Five years after contentious school closures, St. Paul mulls another round

Nearly five years after St. Paul school leaders shuttered buildings , officials are once again weighing closures and mergers. For the past six months, officials in Minnesota’s second-largest school district have begun a multi-year review of the system’s schools, programs and buildings that could eventually close, repurpose or consolidate. Though the plan is still in its early stages, school board members are expected to vote on a recommendation by the end of next summer on changes for the 2028-2029 school year. The plan is the district’s latest swing at correcting a $4.9 million budget gap after recently asking a dozen teachers to take early retirements . District leaders say the deficit opened when hundreds of immigrant students did not come back to city schools after Operation Metro Surge. Advertisement Enrollment in the district, like others across Minnesota , has declined over the years, in part because of falling birth rates. St. Paul’s enrollment has dropped from 39,000 students a decade ago to 32,000 now. The plan’s first phase is over, district leaders announced at a meeting last week, and now the leaders will open six months of community input. However, no decisions have been made about which schools or buildings could be affected, said district spokesperson Erica Wacker, and the district has not determined how many might close. “I think it’s fair to say that closing schools is one of the hardest decisions that a school district has to make,” Wacker said. “It’s never something that anybody wants to do, but it has become more and more necessary as there are just fewer kids being born. There’s more competition, and there’s more choices available for families for their children’s education.” Because schools are funded on a per-pupil basis, under-enrolled schools have fewer specialists than sufficiently enrolled schools, leading to “fewer opportunities, fewer resources and fewer offerings that can be available,” Wacker said. The district, however, does not yet have data on which schools are under-enrolled.