Statement Regarding Project Butterfly

April 13, 2026

 

Public Statement Regarding Project Butterfly

 

To the Ferguson-Florissant School District community, the residents of Ferguson, and all interested stakeholders:

Last week, certified letters were mailed to the City of Ferguson and SSL Investments, LLC (the Project Butterfly development team) to formally voice our concerns about the current structure of Project Butterfly and to request continued discussion. Our preference remains direct conversation, collaboration, and good-faith problem solving. At the same time, it is important that we clearly share our position with the community.

Let me begin by stating that the Ferguson-Florissant School District values our partnership with the City of Ferguson. The City has often been one of our strongest district partners, and we remain grateful for the transparency, dialogue, and engagement that have occurred to this point. We also understand the importance of redevelopment and economic growth. We are not opposed to investment, progress, or the revitalization of the Emerson site. What we oppose is a structure that imposes an undue financial burden on the students, families, and schools we are entrusted to serve.

As Superintendent, my responsibility is not only to ensure sound internal controls and responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars, but also to ensure that our students and school community receive every dollar to which the District is entitled. That obligation requires honesty about the financial challenges our District has faced. Those challenges have not come from any single source. Past internal decisions have certainly played a role, and we do not shy away from that reality. But a full and honest account must also include external forces, especially the impact of tax increment financing, tax abatements, and similar incentive structures that have diverted resources away from our students over time.

That history matters. Since 2010, the Ferguson-Florissant School District has identified approximately $37 million in funds lost to TIFs and tax abatements. That is an average of roughly $2.47 million per school year. For a school district, those are not abstract numbers. Those dollars represent academic supports, mental health resources, staffing, safety investments, facility improvements, and opportunities for students and families who depend on us.

Our more recent experience also reinforces why these issues cannot be treated lightly. In 2025, for example, properties associated with Northpark Partners generated approximately $634,006.87 in total taxes on about $4,277,410 in assessed value, yet our district received only about $10,027.09, or roughly 1.5%. In practical terms, significant taxes were collected, but the school district responsible for educating children in this community received less than the cost of educating even one student for a year.

We have seen similar patterns with major employers over time. As many may know, our district is home to billion-dollar businesses. Yet our long-term experience with Emerson showed that, from a school-finance perspective, the local tax contributions we received were disappointing relative to the scale of the enterprise. Over the 2010–2024 period, our annual local taxes from Emerson generally ranged from the mid-$200,000s and declined to roughly $227,000 in 2024. That is real money, but it is not the kind of stable, growth-aligned revenue our community expects when hosting global-scale operations over the long term.

That history is precisely why we must approach Project Butterfly with caution and seriousness. The project may hold promise. The site’s redevelopment could create jobs, generate activity, and deliver broader community benefits. But the current proposal also asks the District to accept a structure in which real property is abated at 75% for 12 of the 15 years, with the rate stepping down in the final three years, while personal property is also substantially abated through extended phases. The plan further ties the guaranteed real-property PILOT floor to 2024, even though the property’s 2025 assessed value was significantly higher. Just as importantly, the plan itself states that the projected revenues are estimates based on assumptions and may differ significantly from actual results.

In other words, the Ferguson-Florissant School District is being asked, again, to weigh a very large, long-term concession based largely on modeled projections, while our lived experience tells us that projections do not always translate into actual classroom support. That is not a position we can accept lightly. Our students cannot afford for the District to once again be asked to absorb the educational consequences of a deal in which the public upside is uncertain, but the school-finance downside is quite probable.

To be clear, we believe there is still a path forward. Missouri has examples of Chapter 100 and similar structures that provide stronger protections for school districts through higher PILOTs, stronger minimum floors, hold-harmless provisions, enforceable performance requirements, clawbacks, transparent reporting, and separate support agreements that ensure schools are not treated as an afterthought. That is the kind of conversation FFSD is asking to have here. We are seeking a structure that better protects students, staff, families, and the long-term financial stability of this fully accredited school district.

Accordingly, the Ferguson-Florissant School District cannot support Project Butterfly as currently structured. We remain willing and eager to work collaboratively with the City of Ferguson and the development team to identify a more student-protective alternative. Our goal is not to block opportunity. Our goal is to ensure that such an opportunity advances the community's growth and protects the educational future of students in the Ferguson-Florissant School District.

We remain committed to continued dialogue and to advocating for a result that is fair, transparent, and worthy of the students and families we serve.

 

Respectfully,

 

Howard E. Fields III, Ph.D.

Superintendent of Schools

Ferguson-Florissant School District

8855 Dunn Rd, Hazelwood, MO 63042