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Absent Normandy board members wouldn't have changed refusal to pay bills

Two members of the Normandy school board were absent for last week’s vote rejecting bills from districts that have accepted transferring students. But their presence may not have made any difference in the outcome.

What often is a routine part of a school board meeting attracted a lot more attention Thursday night when a motion to pay $1.3 million in bills submitted by receiving school districts for tuition and transportation in September came up for a vote.

School board member Terry Artis, who earlier had been the only vote against laying off 103 teachers and staff members to trim Normandy’s budget, cast his vote against the contracts. So did board member Sheila Williams, leaving President William Humphrey to break a 2-2 tie.

Clearly struggling with the issue, but saying that he felt the board had “a moral obligation to do everything we can to make sure that this district is treated fairly going forward,” Humphrey ended up casting his vote against paying the contracts, making the tally 3-2.

But two members were absent from the meeting at Normandy High School: board Treasurer Joyce McRath, who was out of town, and Jeanette Pulliam, who was ill.

Reached by the Beacon on Monday, McRath said she was not sure how she would have voted because she was not at the meeting to hear what her colleagues on the board had to say. She said she planned to talk with Humphrey about the issue this week.

But Pulliam, who said she could not talk for long because she remained under the weather, said her vote would have supported the majority. “I would have voted not to pay,” she said.

The vote is expected to have little practical effect. Guidelines from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education say that the state would pay any bills submitted by districts receiving transfer students from Normandy or Riverview Gardens that go unpaid by the sending districts for two successive months. The state would pay directly, by withholding tax receipts from the sending district and sending them directly to the districts submitting the bills.

Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro affirmed that policy the day after the Normandy vote, reassuring legislators at a meeting at Lindenwood University that she would be going to the state board of education at its meeting in December to have the transfer bills paid if Normandy has not approved payment by then.

Normandy’s next scheduled school board meeting is Nov. 13.

In an interview with the Beacon late Monday, Humphrey repeated his view that his deciding vote last week was in part a result of the deep feelings flowing from the board’s earlier moves to lay off personnel, offer early retirement incentives to other employees and close Bel Nor Elementary School at the end of this semester.

“This was a very emotional meeting for all of us,” Humphrey said. “For me, at the time I voted, it was a matter of conscience.”

After the board had voted to make all those cuts, he said, “I couldn’t send $1 million to other school districts.”

He said he was not sure what the community reaction would be. Some have praised the board for standing up against what Humphrey called “ a public policy decision gone wild” – the state law that lets students living in unaccredited school districts transfer to nearby accredited schools. Others have criticized the district for failing to pay its bills.

The Missouri Supreme Court decision that upheld the transfer law in June set in motion a process that has seen 2,200 students living in Normandy and Riverview Gardens enroll in other districts. The financial impact on Normandy – as much as $15 million – has brought predictions that the district is not likely to survive the school year, even if it gets a supplemental appropriation of $6.8 million sought by the state school board.

Nicastro and legislators reinforced that impression last week. She said that she hasn’t met anyone who thinks the $6.8 million request is a good idea; legislators she met with said the district did not help its cause with the vote to reject the bills from the receiving districts.

Under a new state law that took effect Aug. 28, the state could move more quickly than before to become more involved in operating Normandy, from a special administrative board like the ones running schools in Riverview Gardens and St. Louis to other oversight actions.

Nicastro said she did not want to move as soon as the law became effective, just a couple of weeks after the start of school, because the district had undergone enough turmoil this year. She also noted that a process is required before the state can become more involved. That is scheduled to begin soon with public meetings.

Others have been more forceful in their desire to get the state more heavily involved in Normandy. Steve Ehlmann, currently the St. Charles county executive and a former member of the General Assembly, said in an op-ed piece in the Post-Dispatch Tuesday that last week’s vote by the Normandy school board is a good reason for the state to appoint an SAB for the district.

Was that vote a one-time protest, or will the Normandy board repeat it when the next batch of bills is presented for payment? Humphrey told the Beacon it’s too early to tell, but he wants the public to understand the context of last week’s action.

“We would ask people to really take a look at what we are trying to do from Normandy’s perspective,” he said.

“A lot of the attention from the beginning of this whole ordeal has been on how the receiving districts feel. But Normandy is charged with improving its academic outcomes to move from unaccredited to accredited status. I think it would be helpful going forward to concentrate on issues that are germane to what Normandy is trying to do.”

Whether the district will even exist after the end of this school year is an open question. Another is what kind of changes lawmakers will make to the current transfer law, if any.

Kate Casas, state director for the Children’s Education Alliance of Missouri, would like to see changes that open up a broader array of choices to students in unaccredited districts, so they could attend class closer to home rather than have to travel elsewhere. Those choices should include the option of private schools, she said.

She attended last week’s Normandy meeting and said she understood the deeply held feelings involved in the board’s vote. But she added that the emotion seemed to override the logic involved in rejecting the tuition bills, and the move won’t help the district’s case in Jefferson City.

“They voted to make all the cuts so they could pay the tuition,” Casas said, “then voted not to pay the tuition. So they’ll feel the pain but not make the payments.

“I don’t know how you could possibly justify voting not to pay your bills, then ask for more money to pay your bills. I don’t think that would be seen as a prudent way to use tax money, from legislators’ perspective.”

There is one thing that she, Nicastro, Humphrey and lawmakers have agreed on. The disputes over transfers and money and personnel have deflected attention and resources from what should be the primary focus of the schools -- providing a quality education for students.

“I have no idea what this is like for the people who are keeping their children in Normandy,” Casas said, “for them to hope the district will be able to respond. I think sometimes districts are artificial and children are real, and I hope they will have better choices than they have today.”

Dale Singer began his career in professional journalism in 1969 by talking his way into a summer vacation replacement job at the now-defunct United Press International bureau in St. Louis; he later joined UPI full-time in 1972. Eight years later, he moved to the Post-Dispatch, where for the next 28-plus years he was a business reporter and editor, a Metro reporter specializing in education, assistant editor of the Editorial Page for 10 years and finally news editor of the newspaper's website. In September of 2008, he joined the staff of the Beacon, where he reported primarily on education. In addition to practicing journalism, Dale has been an adjunct professor at University College at Washington U. He and his wife live in west St. Louis County with their spoiled Bichon, Teddy. They have two adult daughters, who have followed them into the word business as a communications manager and a website editor, and three grandchildren. Dale reported for St. Louis Public Radio from 2013 to 2016.