Districts around the U.S. are mulling school closures as student enrollment falls

Thomasina Clarke has watched school after school close in her once thriving St. Louis neighborhood, which was hit by a tornado this spring and whose population has plummeted in recent decades.

“It’s like a hole in the community,” Clarke said. She fears a new round of closure discussions could strip the historically Black community of a storm-damaged high school, whose alumni include Tina Turner and Chuck Berry.

St. Louis Public Schools is among the districts nationwide weighing how many urban schools to keep open due to shrinking budgets, the falling birthrate and a growing school choice movement. A district-commissioned report released this year found that the school system has more than twice the schools it needs.

Such decisions are gut wrenching. It’s a financial strain to operate half-empty schools, but research shows kids often fare badly after closures.

Elsewhere, Philadelphia, Boston, Houston and Norfolk, Virginia, are considering shuttering schools, while a public outcry over potential closures has stopped them — for now — in Seattle and San Francisco.

How many public schools will close?

From 2019 to 2023, enrollment declined by 20% or more at nearly 1 in 12 public schools — roughly 5,100, according to a report published last year by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning education think tank. Many were chronically low-performing schools in high poverty neighborhoods, the report found.

Public school enrollment is projected to tumble 5.5% between 2022 and 2031, largely due to changing demographics, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Other factors include the shift by some students to private education or homeschooling and some immigrant families’ decisions to leave the country.

Federal funds allowed many schools to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite tumbling enrollment numbers. But now the relief money is gone, and those under-populated schools are a problem, said Aaron Garth Smith, director of education reform at Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank.

“The takeaway is pretty clear,” Smith said: Public school enrollment is declining. “It’s going to continue to fall for years to come. And so generally, state and local policymakers have to adapt to this new reality.”

Chicago closures led to student struggles

Chicago shuttered around 50 schools in 2013 — the largest school closure in U.S. history. Afterward, fighting and bullying increased as displaced students settled into new schools, according to a report from the UChicago Consortium on School Research.

Test scores dipped in the schools slated for closure, and while the displaced students’ reading scores eventually recovered, math performance issues persisted for years.

“There were a lot of communities pitted against each other,” said Marisa de la Torre, managing director and senior research associate for the UChicago Consortium on School Research. “It was a very long process, a lot of uncertainty. All of this really affected the staff and the kids.”

Under pressure from the Chicago’s powerful teachers union, the city issued a moratorium on closures through 2027. Around a third of classroom seats remain empty.

Possible closures rattles a community

St. Louis Public Schools’ student population plummeted from 115,543 in 1967 to 18,122 last year, reflecting an exodus of families to the suburbs. That number could drop further as residents leave their tornado-damaged homes.

Sumner and an elementary school — both in the Ville neighborhood — are among seven St. Louis schools that didn’t open this fall because of tornado damage. At a school board meeting in July, consultants argued that the district can’t support all its schools, which on average were built 79 years ago. Closures, they said, could free up money for improvements.

Board member Donna Jones wasn’t buying it.

“Stop playing like we’re not living in a catastrophe here,” she said.

Several shuttered schools already dot the Ville. In June, Superintendent Millicent Borishade said the district remains committed to Sumner, saying there’s no plan to permanently close it. More recently, officials have been quiet on its fate. Frustrated, the teachers union issued a no-confidence vote against the superintendent.

“It just adds more trauma already to those who are suffering,” said Ray Cummings, president of the American Federation of Teachers St. Louis Local 420. “Those neighborhoods need hope.”

When the 150-year-old Sumner was considered for closure four years ago, a coalition including the nonprofit 4theVille and the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival concocted a plan to save it by expanding its arts curriculum.

Mack Williams, an instructor paid by 4theVille, turned lockers into museum displays honoring the school’s most well-known graduates, including tennis legend Arthur Ashe. There was a waiting list for his museum studies class and his students participated in a National History Day competition.

School enrollment rose.

Even now, Williams sees hope, despite Sumner’s estimated $2 million in tornado damage.

“Yes, there’s damage, but it’s still standing and that’s reflective of the resilience of this community,” he said.

A promising student regains focus

Dakota Scott started at Sumner as a sophomore after struggling so much at a college preparatory magnet school that she was asked to leave.

“At the time, I wasn’t really studious. I was kind of rough around the edges,” Scott said.

But, she said, Sumner helped her get on track. She made a movie and joined choir, junior ROTC and student council. She competed in the history competition, and modeled in a Chicago fashion show with classmates.

“From being a kid who was skipping class, I was a kid who was literally on time and attending all of my classes,” said Scott, now a University of Missouri freshman.

Noting the “rich history” of the school and the once wealthy neighborhood, Clarke, who taught Sumner’s movie-making class as a volunteer, suggested all is not lost.

“People left, the community land, businesses left. Schools left. Productivity left. Nothing but a lot of decay left,” she lamented. “And we’re trying to bring it back. Oh my gosh. If we could just get one fourth of what was going on.”