District to publish SchoolPad dashboard Dec. 19 with enrollment, facilities and cost data

Consultants for St. Louis Public Schools demonstrated a new public data dashboard called SchoolPad during the Dec. 9 work session and said the dashboard will be accessible to the public after the district launches its updated website on Dec. 19.

Steve Raskin of Courtigan (Cordigan) Clark Dittner and his team showed interactive views of enrollment by zone and grade, school-specific pages with building data and photos, facility condition assessments, and financial tables that summarize short- and long-term maintenance costs. Raskin said the tool includes forecasts and historical trends and is customizable for different KPIs.

The presentation included a district-level facilities expenditure forecast that the presenter described as about $1,858,500,000 over the 20-year period covered by their analysis. Staff said the dashboard will publish district enrollment and demographic data, building square footage, facility condition indices, and prop-s/Prop S improvement expenditures, and will incorporate updated information following May tornado repairs.

Board members praised the transparency value of the dashboard and asked questions about school-type definitions and attendance zones; presenters said school type is based on grade levels reported by the district and attendance zone conventions follow the district operations department (North, Central, South) to help organize data views.

District staff said SchoolPad will be public after Dec. 19 and will be updated as new data (including post-tornado repairs and contractor estimates) becomes available.