The Riverview Gardens School District will close Danforth Elementary School at the end of the 2025-26 school year.
The Board of Education voted unanimously in favor on Tuesday after Superintendent Tanya Patton brought her recommendation to the board earlier this month.
The decision to close Danforth comes after the board tapped architecture firm Cordogan, Clark & Associates to conduct a demographic and building utilization study last year, which found the district is projected to lose 800 to 1,000 students over the next decade.
The firm said that Danforth requires over $3.5 million in repairs to bring it up to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which the cash-strapped district cannot afford.
The study found the district’s current school boundaries are not equally drawn, and the school closure will require Riverview Gardens to redesign the map to better distribute its nearly 5,000 K-12 students ahead of the 2026-27 academic year.
Danforth teachers and staff members are expected to be reassigned to other schools, district officials said.
Riverview Gardens joins a list of school districts in the St. Louis area that have announced school closures due to declining enrollment. It’s driven in part by a drop in childbirth rates and families moving out of the districts.
There is also increased competition from charter schools, and more families are choosing to homeschool their children.
