Shania Burl just wants to go back to her old school.
She is a senior at historic Sumner High School, located in the Ville neighborhood. The school has been closed since May 16, when a powerful EF3 tornado ripped through St. Louis and left devastation in its path.
About 340 Sumner and Fresh Start students have been temporarily relocated to Stevens Middle School in the Vandeventer neighborhood, but she said it's just not the same.
"This is horrible," Burl said. "The school is too little. It's too many kids." Burl is used to the grand hallways and high ceilings of Sumner — a school that housed over 1,000 students in the 1990s.
"I've been praying every day because [Stevens] is not it. It's not enough space," Burl said.
Standing on the sidewalk in front of Sumner, it's hard to understand the extent of the storm's damage. The towering building looks mostly untouched.
Drone images taken by St. Louis Public Radio showed a badly damaged roof, windows and siding.
A tour inside the building revealed large-scale devastation left by water damage from the subsequent thunderstorms that have pounded the city over the past six months.
On the first floor, on the west side of the building, ceiling tiles and paint have collapsed or peeled away after water seeped in from roof damage.
Anthony Graphenreed, director of facilities, said the district took initial steps to stabilize the buildings by placing tarps on the roofs and wooden boards over the windows.
The water still found its way in. "We just want to get them back to their homes, so they can get back to doing good work again," Graphenreed said.
Dark brown wood floors, which once welcomed the footsteps of high schoolers, have buckled from the rain that forced its way into the building, with the top floors being hit the hardest.
The school sits frozen in time. A school bell echoes through the once-bustling hallways.
A message written on a chalkboard that was prepped for May 19 read: "It's Monday. Let's approach this week with a 'God will do it' attitude."
The students have yet to return to the classroom.
The impact of the storm
The storm hit around 2:40 p.m. on a Friday, one week before school let out for summer break. Many students had to hunker down in their buildings, following their tornado drills. Other students were trapped in buses or district-provided cabs on their way home.
The storm damaged a dozen buildings in the St. Louis Public Schools district, but seven were forced to close for the start of the school year due to severe damage.
Nearly 2,000 students were relocated to other schools in the district. A newly revised estimate of the damage sits between $5 million and $15 million.
The schools include: Ashland, Washington Montessori and Hickey Elementary, Yeatman-Liddell Middle, Beaumont, and Sumner and Soldan International Studies high schools. Beaumont is home to some of the district's career and technical programs.
Drone images show varying degrees of damage across the schools.
For example, nearly all of the windows on the front of Soldan, which is in the Academy neighborhood, are still boarded up. The roof is in bad shape, with bricks strewn across the top. School officials said water has also made its way into the building and has caused similar damage to Sumner.
Ashland, located in the Penrose neighborhood with an enrollment of nearly 170 students, has become the target of vandalism, according to Chief of Operations Square Watson.
The historic neighborhood school has roof and window damage. As it sat vacant for the last six months, thieves broke in to steal metal pipes and wiring — a common trend that emerged after the storm.
"Ashland was hit really hard by not just the tornado, but by people," board member Brian Marston said during a school board meeting on Nov. 10. "People who went in after the tornado and ripped out anything metal they could get their hands on."
A push to reopen
As weeks turned into months and the tornado-damaged schools sat vacant, community members and neighbors began to worry about the future of the buildings.
The Sumner Alumni Association has lobbied district officials to reopen the school and expressed skepticism about the extent of the damage. The members fear the school could be permanently closed, though the district has affirmed that it will reopen.
The American Federation of Teachers Local 420, which represents SLPS teachers and staff, raised concerns in the summer after the initial announcement about the co-located schools, citing safety concerns over mixing student populations from different neighborhoods.
During a town hall on Oct. 2, the union slammed the district's leadership for closing the tornado-damaged schools, which are primarily located in north St. Louis.
The union has taken a hard stance against a larger proposal to consolidate SLPS schools despite dwindling student enrollment and aging school buildings.
At a regular monthly board meeting on Oct. 14, board member Tracy Hykes pressed former Superintendent Millicent Borishade for temporary solutions to get students back in their schools.
She invited the board members to tour the storm-damaged schools and pushed back against the use of temporary fixes.
"The goal is to make sure that we have our schools ready for our students, and when I say ready, it needs to be nothing temporary," Borishade said. "We want our students to go back to a building that is ready for them. They've been waiting, and to have them waiting for this long, and have them go back to something that is halfway restored, it's not fair to our students."
The school board voted to fire Borishade without cause on Oct. 17.
During a press conference on Oct. 20, school board President Karen Collins-Adams signaled the first major step from SLPS leadership about the future of the schools since the district closed the buildings in May.
The district would work toward reopening several of the tornado-damaged schools.
"This decision reflects the input we have heard from families, staff and neighborhood leaders," Collins-Adams said during the press conference. "It is part of our renewed commitment to the neighborhood schools and equitable access to education for all of our students."
The surprise announcement followed irregular updates from the school board and district leadership about the future of the tornado-damaged schools.
A path forward
The district proposed a plan during a monthly school board meeting last week to reopen three of the storm-damaged schools after it finishes repairs by Dec. 10. Those schools include Yeatman-Liddell, Beaumont and Washington Montessori.
Hickey is expected to have its repairs completed by August 2026, putting it in a position to reopen in time for the next school year.
For the remaining schools — Sumner, Soldan and Ashland — repairs will be completed by December 2026, which could set them to reopen in January 2027.
STLPR toured Washington Montessori, located in the Fountain Park neighborhood, which was devastated by the tornado.
It's hard to understand how Washington Montessori was largely spared by the fierce winds of the storm. The Euclid School, located directly across the street and closed by the district in 2007, has a caved-in roof and extreme exterior damage.
Inside Washington Montessori, freshly polished floors and blue and green banners provided a sense of warmth and welcome.
The smell of disinfectant and floor polish wafted through the classrooms, which sit mostly empty.
Part of the process of reopening the school will require the district to move classroom furniture from Ames Visual and Performing Arts Elementary School, where students have been temporarily relocated, back to Washington Montessori.
Technicians were working on straightening out metal hinges on a classroom door as Anthony Graphenreed made his way in and out of the classrooms.
Many of the windows that were blown out have been replaced with temporary glass as the district waits for the permanent window fixtures to arrive.
Graphenreed said the credit goes to the district's custodial staff, which has been working diligently to clean up Washington Montessori for its young students — the school serves pre-kindergarten to fifth grade.
"We got a lot of custodians that have been around for quite some time. They work hard. They take a lot of pride in the work that they do," Graphenreed said.
He empathized with students like Shania Burl and said the district was committed to getting its students, whom he refers to warmly as his scholars, back into their home schools.
"I look at our students — they are our future, and we do what we can to make sure that we give them a quality education and make sure the facilities are safe," Graphenreed said.
See photos of tornado-damaged SLPS buildings from St. Louis Public Radio's Brian Munoz and Kate Grumke.
Sumner High School
Washington Montessori Elementary School
Euclid School
Ashland Elementary School
Yeatman-Liddell Middle School
Beaumont High School
Soldan International Studies High School
Hickey Elementary School
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