Flashback #1: Saving St. Louis Public Schools must be the top priority
Revisiting school closure and vacant properties.
I write because if I don’t write all the ideas and thoughts and feelings get tangled up inside my head, creating a suffocating urgency to do something. For me, writing is thinking and thinking solves problems. I write so that I can feel better AND so that I can make things better for others. I learned this about myself in December 2020.
Saint Louis Public Schools (SLPS) was wrapping up yet another round of permanent school closure; a process we began more than a year prior, before the pandemic upended everything. Despite a series of community visioning workshops, press coverage, and discussion in public Board of Education (BOE) meetings, the possibility of more school closures hadn’t taken hold in the discourse. However, when a vote looms, as it did then, school closures hold our collective attention. Schools and what they mean to us are thrust into the spotlight. Tensions run high. The pressure was on.
The Editorial Board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch declared St. Louis Public Schools must do better with closed buildings. So much of what they said was true — City residents did (and do) deserve so much better than to see property purchased with tax dollars reduced to a pile of bricks — but so much context was missing. I dedicated my weekend to writing a response on behalf of the BOE and the district. I’d never written for a broad, public audience before but I pushed through the vulnerability and worry of how it would be received by others. Despite holding the title of President for more than two years, I feared I didn’t possess the authority to take such a bold stance on behalf of my city. I couldn’t and wouldn’t let the moment pass. The list of educational injustices — white flight, charter school expansion, population decline, and the City’s misuse of development incentives — deserved to be named and acknowledged in the very same paper that reduced the importance of schools to mere infrastructure.
St. Louis is trapped in a toxic cycle of school closures. Every few years, SLPS votes to close schools — sometimes one or two, other times ten or more — in response to declining enrollment and limited resources. Nearly immediately after the school board casts votes sealing the fate for one set of schools, a new list is generated and the process begins again.
Soon after their entry to the City in 2000, charter schools also began to contribute to this cycle. Their closures receive comparatively less attention, yet their impact on children, families, and staff is just as real. The difference, perhaps, lies in the lack of a singular charter school agency on whom to direct the outrage. School closures of any kind are emotional and contentious, a testament to the importance of school in our lives and the prominence of school buildings in our neighborhoods.
It is true that many of the district’s vacant buildings were, and still are, dilapidated and in disrepair. In their editorial, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stated “The school board should direct the superintendent to get rid of the existing surplus buildings, either through sale or donation, by a specified date” but figuring out how to do that is far more complex than it may initially appear. A 2013 report of 12 cities, including St. Louis, identified the sale and/or repurposing of closed school buildings to be a widespread problem. School buildings are massive in size, old, and often in poor condition making it difficult to find a buyer and when one is found the sale price is often far less than the valuation. Although the maintenance and security of vacant buildings is costly, the sale of a building cedes that authority to a private owner who may or may not do a better job than the district would have. In some cases, maintaining ownership of the vacant building may ensure at least a moderate level of upkeep even if it's not to the highest standard. In addition, the demolition of old properties may be more costly than regular maintenance given the size and possibility of toxic building materials like asbestos and lead. If the district’s primary responsibility is to provide high-quality educational opportunities to children, how much of the its limited budget and time do we want to devote to real estate functions?
That is not to say that the district’s responsibility to neighborhoods isn’t real and great. It absolutely is. However, other government entities also bear some responsibility. Neighborhoods stand in service to schools just as schools stand in service to neighborhoods, the value of one depends on the value of the other. Only if SLPS and the City work together towards a shared goal will we end the cycle of school closure.
This opinion piece below originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on December 8, 2020.
For too long, the city of St. Louis has ignored St. Louis Public Schools. Following the school closures in 2009, investing in our school system should have been the city’s No. 1 priority. Instead, the rampant proliferation of charter schools exacerbated the slow demise of schools in the district, and toxic anti-district sentiment continues to permeate every discussion about education in this city.
It is shameful that, 11 years later, we’re faced with another round of school closures when we could have prevented it by saying: Enough is enough. Enough charters. Enough tax abatements and tax-increment financing. Enough white flight to the county. Enough racism. But we didn’t. The disinvestment continued. Charters expanded. The Central West End prospered at the expense of long-ignored north city residents and neighborhoods. And interest in local public schools continued to dwindle.
In the 2007-08 school year, there were a total of 103 district and charter schools serving 60,642 children. By 2019-2020, however, the school age population declined to 45,919 children, yet the number of schools increased to 110. The system expanded when it should have contracted. Currently, 43% of public school seats are empty. In buildings designed for 1,000 students, classrooms sit empty and entire building floors or wings are closed off. Every year, St. Louis Public Schools spends $200,000 dollars on the upkeep and maintenance of vacant, deteriorating buildings. Money that should be directed to academics, support services and enrichment opportunities.
The district has 17 active real estate listings and a total of 20 buildings left vacant from the lack of a citywide plan for education, economic development or neighborhood revitalization. Schools are not just real estate, not merely buildings or architectural monuments. Schools are where our children first interact with people outside their family, develop a sense of self, and learn how they can uniquely change the world.
While the deleterious effect of vacant buildings on neighborhoods cannot be overstated, what we are losing is so much more than property value. The district continues to do the tough work for our children, and the city keeps ignoring them, or worse, actively working against them. We have to consider closing schools as a commitment to putting our ever-decreasing resources toward children first, not buildings or businesses. But history will surely repeat itself unless the city is held accountable for putting real money into a public education system that serves all children, all the time.
Enrollment in local public schools will continue to drop as a corollary of the vanishing city population as families increasingly opt for charter and private options. But St. Louis Public Schools isn’t the only education provider that is worried. Our entire education system is fractured, fragmented, and unstable and is not designed for the benefit of children.
The ever-declining city population has made the fight to increase enrollment even more urgent — students have become a commodity, and school leaders have become salespeople. Families focus their attention on their individual chosen schools, creating a lack of ownership in the system as a whole. The idea of education as a common good has fallen through the cracks. Money intended for children’s academic and social-emotional needs instead maintains the bloated bureaucracy of executive-director salaries, bus routes that crisscross the city, and out-of-town consultants paid to tell us what to do with our city’s schools.
As the largest education provider in the city and the one overwhelmingly responsible for the education of Black children in the region, St. Louis Public Schools bears the burden of this broken system. Despite an ever-present battle to receive the property and sales tax dollars to which it is entitled, the district continues to welcome any student living within the boundaries of St. Louis.
Collectively, we must actually say and believe that quality education is a human right, that education is a social justice issue, and that improving education outcomes benefits us all. Let this be the last time that we force the trauma of school closures onto the most vulnerable children and families in our community. We must immediately demand a renewed emphasis on our public school district by bringing education back to the top of our city’s priorities. Until we decide what public education means to us and what we want the system to provide, we will continue to see winners and losers in schools. Education must be the No. 1 issue in the next mayoral race. St. Louis Public Schools is worth the fight.