ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Maintaining buildings in the St. Louis Public School District could dip into the billion dollar range in the future.
Cordogan, Clark, and Associates have been evaluating more than 68 schools to put together a "facility condition assessment" for the district's master plan.
Steve Raskin, Vice President with the company, presented their findings to the school board Tuesday.
"We have more than 20 accessors working over the last couple months touring the facilities," said Raskin. "We looked more than 68 schools in total and evaluated more than 6.5 million square feet of space."
Raskin says the company took a look at the district's education facilities, along with their non-educational facilities. All of the evaluation was data driven.
The firm estimates in the next 10 years, nearly half of all the school buildings will be at a level where the district will need to choose if they should continue to invest in these facilities or not.
"Really critical thought needs to be put into whether or not to continue investment in some of these specific facilities," said Raskin.
Over a 20-year period, the estimated costs would be $1.8 billion to all buildings.
The figure does not include around the 20 or so vacant school buildings still owned and maintained by the district.
The district already have some immediate issues that need to be addressed, such as plumbing, electrical work, roofing and more that is could already cost in the $20 million.
