Proposal would disband failing Missouri school districts

The six state board members listened intently as consultants outlined a plan that rethinks how public education is delivered in Missouri.

If enacted, an unaccredited district would be replaced by a state-run entity called a Community Schools Office that would report directly to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

During a transition period, the office would directly operate the schools from the unaccredited school system. Ultimately, the office would oversee a system of schools run by nonprofit operators, similar to charter schools but with several key distinctions.

The proposal by the Indianapolis-based Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust — CEE-Trust — is one of several proposals that Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro will be considering as she crafts a different approach to troubled school systems. She plans to present it to the board next month.

Nicastro sat with board members as they spent more than two hours digesting the proposal, its possibilities and potential pitfalls. More than 150 educators and community activists also listened to the presentation inside the ballroom of the Governor Office Building. Some held signs protesting a takeover of public education.

In the proposal, schools overseen by a Community Schools Office would have control over budgets, staffing, curriculum and other areas normally controlled by a district’s central office. The CSO itself would focus on only systemwide services, such as transportation, building maintenance and holding schools accountable.

“The strength and weakness of this is, it is a significant change in the system of the management of education as we know it in the state and nation today,” Board President Peter Herschend said.

When hired by the board in August, CEE-Trust was asked to develop an improvement plan to target the unaccredited Kansas City Public Schools — a plan that also could be implemented throughout the state. The need to address troubled schools became more urgent last summer when a Missouri Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for students to begin transferring from the unaccredited Normandy and Riverview Gardens school districts and into better schools.

If implemented statewide, the proposal would halt transfers from unaccredited school systems such as Normandy and Riverview Gardens. But it proposes nothing to address either district’s more immediate needs.

Normandy is projected to go bankrupt by spring break because of the $15 million in expenses associated with 1,000 students now attending higher-performing schools. Another 1,100 transferred from Riverview Gardens, which has a larger savings account and can afford to finish the year.

The report presented to the state board points to individual schools across the country that have closed the racial and economic achievement gap among poor and minority students. But the consultants could not point to a successful urban school district that had shown great success.

“How do you create the conditions not for a few schools, but a whole system of schools?” Bryan Hassel of Public Impact, a national education consulting firm that worked with CEE-Trust on the report, said. “That has never been done.”

CONTROL AND FLEXIBILITY

In a sense, the proposal would create a more centralized approach to school governance for troubled school systems by replacing them with state-run offices. But the administrative aspects of managing the schools would become decentralized, giving educators at the school level more authority to make decisions to best meet the needs of their students and parents.

The proposal promises lower administrative costs, potentially unlocking millions of dollars that could be spent at the school level on universal preschool and higher teachers salaries.

“We think there’s enough money in the current system, it just needs to be allocated differently,” Ethan Gray, executive director of CEE-Trust, said.

Crafters of the plan say it would require no change in law to enact. It could kick in as early as this summer, with a transition office within each Community Schools Organization to initially operate the schools.

All contracts would be void. Decisions regarding collective bargaining would be made at each school, threatening the existence of teachers unions.

There would be no governing board, just an executive appointed by the state education commissioner. A citizens council would serve in an advisory capacity.

The schools would never again return to the school district, whose designation as a political entity would be completely abolished. However, once academic performance among the schools improved, their governance would go to an elected school board with less authority than before.

After the meeting, members of the Missouri National Education Committee said they were withholding judgment about the proposal until they had read it thoroughly.

“We think it’s worth some study,” said Ann Jarrett, teaching and learning director for the union.

CONCERNS

Others were less impressed.

“Keep taxpayer dollars for public schools, not for other organizations,” said H. Lon Swearingen, a retired special education teacher from Kansas City. “That ‘nonprofit,’ that’s a code word,” he said, adding he sees it as an attempt to create a system of charter schools.

Unlike charter schools, the nonprofits would report to the Community Schools Office and would be held to higher standards, Gray said. If the nonprofit failed, the CSO would replace it with another operator.

The proposal has components of state-run districts in other states, such as the Recovery School District in Louisiana, and the Achievement School District in Memphis. No state has embarked on an approach quite like this.

“You guys have done an excellent job of thinking about how to rethink the delivery system for public education,” said Board Vice President Michael Jones of St. Louis. “We’ve got a 19th-century public education system that we’re trying to make work in the 21st century.”

The department’s contract with CEE-Trust has drawn fire from lawmakers and some education groups.

The $385,000 contract is fully funded by the Kauffman Foundation and Hall Family Trust — two groups that are supportive of charter schools.

Emails that became public last month showed Nicastro had been talking with CEE-Trust for several months before the state Board of Education awarded it a contract.

Nicastro has emphasized that the proposal is not the department’s plan — at least, not yet. She is also weighing proposals from the Missouri Association of School Administrators, the Riverview Gardens chapter of the National Education Association, and others.

Some board members, such as Russell Still of Columbia, expressed skepticism that such a plan would transform the level of learning taking place in the classroom. He wanted some degree of proof.

“Where have we done something like this?” he asked.

“I think we were hired because it hasn’t been done,” Gray said.