UPDATED at 6 p.m. Wednesday with a second legislator calling for a special session.
On Friday, one of Parkinson's GOP House colleagues from St. Charles County - Chrissy Sommer - said she, too, wants a special session "to resolve this issue" but didn't say what should be in such legislation.
"Taking students from one school district and putting them in another is not the answer," she said. "Rather, we should be looking at ways to improve the school districts that are struggling."
Sommer's husband, Mike Sommer, is a member of the Francis Howell School Board.
ST. CHARLES COUNTY • A state legislator from St. Charles County on Tuesday urged Gov. Jay Nixon to call a special session aimed at changing a state law allowing transfers of students from unaccredited school districts to other districts.
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Rep. Mark Parkinson, R-St. Charles County, made the request in the wake of the unaccredited Normandy district's decision to give the option of busing students in its area to the Francis Howell district.
Normandy officials acted following a Missouri Supreme Court decision upholding the law.
Parkinson said he wants the Legislature to either allow a receiving district in such a situation to veto all such transfers by bus or at least set some objective standard by which transfers could be blocked.
"It is a slap in the face of every family living in the Francis Howell School District to be forced, without consent, to accept students from outside the district," he said.
Parkinson said he would urge other representatives and senators to join him in calling on Nixon to make the special session call.
He said a logical time would be September when lawmakers already are required to meet briefly to deal with Nixon's vetoes of bills passed in this year's regular legislative session that ended in May. The next regular session won't begin until January.
The law requires unaccredited districts - such as Normandy and Riverview Gardens - to pay for transportation to at least one other school district. Riverview Gardens has yet to say where it will transport students.
Normandy families may choose other districts as well but they must provide their own transportation to those schools.
Parkinson, a Howell district graduate himself, said he isn't calling for changing that provision and is concerned mainly about the potential for large numbers of transfers by bus. Parkinson's House district includes part of the Howell district.
Efforts in recent years to put limits on the transfer law have failed. One proposal discussed in the 2012 session would have let receiving districts turn away transfer students if the districts lacked enough teachers and classrooms based on an objective standard, such as their average enrollment in the previous three years.
The bills have stalled as school choice advocates have pushed to add provisions such as tax credit-supported private school scholarships.
