Five candidates competed for two seats on the St. Louis Public Schools board in Tuesday's election, with incumbent Donna Jones and newcomer Wendy Goss emerging as early leaders in voting. The race unfolded as the district wrestles with a projected $41 million deficit, declining enrollment, longstanding low test scores and the threat of losing its full state accreditation.
Jones, who has served on the board since 2006 and is one of the region's longest-serving school board members, was seeking to hold off challengers Zacheriah Davis and Aneetra Williams Jones for her seat, while incumbent Emily Hubbard faced the same two challengers for the other open spot, according to STLtoday.com. The five-candidate field for the two seats had been previewed ahead of the election by a separate St. Louis Post-Dispatch report, which noted the district faces major financial and academic challenges.
Jones, a Walnut Park West resident with seven children who graduated from SLPS and grandchildren currently in the district, has built her tenure around opposition to school closures and advocacy for neighborhood schools and career training. She has said she joined the board because she was tired of seeing vacant buildings in her neighborhood, and that closing a school also closes down a neighborhood. Per the same account, Jones said she feels happy to see some results from staying in the fight.
Closure Plan Looms Over the Race
The election took place against the backdrop of the district's proposed Future Ready plan, which would shrink SLPS's portfolio of 61 active school buildings down to 52 and is projected to save $20 million, according to St. Louis Public Radio. The plan calls for closing 11 schools the following year, including 10 elementary schools — Ames, Ashland, Carver, Hamilton, Hickey, Meramec, Monroe, Walbridge, Shenandoah and Columbia — along with AESM at L'Ouverture Middle School, the station reported. The Board of Education was scheduled to vote on the plan on Nov. 10.
Goss, a retired teacher living in Princeton Heights who spent most of her 26-year teaching career in the Ferguson-Florissant School District and taught six years at Carr Lane Middle School in SLPS, has pushed back on the pace of the overhaul. She supports delaying a vote on Future Ready for at least another year and has said she wants more analysis of school spending before deciding on closures, arguing the district is rushing changes that usually take school districts years to implement.
Hubbard, a graduate assistant at St. Louis University's School of Education who has four children enrolled in SLPS, has supported the Future Ready plan. Hubbard, who was elected to the board in 2022, has said she intends to honor the promises she made.
Challengers Bring Their Own Ties to the District
Davis, a history teacher at Cardinal Ritter Catholic High School who lives in the Vandeventer neighborhood, is raising a granddaughter in SLPS and previously taught in Cincinnati and in the district itself. He holds a Missouri substitute teaching certificate and ran an unsuccessful campaign for a board seat in spring 2024 before this run. Williams Jones, an SLPS graduate who lives in St. Louis Place, has said the city needs public schools to produce leaders who stay and serve.
Jones, Hubbard and Davis appeared together at a candidates forum held Oct. 15 at Vashon High School.
The Road Ahead
The incoming board members will be expected to help implement the Future Ready consolidation plan by fall 2027, while continuing to confront the district's projected $41 million deficit, declining enrollment and longstanding low standardized test scores.
Accreditation
The financial pressure bearing down on the district follows a formal downgrade in its state standing. The Missouri State Board of Education voted 6-1 in January to drop St. Louis Public Schools to provisional accreditation after the district failed to submit its annual audit on time, according to St. Louis Public Radio.
Those financial and academic strains, paired with an enrollment slide that has left SLPS with about 16,300 students this fall compared with more than 43,000 in the 1990s, form the backdrop against which the new board will have to govern once members are seated in December.
