St. Louis City - EdTribune MO - Missouri Education Data

St. Louis City Schools: 68 Buildings, 16,211 Students

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Correction (April 12, 2026): The charter enrollment section originally used name-pattern matching to identify St. Louis City charter schools, missing several entities. This version uses district ID-based filtering (all 115xxx IDs except 115115/SLPS) and corrects charter entity counts, enrollment totals, growth rates, and combined public enrollment figures. The corrected data shows the outflow from the city's public system is even larger than originally reported.

In January, the Missouri State Board of Education voted 6-1 to strip St. Louis City^↗ schools of full accreditation. Board member Kerry Casey cited late audit submissions, unmet performance benchmarks, and a district already on track for a downgrade by 2027. The decision itself changed little operationally. Schools stayed open, seniors still graduated, teachers kept their jobs. But it formalized what enrollment data has been saying for a quarter century: the institution that once served 43,420 students now serves 16,211, and the gap between its infrastructure and its enrollment has become ungovernable.

That 62.7% decline over 25 years is the steepest sustained collapse of any large urban district in Missouri. It accounts for 68.4% of the entire state's net enrollment loss since 2001, a staggering concentration of decline in a single district that makes up just 1.9% of Missouri's student population today.

A building designed for a city that no longer exists

The numbers behind the accreditation vote tell the sharper story. SLPS operates 68 school buildings with classroom capacity for roughly 30,000 students. Fewer than 16,211 attend. An architecture firm hired by the district recommended closing 37 of those buildings before the 2026-27 school year, citing a 52% average utilization rate, an average building age of 79 years, and an estimated $1.8 billion repair bill. The projected savings from closures: $42 million in the first year alone.

Then a tornado struck on May 16, 2025, damaging a dozen district schools and displacing roughly 2,000 students. The storm added nearly $70 million in unplanned expenses to a district already budgeting deficit spending of $35.4 million for 2025 and $33.4 million for 2026. Superintendent Millicent Borishade acknowledged the trajectory: "It is definitely not sustainable for us to keep doing business the way we're doing it now."

The artifact and the actual decline

The raw 25-year dataset contains a major data artifact that must be understood before the real trend is legible. In 2007 and 2008, roughly 4,666 and 3,226 students "disappeared" from SLPS enrollment counts as charter school students stopped being counted in the home district before charters began reporting separately to the state. The enrollment line drops from 40,027 in 2006 to 27,574 in 2009, but much of that plunge reflects a reclassification, not families walking out the door.

Starting from 2009, when the data becomes comparable, SLPS has lost 11,363 students, a 41.2% decline over 17 years. That decline has been nearly unbroken. Since 2010, SLPS has posted a year-over-year loss in 14 of 16 years. The two exceptions: 2014, when charter students were added back into state totals after a data gap, and 2025, when enrollment ticked up by 13 students before falling again by 331 in 2026.

The pace has varied. Between 2009 and 2015, SLPS lost an average of 541 students per year. Between 2016 and 2020, that doubled to 1,094 per year. The 2021-2026 era averaged 602 per year, a deceleration, but only because the district had fewer students left to lose. In percentage terms, the loss rate has barely slowed.

The city behind the district

SLPS is losing students because St. Louis is losing families. The city shed approximately 21,700 residents between 2020 and 2024, the fastest rate of population decline among major U.S. cities, surpassing San Francisco. Since peaking at more than 850,000 residents in 1950, St. Louis has fallen below 280,000.

The population loss is not uniform. Ness Sandoval, a demography professor at St. Louis University, has described it as driven specifically by families with children leaving for suburbs with better parks, schools, and family-sized housing. The city continues to attract single adults, but they do not offset the families departing, and each departing family removes one to four potential students from the school system.

"St. Louis city is the principal city of the region. It is the brand of the region. If the region is going to recover and grow, the prerequisite is that St. Louis needs to recover and grow." — Ness Sandoval, St. Louis University, STLPR, May 2025

That creates a structural problem no superintendent can solve through school improvement alone. Even if SLPS ran the best schools in the metro area, the district's enrollment would still decline as long as the city's family population continues shrinking. And the school quality challenges compound the problem: a state audit in August 2025 gave the district its lowest possible "poor" rating, citing $3.5 million in unconstitutional attendance incentive payments, 73% of sampled employees earning above board-approved salary schedules, and procurement violations including a $133,295 t-shirt purchase that bypassed sealed bidding.

The charter question

SLPS is not the only public school system operating within St. Louis city limits. Sixteen charter school entities enrolled 11,667 students in 2026, up from 7,719 across ten entities in 2009. Charter enrollment has grown by 51% over that span, while SLPS enrollment has fallen by 41.2%.

But attributing the SLPS decline primarily to charter growth overstates the relationship. The combined public enrollment in St. Louis, traditional and charter together, has fallen from 35,293 in 2009 to 27,878 in 2026. More than 7,400 students vanished from the city's public system entirely. Charters absorbed some students who would have attended SLPS, but the larger force is families leaving the city altogether. Since 2021, charter enrollment in the city has been essentially flat, hovering between 11,300 and 11,800 students, while SLPS continued losing 600 per year.

A 2024 STLPR analysis found that since 1991, 61 charter schools had opened in St. Louis while 87 traditional public schools had closed. The constant churn of school openings and closures creates its own instability. As one researcher noted, "too much choice is harmful" when the set of available options is constantly changing, making long-range planning nearly impossible for families and educators alike.

Twin collapses, diverging outcomes

St. Louis is not the only Missouri urban district in long-term decline. Kansas City 33 lost 21,678 students since 2001, a 60.8% decline nearly matching SLPS in percentage terms. Both districts lost state accreditation during periods of crisis. Both became symbols of urban school system failure in Missouri.

But the trajectories have recently diverged. Kansas City has posted three consecutive years of enrollment growth: 91 students in 2024, 279 in 2025, and 324 in 2026. Indexed to 2009 enrollment, Kansas City has stabilized at 62.1 while St. Louis continues falling to 58.8.

The reason for Kansas City's stabilization is not clear from enrollment data alone, which does not include demographics in Missouri. The city of Kansas City grew by approximately 8,600 residents between 2020 and 2024, now totaling 516,032. St. Louis shrank by 21,700 over the same period. The urban districts are mirrors of their cities, and the cities are moving in opposite directions.

What the building plan cannot fix

SLPS represented 4.9% of Missouri's total public school enrollment in 2001. It now represents 1.9%. That contraction has fiscal consequences beyond the district's borders. Missouri's foundation formula distributes state aid on a per-pupil basis, meaning every student who leaves SLPS carries funding with them. The district's reserve fund stood at $197 million as of mid-2025, but the state auditor projected that if deficit spending continues at the current rate, fund balances would fall below the state-mandated minimum by 2030, with the district unable to complete the 2031 school year.

The closure of 37 buildings, if approved, would consolidate 16,000 students into 31 schools. That is a district the size of a mid-sized Missouri suburb, housed in infrastructure built for a city of 850,000. The architecture firm's report left the arithmetic exposed: 68 buildings averaging 79 years old, a 52% utilization rate, and $1.8 billion in deferred repairs. Even if the city's plan to attract 15,000 new immigrants by 2030 succeeds, those families would fill classrooms in a system that still has to decide which 37 buildings to padlock first.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Missouri Public Schools Just Hit Their Lowest Enrollment in at Least 25 Years

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

The number on the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's enrollment report is one that no superintendent, school board member, or state legislator wanted to see: 855,081 students in the state's public schools for the 2025-26 school year. It is the lowest figure in at least a quarter century of available data, falling below even the disrupted pandemic years, and it arrives not as a surprise but as the continuation of a trend that has been quietly accelerating for two decades.

Missouri peaked at 894,843 students in 2000-01. It has lost 39,762 since then — a 4.4% decline that sounds modest until you examine the pace at which the losses have mounted.

A slow leak becomes a flood

For most of the 2000s, Missouri's enrollment barely moved. Between 2001 and 2009, the state averaged a loss of just 220 students per year — rounding error for a system serving nearly 900,000 children. Individual years bounced up and down. The trajectory was flat enough that it didn't demand attention.

The 2010s brought a steeper slide. From 2010 through 2018, annual losses averaged roughly 1,000 students per year. Still manageable. Still abstract enough to land in budget footnotes rather than headlines.

Then came the era that changed the math entirely.

Since 2019, Missouri has averaged a loss of 3,858 students every year — nearly four times the pace of the prior decade. And unlike the earlier eras, when gains in one year could offset losses in the next, the recent decline has been relentless. Of the last five years, four have been negative.

The 2022 cliff

The single worst year tells its own story. In 2021-22, Missouri lost 20,068 students in a single school year — the largest non-artifact decline in 26 years of data, and one that cut across 397 of the state's 553 districts.

What makes Missouri's experience unusual is the timing. Many states saw their enrollment crater immediately in 2020-21, when COVID closed schools and families scrambled for alternatives. Missouri's initial pandemic losses were remarkably mild: just 1,728 students between 2020 and 2021. The real collapse came a full year later, suggesting that families who stayed put during the chaos eventually made permanent decisions — homeschooling, private schools, moves out of state — once the immediate crisis passed.

The state clawed back 4,061 students in 2022-23, hinting at a bounce. It didn't hold. The three years since have each been negative: down 1,103, then 2,817, then 2,972. The 2022 cliff was not a one-time shock. It was a step down to a new, lower baseline.

Two states in one

The statewide average conceals a geographic reality that is more dramatic — and more consequential — than the topline number suggests.

St. Louis City^↗ enrolled 43,420 students in 2000-01. By 2025-26, that number has fallen to 16,211 — a loss of 27,209 students, or 62.7%. It is the single largest absolute enrollment loss of any district in the state. The district lost its full accreditation, regained it, then lost it again in January 2026. The enrollment decline and the governance crisis have fed each other for more than a decade.

Across the state, Kansas City 33^↗ has followed a remarkably similar trajectory. From 35,642 students in 2001 to 13,964 in 2026, the district has shed 60.8% of its enrollment. Together, the state's two anchor cities account for 48,887 of Missouri's 39,762-student statewide loss — meaning the rest of the state, collectively, has actually grown if you subtract the urban collapse.

But the losses around St. Louis extend well beyond the city limits. Normandy Schools Collaborative^↗, just north of St. Louis, has lost 53.6% of its enrollment. Riverview Gardens^↗ is down 31.3%. Ferguson-Florissant^↗ has shed 24.1%. The inner ring of suburban districts that once absorbed families fleeing the city is now losing families to the next ring out.

And that next ring is thriving. Wentzville^↗ has grown from 5,742 students to 17,538 — a 205% increase that included 20 consecutive years of growth before a brief COVID-era dip. North Kansas City 74^↗ reached an all-time high of 20,915. Grain Valley^↗, east of Kansas City, posted 22 consecutive years of growth before briefly dipping in 2024, climbing from 1,659 to 4,466 students over the full period.

The pattern is a textbook enrollment donut. Families leave the urban core. Inner-ring suburbs absorb them for a decade, then begin declining themselves as the next generation moves further out. The growth concentrates in exurban districts with new housing stock. Parkway^↗ is down 20.0%. Hazelwood^↗ is down 14.9%. Francis Howell^↗ is down 12.6%. Rockwood^↗ is down 10.4%. These are not distressed districts — they are some of the most respected school systems in the state, and they are all shrinking.

173 districts at their lowest point

The decline is not just an urban or suburban story. Of the 550 districts with sufficient enrollment history, 173 recorded their all-time lowest enrollment in 2025-26 — roughly one in three. Only 31 districts are at all-time highs.

The districts hitting bottom span the state's geography: rural counties where birth rates have fallen for a generation, small towns that lost their manufacturing base, inner-ring suburbs caught in the donut's outward drift. The 173 figure excludes 2012-13, a year when 36 charter school districts were missing from the state's data — a gap that makes that year's numbers unreliable for comparison.

Where Missouri goes from here

At the state's five-year compound annual growth rate of -0.53%, Missouri's public schools would fall below 850,000 students by the 2027-28 school year and below 840,000 by 2030. These are not forecasts — they are projections of recent trend, and recent trend has been consistent enough to take seriously.

Springfield^↗, now the state's largest district at 24,004 students, has been the steadiest of Missouri's major systems — holding within a narrow band while the two anchor cities collapsed around it. But even Springfield dipped by 1,539 students in 2022 before partially recovering. No district is immune to the forces driving the decline.

Missouri's legislature convened a school funding formula review task force in 2024, charged with evaluating whether the state's per-pupil distribution model still fits the system it funds. The task force's work now unfolds against a specific backdrop: 173 districts at their smallest size in recorded history, losses accelerating rather than leveling off, and a formula that sends less money to every district that shrinks. The math is no longer abstract.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Missouri Publishes 2025-26 Enrollment Data

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

This article is part of The MOEdTribune's series on Missouri 2025-26 Enrollment.

A year ago, Missouri's enrollment was already heading the wrong direction. The state lost 5,580 students between 2023-24 and 2024-25, continuing a slide that had started well before the pandemic. Some school leaders pointed to the 2022 cliff — the year Missouri shed 20,068 students in a single school year — as a one-time shock that would stabilize. Then the new numbers landed.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's 2025-26 enrollment file shows 855,081 students in the state's public schools, down 5,069 from the prior year. That puts Missouri at its lowest enrollment level in at least 25 years of available data, below even the worst pandemic years. The loss is the third consecutive year of decline exceeding 5,000 students, a pace the state never sustained before 2022.

Whatever floor people thought they saw after the COVID cliff was not a floor. It was a step on a longer staircase.

What the numbers open up

The DESE Finance Summary enrollment data covers all Missouri public school districts and breaks enrollment down by district. Over the coming weeks, The MOEdTribune will unpack it in a multipart series. Here is what we are looking at first.

The acceleration question. Missouri lost an average of 220 students per year in the 2000s. In the 2010s, that rose to about 1,000 per year. Since 2019, the state has averaged losses of nearly 3,900 per year — a pace that shows no sign of slowing. The critical question is whether this is a structural shift in how many children attend Missouri public schools, or a recoverable shock.

Two cities, two trajectories. St. Louis City^↗ has lost 62.7% of its students since 2001 — from 43,420 to 16,211 — and just had its accreditation downgraded in January 2026. Kansas City 33^↗, after an even steeper percentage collapse, has posted three consecutive years of growth driven by immigrant enrollment. The same state, two radically different stories.

By the numbers: 855,081 students statewide in 2025-26 — down 5,069 from the prior year, a 0.6% decline and the lowest enrollment in at least 25 years of available data.

The threads we are following

The virtual school explosion. A 2022 law removed the requirement that families get their home district's approval before enrolling in a full-time virtual school. Three small rural districts hosting virtual academies have since grown by 362%, 448%, and 207% respectively, adding 7,400 combined students. Their enrollment reflects students from all 114 Missouri counties who attend class from home but show up on a rural district's headcount.

The suburban donut. Wentzville R-IV^↗ has tripled its enrollment since 2001. North Kansas City 74^↗ just hit an all-time high. Meanwhile, the inner-ring suburbs — Hazelwood, Ferguson-Florissant, Parkway, Rockwood — are collectively losing thousands. The geographic redistribution of Missouri students is as dramatic as the total decline.

One in three districts at their lowest ever. Of Missouri's roughly 520 districts, 173 are at all-time low enrollment in 2025-26. That includes the state's biggest suburban systems and its smallest rural ones. The question is what happens to the funding formula — and the buildings — when a third of the state's districts are simultaneously shrinking to sizes they have never been before.

What comes next

Each of these threads will get its own article with charts, district-level breakdowns, and sourced context. The first deep dive will examine the statewide enrollment trajectory and what it means for a state that built its school infrastructure for 895,000 students and now serves 855,000. New articles publish weekly on Thursdays.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.