Former Board of Education member to prioritize “budget equity”
After Tishaura O. Jones was inaugurated as mayor, Adam Layne was sworn in as treasurer to fill her former governmental position. Layne’s roots are in the education system: His first job out of college was as a St. Louis Public Schools educator with Teach for America, and he has spent the past two years serving on the SLPS Board of Education—becoming, in fact, the only young Black man on the board.
At the Board of Education meeting on the night of April 27, Layne gave a farewell address—having just driven back from a meeting in Jefferson City earlier that day. St. Louis Public Schools bylaws state that any member of the Board of Education may not serve in any other elected office, so Layne was handing in his resignation.
“One of the many narratives before I joined the board was that people didn’t show up for the school district,” he said in his closing remarks, noting that that narrative has begun to change. “I think that I’ve seen, over the last few years, with us regaining local control, and us having conversations around how we reimagine our schools and closures and consolidations … that the people of St. Louis have showed up.”
His replacement, too, will be chosen by Mayor Jones. But Layne hopes to stay involved in the school board through participation in the Budget Equity Committee, which he helped found. This committee, which handles questions of resource allocation through an equity lens and presents recommendations to the board, includes members from all facets of the St. Louis community, not just members of the board itself.
“What this committee is going to explore is okay, what is our budget, what is our definition of budget equity, and where are some recommendations we can make moving forward to have a more equitably funded district?” Layne explained. “Because based on the real needs, we have different challenges that are faced by different demographics throughout our district.”
He’s also bringing his knowledge from the Board of Education into the Treasurer’s office in less direct ways: “A sound knowledge of Robert’s Rules,” he joked, is going to be helpful. But more seriously, he added, “an understanding of how different political systems interact … larger and also hyperlocal political systems,” is something that he hopes to bring to the position as new overseer of the city’s finances.
“We have in my time here in St. Louis, as a whole, kind of ignored education in the city,” he said. “I know positionality on the ballot is not the most important thing. But Board of Ed candidates are always the last thing on the ballot, the least talked about outside of people who are heavily involved in the school system.” That percentage of people that are heavily involved in the school system is low, too: There was only a 28% turnout in the school board elections last month.
Layne described the city’s schools as being stuck in a “tug of war” between different powers—neighborhood development, school enrollment and school funding choices being passed back and forth between aldermen, the board of education, the city’s government and private interests. He plans to begin to serve as a bridge and encourage funding equity in the city. In order to do so, Layne says, he will meet with “every alderperson individually” to discuss funding equity issues in their wards.
Layne is also interested in expanding the work of the city’s Office of Financial Empowerment, which offers financial literacy education and the college-savings program College Kids, which provides every child going through St. Louis Public Schools with a bank account with $50 in it to start their college savings journey. In all this, he stressed, he will be working “in close partnership” with Mayor Jones, who also made equity issues a large part of her campaign platform.
His focus in this regard is on improving financial literacy to break the cycle of poverty. “I say this all the time: it’s not only important for the city to have its finances in order, we also need to make sure that the citizens of the city have their finances in order. And that is all with the goal of making sure that the most marginalized in our city are able to be financially self-sufficient; that we can break that cycle of poverty.”
