By Kevin Lavery, KWMU
The St. Louis Public Schools are on the brink of a major overhaul. This week, the city school board approved a plan to close more than a dozen schools as part of an overall strategy to make up a $90 million budget gap.
The plan is the work of a private management team the school board hired to pull the district out of the red.
The team claims the consolidation will better balance declining enrollments and cut non-instructional costs. But opponents fear the restructuring will eliminate jobs, degrade their community and jeopardize the quality of education for all of the city's 41,000 students.
KWMU's Kevin Lavery prepared this report.
The list of schools to be closed is:
Elementary schools:
Carver
Cook
Cupples
Emerson
Garfield
Hempstead
Jackson
Lowell
Marshall
Roe
Scullin
Walnut Park
Waring
Middle schools:
Des Peres
Williams
High schools:
King Tri-A
After the schools are closed, the district will have the following number of schools in different parts of St. Louis City:
North (north of Delmar): 46
South (south of I-44): 33
Central (area in between): 17