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Lesson Plans: Lawmakers Work On Sweeping School Proposals

St. Louis Public Radio File Photo
Whether the Senate or House version, the legislature is likely to pass sweeping education bill.

With the Missouri legislature approaching its spring break, the Senate has passed a sweeping education bill designed to deal with struggling schools and transfers from unaccredited districts, and a bill addressing similar issues is ready for debate in the House.

At the same time, up the street from the Capitol, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has proposed a draft plan to map out when and how the state could intervene in schools at various stages of achievement – or lack of it. After gathering public comment on the plan in St. Louis and Kansas City last week, officials are expected to submit a final version of the proposal to the state board of education later this month.

At this point, everyone seems to agree on a few basic points.

  • Instead of accrediting entire school districts, the state should accredit individual school buildings.
  • Districts that receive transfer students should be able to limit class sizes and the number of students they have to accept.
  • Unaccredited districts that send transfer students should have a cap on how much tuition they have to pay.
  • Under certain conditions, students could even transfer to nonsectarian private schools that have the proper credentials.

The overarching principle that governs the bills and the plan is this: Students should be able to get a quality education in their own communities.
The flurry of activity to address issues that have been on the horizon for several years was prompted, of course, by the Missouri Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling last June to uphold a provision of a 1993 education law that lets students who live in unaccredited school districts transfer to nearby accredited ones.

The law’s requirement that transfer students’ home district must pay for tuition and in some cases transportation for those who leave has put a severe strain on the budgets in Normandy and Riverview Gardens, which along with Kansas City are the only three unaccredited districts in the state.

In Normandy’s case, the district was projected to go bankrupt around the first of April unless it received an emergency transfusion of state funds – first estimated at $6.8 million, then reduced to $5 million. The request for the added money was approved by the state board and forwarded to the legislature by Gov. Jay Nixon, but prospects for its approval initially seemed dim.

That situation changed, though, when the state board voted last month to put Normandy’s finances under the control of DESE. Commissioner Chris Nicastro assured students in the district that the move meant they could stay in their classrooms for the rest of the school year. The move also seemed to bolster the likelihood that lawmakers would approve the emergency money. This week, the House advanced a plan to send the money to DESE for use in Normandy as part of a supplemental spending bill .

Meanwhile, looking beyond the end of the current semester, the House and Senate are studying creative ways to ease the burden of the transfers, financial and otherwise, while creating the best possible chance to fulfill the goal of good schools for all Missouri children.

DESE is using a law passed last year that gave it greater latitude to intervene in struggling school districts to come up with more and better ways to detect problems and to prevent districts from sliding into provisional accreditation or total lack of accreditation.

In putting together its plan, it considered proposals from a variety of education groups and school districts as well as public comments from a series of meetings across the state.

Here is a look at the various issues involved and how they are being addressed by each chamber of the General Assembly, as well as the broader plan being put together by DESE.

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.