underperforming districts are.

And then, as Sarah said, after someone has looked at that, 24 hours later it's out of their mind.

Well, I subscribe, I don't know how, because someone sent it to me, to Boston Magazine.

And what they've done is taken all the public schools and I think some of the private schools in the Boston area, and instead of a letter grade, they say, okay, here's the attendance, here's what percentage take AP courses, here's the student-teacher ratio, here's the percentage who go to college.

And so you just kind of go across, and then they kind of rank them accordingly.

And they also take a look at how much is spent per pupil.

And I think something like that from the state would be really helpful.

But when I go to the state website, I honestly can't decipher the stats that they put out there from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Once upon a time, they used to, at least on our ancient dinosaur report cards, your behavior or the behavior part of it was check, plus, minus, where a check was sort of average, plus obviously above average, and then minus below average.

That is not as condemning as you said, because you're both absolutely right.

When you stamp that F, then some kids are going to look at that as sort of a reason why they shouldn't drive.

Yeah, what's the point?

But I think they've reached that, and I think the one thing is we're talking about schools here, and we're getting divided off on whether it should be grades, and now I found out that the St.

Louis public schools have put off again their vote until November.

And I keep worrying that what's going to happen is we're going to come up with enough ancillary issues that people are going to forget about the fact that for a substantial chunk of residents, public schools are not providing them with the education they should be, and we're going to go down all these, should we give them a letter grade?

Should it be 12 or 13 schools?

And we lose sight of the fact that basically people are saying these schools are not doing the job they're supposed to, and it gets lost in all this minutia.

Well, you know, Sarah was mentioning Metro High School.

I think it's kind of like SLU High.

I mean, you can't get into it unless you've got an A or a B in seventh and eighth grade.

So you're only getting the best students.

Of course you're going to have a great school.

Of course you're going to have high rankings.

Of course your SATs are going to be high.

And then at some of these schools, if you don't make letter grades, they get rid of you.

And so then their SAT average goes even higher because they got rid of the underachievers.

That's the truth.

Well, and for a bunch of those schools, people are paying for that privilege.

Yeah.

Well, this is true.

Okay.

Wendy, I want to ask you about the controversy in Frontenac.

You're our Frontenac editor, I think.

She's Frontenac adjacent, right?

Aren't you Frontenac adjacent?

Let's go to our Frontenac correspondent, Wendy, please.

Grassy's Restaurant is complaining, in I guess a good-natured way, that Foreshaw, the furniture establishment that sells grills and everything else, it's been around for 175 years, that Foreshaw bought some land and won't let the Grassy's customers park on it.

Foreshaw doesn't have a point.

Hey, they're not paying the taxes on the property.

They're not paying for the insurance.

They're not cleaning it up.

Why should the Grassy's customers park there?

Well, first of all, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Leslie Farber, if she is watching.

I believe she's back in town.

And she introduced me to Grassy's when I was in high school and working at the bakery right there on Clayton Road.

I have never, I mean, I don't know what it is about that roast beef sandwich or the salad, but people come from everywhere.

During the lunch hour, I've stopped on the way home from Donnybrook and picked up dinner for Chris and the kids.

It is a terrific place.

And I like the way the man who owns Grassy's, Don Dyer, is that his name?

Frank Dyer.

Frank Dyer.

He's got such a great attitude about it, truly.

He's saying, you know what, our customers are very loyal.

We've got a lot of parking in the back.

Everybody seems to be keeping their head about this.

You know, I think it's because so many people do love Grassy's, that is also going to be a story that's going to get attention.

But, you know, the front-neck official who was quoted in the paper is saying this doesn't really rise to a city hall issue.

This is between landlord and tenant.

But I just hope it works out because it's a great, great place.

I think people, why people are so wound up about this, and I should say this was my colleague Ryan Kroll's story in St.

Louis Magazine.

It was not the owner of Grassy's who called us to complain.

We heard about it from customers who are like, this is insane.

Like, if you go out there, you'll see they put cones and, like, blocked off this entire street.

And sure enough, they did.

And I think where, like, the outrage comes from is it looks like a public street.

It looks like some private owner has said, you are not allowed to park your car across the street from this restaurant on what looks like a public thoroughfare.

It turns out it's been privately owned for years.

Well, and it was the end of the trolley line.

The end of the trolley line, yeah.

Wait, what?

It's one of these weird, like, historic accidents where you think, okay, this is a cool place for me to park.

It does seem pretty petty to block it all off before you have a plan for this.

I also got from the story that it seems like negotiations broke down.

They did.

And before I'm going to villainize anybody in this, especially Forshaw, it's their property.

Right.

Sure.

Okay, that's like me putting up a fence on my property.

I think that's really the entire argument is that you are parking on my property.

And so that's got to count for something.

Almost everything.

And that's why Grassy's, I think, is being so gracious.

Well, are they?

Maybe the Grassy's customers were littering on it or ruining the lawn.

Or who knows what's going on.

No, Grassy's are not.

They're beloved Grassy's.

Maybe they are beloved.

But you know what, Forshaw's must be beloved too if it's been around for 160 years.

They are.

I'm telling you, there's probably some people from Clayton, Charlie, went out there.

And their parking spot wasn't available.

Probably tailgating.

And they got out and they called Sarah.

Leaving trash and garbage.

You take those calls.

That's not like a South St.

Louis thing, where you put a pie line up to reserve your spot.

I was saying, in South St.

Louis, you respect that.

This is our spot.

Oh, okay.

This is our spot.

Alvin, I want to ask you about the Posters Patch.

over the weekend, the new publisher, David Hoffman, put his name on the masthead.

I like it.

I like it when you have a publisher like Colonel Robert McCormick in the Chicago Tribune who uses the newspaper as an extension of his own ego and hopefully can accomplish some good.

What do you think?

Fundamentally wrong.

I think the newspaper, you could own the paper.

You could be the controlling interest in the newspaper.

You are not the newspaper.

So your name does not belong underneath the masthead on the front page.

It's foundationally wrong, and I am vehemently against it, and I think it once again shows that Mr.

Hoffman's heart and his money is in the right place, but he has no understanding what the perception is of some of the actions he's taken.

To me, it just seems kind of tacky.

It was like back when he was buying up all this stuff in Augusta, everybody said, oh, we're living in Hoffmanville because he would put all these plaques all over town.

This has been bought by this Hoffman company.

It's like if you have a billion dollars, why do you need your name everywhere?

Shouldn't that be for the little people?

And he puts it on Jed Limousine, too, I've noticed.

But you know what?

Then you know who is responsible.

And within the age of hedge funds and private equity, you don't know who owns a company, and in this case, it's David Hoffman and the buck stops there.

But it doesn't have to be on the front page of the paper.

Why not?

Go on the masthead where everybody else's name is.

I do like that he wrote an op -ed.

I thought that was nice.

You know, I was very critical when he did the sort of front page story about him that all the papers had to run.

But when he did his op-ed sort of explaining his philosophy and how he wants the Post to attach to Approach News, I thought, this is good.

I want to hear this directly from him.

The op-ed page is exactly where this belongs.

I want to hear from the publisher there.

It's like you do not need your name in bold letters right under the name of the newspaper.

But if you have how many hundreds of newspapers going under?

And if you work for this- It doesn't matter.

But I understand what you're saying.

I am that way about radio.

Trust me.

I get where you're coming from.

I really, really do.

But if we feel so strongly about it, then don't work there.

Don't work there.

I mean, honestly.

I know that sounds- That is.

But I'm saying that, all right, if I have a journalistic standard, one that I think that most people had maybe 30, 40 years ago, there's nothing wrong with that.

And I'm not giving that up just because somebody bought the paper.

Exactly.

And by the way, that column kind of reminded me of that thing that Neville Chamberlain was holding up in the wind at that airport, like, hmm, what is he really saying here?

Well, even Al Neuharth, I don't believe, put his name on a massive- Never did.

Was he the owner?

Was he the owner of USA Today?

Yeah.

Oh, was he?

I don't know.

He had Kate Graham and her family, very strong publishers.

Their name may not have been on the Washington Post, but he had new dark- That's what I'm saying.

That's a difference.

It's a big difference.

But we're not even going to have a print edition in 10 years.

All right.

If that.

He's not even like the owner.

He's not even the owner in the way that the Grahams were the owner.

No, that's true.

He's the chairman of this publicly traded company, so if you said Lee Enterprises across the top, of course.

He's the majority owner.

Nobody would be talking about this.

Well, who's Lee?

Who was Lee?

I don't know.

It's an Iowa-based company, Charlie.

They put that Lee name on it.

Made some jeans.

Lost out to Levi, I think.

I don't know.

Some dude who lost the Civil War.

That will complete this edition of Last Call.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, Sarah, for sitting in.

See you next week at this time.