Schools face closure as demographics show years of falling enrollment

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.

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.

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.

Aaron Garth Smith, director of education reform at Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, said, “The takeaway is pretty clear. Public school enrollment is going to continue to fall for years to come. And so generally, state and local policymakers have to adapt to this new reality.”

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.

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.

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. 



(AP Photo Jeff Roberson)