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Consultants have recommended that Mann Elementary School on Juniata Street be closed. Emily Rasinski | Post-Dispatch

The final bell may toll for 27 of St. Louis Public Schools’ 87 buildings, some immediately and others over the next several years. That’s the advice from MGT of America, consultants hired to evaluate the district’s facilities.

MGT’s recommendations are based on bricks and mortar, dollars and cents and operating efficiencies. That was the job the company was paid to do.

But the Special Administrative Board that governs the district has a larger duty to the public. It cannot rely solely on the consultant’s report when it decides which schools are eliminated.

Much more is at stake than the mere disposition of district property.

These buildings are public assets and landmarks vital to the fabric of neighborhoods. And some are brilliant examples of historic architecture.

Moreover, their value as facilities to educate children might not be limited to how they can be used by a centrally administered public school system. For better and worse, public education in this community consists of more than traditional schools. It also includes charter schools, which are hungry for facilities.

The report is a dense, 160-page-plus document that contains recommendations that would radically alter the city’s school landscape over the next 10 years. It would change how, where and how far children would have to travel each day.

The report measures and assigns ratings to ways in which each building is used. The factors include operating efficiency and suitability to serve the needs of children in coming years. These criteria are logical, the data are valuable and the due diligence indispensable to making informed decisions.

Clearly, some schools must close. The district faces a daunting budget deficit of $36 million. The financial problems are fueled in part by costs of staffing and maintaining multiple buildings at just 40 to 60 percent capacity.

The high number of closings has been dictated, in part, by MGT’s dim view of the district’s prospects. It assumed that St. Louis Public Schools student enrollment (already down from 43,850 to 26,405 over the past 10 years) will drop another 25 percent over the next decade, to just under 20,000.

The public benefits from this conservative analysis. The board must know its best options for worst cases.

But the board also has a duty to leaven its decisions with information from the community, not just from consultants.

Among the members of the public who attended community meetings as part of the planning process, 67 percent considered historic preservation of school buildings to be “important” or “very important.”

This doesn’t mean the district must “save” architecturally prominent properties that no longer suit its purposes. But the district does have a duty to act reasonably, diligently and creatively to protect these buildings and permit their productive reuse — recognizing, as St. Louis Landmarks Association aptly notes, that they serve as “irreplaceable institutional and architectural anchors” to many neighborhoods.

The rise of charter schools has contributed to the decline in traditional school enrollment. But the district’s neighborhood-be-damned approach of imposing deed restrictions that prevent buildings’ rebirth as charter or private schools is not the best way to advance the public interest.

The district has a chance to reshape its image by making the most of buildings it no longer needs, rethinking its relationship with charter schools and broadening its leadership role. The Special Administrative Board should put public education and neighborhood stability ahead of protecting turf.