Date: June 22, 2023
Author(s): Jin Zhang
Abstract
Public school districts in the St. Louis area have encountered significant problems in maintaining and sustaining their schools over the past decade. Due to a continuous decline in enrollment, St. Louis Public Schools, a 19,000-student district in Eastern Missouri, closed six schools in the 2020-21 academic year. As a result, students who previously attended those schools were shuffled around the district for other viable school options. This reconfiguration, coupled with a shortage of buses and the district’s reliance on independently organized transportation arrangements such as club, religious, and parent vans, as well as gas vouchers, has heightened the overall sense of anxiety among parents regarding their children’s commutes to school.
About the Project
This capstone project was completed in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Master of Urban & Regional Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.