Transportation officials and leaders of St. Louis Public Schools shared plans Tuesday evening to begin the 2024-25 school year on a positive note.
The district has been under fire in recent months over student transportation, hiring and financial questions. Board of Education President Antionette Cousins said at a Board of Education meeting Tuesday that there is much good to focus on.
“You don’t hear about how we’ve gotten principal increases,” Cousins said. “You don’t hear about how we’ve had Literacy for the Lou and brought in over 4,000 families, serving them at a library that no one ever wanted to use or go to. You don’t hear about that. In the gossip column, you hear the lies, how the district is broke. How we’ve lost so much money.
“What you need to hear is how we’re working tirelessly, tirelessly to change. And we can’t do this alone. It takes a city to change the game," she said. "To be clear, I will not step down from this position.”
Board member Emily Hubbard previously called for Cousins and board Vice President Matt Davis to vacate their positions, citing a lack of transparency from leadership. Hubbard said her concerns about now-suspended Superintendent Keisha Scarlett’s hiring practices went unheard.
During public comment at the board meeting on Tuesday, some community members commended Hubbard for sharing her concerns about the board. Ultimately, Cousins said she’s looking forward to continuing to work together as a team, despite differences of opinion.
The Missouri State Auditor’s office began its investigation of the district on Tuesday. Kelly Davis, a representative of the office, said staff members will begin by meeting with SLPS acting Superintendent Millicent Borishade and other district leaders about logistics.
Then they’ll conduct surveys to gain a broad understanding of the school district, Davis said. From there, they’ll focus on specific areas they find to be significant.
“We want to spend our time and your time on the things that will be of most use to the district and to the taxpayers," she said. "After we do our fieldwork, we will have what we call a pre-exit conference, where we’ll bring our initial findings to district staff, Dr. Borishade, CFOs and anybody who is relevant staff, and this will give them an opportunity to provide us more information.”
The state auditor will review the district’s 2023-24 school year through July 31, but staff members are not limited to that time frame, Davis said. She said they will work closely with the board throughout the process but try not to overlap a separate third-party investigation that is currently in process into a personnel matter.
SLPS will not have to pay anything for the state audit, she added.
Scarlett is away on a temporary leave of absence. The third-party investigation is expected to be completed in September, and until then, no decisions will be made about Scarlett’s employment, Davis has previously said.
Transportation
Square Watson, the district’s chief operations officer, reported that nearly half of the roughly 14,000 St. Louis Public Schools students who need transportation to school will now ride yellow school buses provided by First Student when classes resume on Monday.
He noted Tuesday that more than 6,400 students will ride yellow school buses and over 6,200 will utilize alternative vehicles. More than 630 families voluntarily opted out of receiving transportation from the district, he said, and fewer than 1,600 students will take public transit.
“As we get more buses and they become available, we’ll make adjustments, which means that we’ll continue to communicate to families, and we’ll be able to take them off of the public transit, or Metro, and we’ll be able to remove them from our cabs, vans, sedans and SUVs,” Watson said Tuesday.
Information on how to ride the Metro Transit is on Metro Transit’s website and the school district’s site. SLPS purchased Student Semester Passes and is distributing them to high school students who need rides to and from school.
“Some of the students and parents may never have taken MetroBus for transportation until now,” said Metro Transit Chief Operating Officer Charles Stewart. “We want them to be prepared so we have teams ready to help parents and students plan their bus trips, to determine what MetroBus route to take, where the closest bus stop is to their home, and what time the bus arrives at the stop and at school.”
Watson and SLPS Transportation Director Toyin Akinola said all vehicles will be door-to-door and will have an identifier number on the windshield. Drivers will make contact with parents before arriving, he said.
“They’ll be picking students up in front of their homes with that identifier, with the decals, with the badges, and all of those things to ensure safety and to reassure families that the students when they put them in the vehicles that they have been approved by our process doing background checks,” Watson said Tuesday.
He said districts nationwide are facing similar transportation issues. Parents can visit the school district’s FAQ page to leave questions and concerns and receive updates on transportation.
A projected deficit
The district’s chief financial officer, Angie Banks, shared information about the school district’s budget, which has a projected $35 million deficit for the 2024-25 school year.
Banks said the projected $35 million deficit is due to teacher pay raises that were approved this year, plus spending on transportation and other initiatives.
“We’re in a good financial position that we now can begin to really address the compensation, so that’s what we did this year, and that’s where we are focused,” Banks said.
She said the deficit is not ideal but is manageable.
“That’s OK for a short-term strategy, but we don’t want to live there and we want it to get back to that annual balance budgeting by fiscal year 2026-27.”
Banks said the annual budget doesn’t tell the whole story — it doesn’t take into account the fund balance, which is the school district’s reserve. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education requires the district to maintain a minimum of 3% in its fund balance, she said. The district adopted its standard of maintaining a 30% fund balance in 2013.
Banks noted that the operating budget is different from the fund balance, which is also less than the total budget.
The school district’s projected fund balance this year is currently $231.7 million, she said — it’s only an estimate because the numbers for the last school year aren't finalized. Operating revenue for this year is about $400 million, and operating expenditures are currently about $434.5 million.
“If everything plays out exactly as we’ve had it budgeted, we’d end the year with a lower fund balance of $197.4 million,” Banks said. “That is a fund balance percentage of 45.43%. How do you calculate that? You take the ending fund balance and divide it by your operating expenditures.”
The school district has been building its fund balance over the past 10 years, she said.
