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ST. LOUIS — The city is a national outlier for awarding tax breaks to developers, amounting to a loss of $1,634 per student per year in St. Louis Public Schools, according to a report released Wednesday.

The report looks at annual revenue losses from tax abatements in SLPS and the 23 school districts in St. Louis County. It shows tax breaks adding up to $260.7 million in losses to area schools over the last six years.

“While these programs were laudably enacted to encourage economic revitalization of distressed areas, the net fiscal effects cause local students to end up as collateral damage,� reads the report from , a pro-labor group in Washington that promotes government and corporate accountability.

The housing, urban development and zoning committee of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen met Tuesday to discuss a proposal from Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier of the 7th ward that would require developers to be current on their taxes to apply for tax abatements.

Sonnier said in a statement that she was saddened by the report showing financial disparities between SLPS and suburban school districts.

“This report further underscores the need for developers to be good community partners and to pay their fair share of taxes. City leadership must hold developers accountable before giving them tax incentives. ... We should all be held to the same standard of paying our taxes, and our city’s children and future rely on this,� Sonnier said in a statement.

Revenue losses for school districts are further calculated by student race and income in the report, which shows that Black students miss out on $610 a year on average while white students lose $179. Students who qualify for free or reduced lunch, a measure of poverty, lose $665 compared to $133 for those who don’t.

“We know this is not an isolated situation there, but it’s very severe for kids in St. Louis schools,� said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First and a co-author of the report.

The report “affirms what we knew about the racist nature of how incentives play out,� said Molly Metzger, an SLPS parent and senior lecturer at Washington University who focuses on fair housing policy.

After SLPS, the district with the biggest tax losses per student is the Special School District of St. Louis County, which serves students with disabilities and is funded through a countywide tax. The average revenue loss per student is $1,148 a year, according to the report.

In the Rockwood School District, where 9% of students qualify as low-income, the loss of tax revenue equaled $18 per student. The Maplewood Richmond Heights and Riverview Gardens districts reported “immaterial� losses to tax abatements. 

The report, “Overarching Disparities: How Black and Poor Students are Disproportionately Impacted by St. Louis-Area Tax Abatements,� was funded by .

“I think it clearly shows that St. Louis politicians have used schools like a piggy bank to finance their ideas for redevelopment,� said Ray Cummings, president of the local union. “We’re not against development, but we know from other cities that you don’t have to give away the store for development.�

The largest source of abatements is tax increment financing (TIF), particularly for SLPS that missed out on $64.2 million from 2019 to 2022. St. Louis is an “extreme outlier� in the use of TIF, at seven times the rate of Chicago, according to the report.

Tax abatements and TIF freeze property taxes at pre-development levels for a number of years. St. Louis Development Corp., the city’s economic development arm, adopted a “Community Benefits Scorecard� last year that “improves accountability and brings increased transparency to the review process,� said Neal Richardson, SLDC president and CEO.

Mayor Tishaura O. Jones “has publicly disavowed St. Louis’ historic lack of standards for doling out TIFs and tax abatements at the expense of the City’s children� and her administration has not enacted any new TIFs since entering office in 2021, according to a statement provided Tuesday by her office.

The Board of Aldermen passed a bill last session that requires the development agency to consult with SLPS on any tax abatements for projects costing $1 million or more and produce a report on the fiscal impact to the school district. 

“The Board of Aldermen is continuing to refine the City’s requirements around tax incentives to reduce harm to our public schools and students,� said Aldermanic President Megan Green in a statement Tuesday. “We appreciate the work of Good Jobs First and are reviewing their recommendations to determine whether state or local interventions are needed to make these recommendations a reality.�

Recommendations for policymakers from the report include:

• Shield school district funding from tax abatements.

• Give SLPS veto power on the St. Louis TIF Commission.

• Use TIF to create public housing for the 2,000 to 4,000 homeless students in SLPS.

The St. Louis teachers’ union, other labor groups, clergy members and the League of Women Voters will host a forum Wednesday at Harris-Stowe State University to discuss the report’s findings.