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ST. LOUIS — Two years of deficit spending, federal budget cuts and the May 16 tornado have put St. Louis Public Schools on track to deplete its financial reserves by 2030, Superintendent Millicent Borishade told the school board Tuesday night.

Borishade’s warning comes less than four weeks before the start of the new school year amid looming concerns over transportation and the closure of seven storm-damaged schools.

“Altogether SLPS will be spending $70 million in unplanned expenses� in 2025-2026, Borishade told the school board at a meeting Tuesday.

The district’s projected fund balance stands at $197 million, but could fall below the state’s mandated minimum of about $12 million by 2030, the superintendent said.

Her remarks came in an introduction to a suggesting the district needs to close more than half of its schools in the next year because of declining enrollment.

Members of the SLPS board downplayed the analysis from Cordogan, Clark and Associates, which has a $7 million contract with the district through next June for facility planning services.

The school board is expected to vote next month on whether to increase the firm’s payment by close to $3 million with additional funds from , a $160 million bond issue approved by voters in 2022.

“This is just a report. A report has to be the beginning step,� board President Karen Collins-Adams said. “We’re not making decisions on this. We need to be able to do things methodically, with a lot of community input and consider not just the data but the emotional impact that it has on everyone while we’re doing this.�

Based on capacity needs for a declining enrollment, the footprint for SLPS should drop from 68 schools to 31, the firm’s representatives said. The analysis estimates SLPS enrollment will fall to 12,700 by 2035, a stunning collapse for a district that enrolled as many as 115,000 students in the 1960s.

Adding to the district’s financial woes is a projected loss of 2,000 students displaced by the tornado that tore through the city, heavily damaging north St. Louis.

Collins-Adams bristled at the report’s comparison of the tornado aftermath to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, where a huge drop in enrollment has not fully rebounded 20 years later.

“There is no comparison to what happened in Louisiana where multiple areas across the city ... were flooded, and although many students didn’t come back, there were reasons why, and entire neighborhoods were permanently destroyed,� said Collins-Adams, who was a principal in New Orleans during the hurricane.

SLPS has spent $28.5 million so far on tornado damage, including debris cleanup, insurance deductibles and replacing computers, with an expectation that 85% of its costs will be reimbursed by federal and state disaster relief funds, Borishade said.

Closing 37 schools would save the district $182 million over five years, according to the report. Steve Raskin and Greg Goebel of the planning firm, who presented the report to the school board, did not respond to questions about the figures on Wednesday.

Research shows that school closures historically have not yielded significant savings for districts, which spend the bulk of their funds on salaries and benefits. SLPS already owns 20 vacant school buildings, including some that have been shuttered for more than two decades.

Meanwhile, the school board did not discuss any back-to-school topics on Tuesday with one meeting left before school starts August 18. Families and staff are hopeful that new bus vendor Zum will help the district avoid the chaos of previous school years that were marred by dozens of canceled routes on many days.

More than 90 Zum buses have arrived in St. Louis out of 220 included in the California company’s $30 million contract with SLPS. Most of the buses are parked at a local dealership before moving to Zum’s depot August 1 at an unspecified site, according to an .