After this summer's revelation of a $20 million budget shortfall set off a rapid and often emotional process to draft a school consolidation plan, the St. Joseph School District Board of Education voted on Oct. 27 to spare it’s three high schools and pursue a plan developed not by administrators but by a softball coach and teacher in the district.
The proposal, known as "Plan E," for "everyone," was developed by Jeff Leake. It closes Hyde Elementary, Bode Middle School, and the Webster Early Learning Center, but spares the city’s three high schools.
The decision comes after a frenzied month for the district and the St. Jo school community. At a Board Meeting on Sept. 22, administrators presented multiple options for school closures and reorganizations of the district beginning in the 2026-27 school year. Different plans looked at closing different high schools, as well as lower schools in the district, comparing their impacts to students, staff, and finances. In the end the administration recommended the closure of Lafayette High School, while maintaining Central and Benton.
According to Superintendent Ashly McGinnis, this would preserve a school on the city’s south side and create a future opportunity to build a new school in the city’s north. “that being said,” McGinnis told the board at their Oct. 27 meeting, “we honestly just want a plan, any plan. We are ready to move forward.”
The meeting took place in the Central High School Gymnasium, before a packed crowd. A public hearing, the last of three held over the course of the month at locations across the city, preceded the meeting and saw nearly 50 members of the public speak up defending their schools and urging for action to stabilize a district which has been struggling for years.
Many commenters said Leake’s Plan E was the right choice. “I think the message has been very consistent and very clear throughout the process that the public want to keep three [high] schools,” said Jo Pruitt after the public hearing had closed and before the board's vote. She said the administration’s plans were “too much too fast.”
Leake initially proposed his plan when he realized the district could lose a high school. Speaking after the vote, he recognized change was necessary – nearly 15% of seats in the district’s classrooms are empty after decades of enrollment declines – but he was convinced there must be another way.
“Our schools are valuable,” he said. “There’s so much community there...I know we have dwindling enrollment, but I don’t want to cut and close our way to even less enrollment.”
Leake said he was “shocked” by the board’s choice of his plan, even after the community rallied around it. “I’m so used to being the underdog,” he said.
According to a district analysis, Plan E, in its current form, will deliver some cost savings, but not to the degree of a high school closure. By 2030, it could recover the district’s reserve ratio, a measure of school financial health, to 13.8%. It currently sits at 10%, half of what is recommended by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The plan recommended by administrators would result in a reserve ratio of 15.5% by 2030.
In its motion, the board asked administrators to use Plan E as blueprint and develop a specific path forward to be considered at a work session on Nov. 10.
