The Normandy School District sued the Missouri Board of Education and 20 area school districts Wednesday, challenging the validity of a school transfer law that has left the Normandy district nearly insolvent.
The petition, filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court, challenges the federal and state constitutionality of the law that has forced the unaccredited Normandy district to pay transportation and tuition expenses for about 1,000 children who left for higher-performing schools this year.
The state did not provide funding for the transportation costs, the lawsuit says, and therefore the transfer law is an unfunded mandate in violation of Missouri’s Hancock Amendment. The Normandy school system has spent about $8 million so far this year on transfer tuition and transportation expenses, an outflow for which officials hadn’t budgeted.
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“To sit idly by while watching district resources dissipate to the detriment of 3,000-plus remaining students while crippling efforts to regain accreditation — all due to a misguided statute that ostensibly is for the betterment of education — is not an option,” said William Humphrey, president of the Normandy School Board.
The suit comes one day after the Missouri Board of Education voted to lapse the district and reopen it July 1 under a different name and governance structure. The decision means all contracts and policies will be void, and an appointed board will replace the elected one. The decision was prompted by the district’s poor academic performance and not its financial situation, Margie Vandeven, deputy commissioner of education, said today.
But the decision does nothing to address the district’s financial situation. The new political entity — the Normandy Schools Collaborative — will receive local and state funding under the same structure as the current school district. And so far, state lawmakers have not done enough in the eyes of Normandy school officials to reduce the financial burden of the transfer law on their students.
“We tried to follow the letter of the law,” Superintendent Ty McNichols said in a prepared statement. “We intentionally did not file the legal case earlier because we trusted that the political system understood the plight of the Normandy School District, but their inaction seems to suggest something different.”
The Legislature passed a bill last week altering the school transfer law, but critics say it doesn’t go far enough to prevent unaccredited districts such as Normandy and Riverview Gardens from going bankrupt. Gov. Jay Nixon is considering whether to sign or veto the bill.
The bill includes a measure that would allow transfers into non-religious private schools within district boundaries. Nixon has said he opposes public dollars going to private schools, and he told area superintendents earlier this year that he would veto such a measure.
The suit, according to the district, charges that the state’s school transfer law has harmed Normandy students by forcing their school system to pay tuition to receiving districts in amounts significantly larger than the costs of educating the transfer students.
The district argues it’s paying in excess of $10,000 in tuition for each transfer student over the amount it costs receiving districts to educate them.
“This irrational system is bankrupting the district and harming our students,” the district’s statement says.
A copy of the suit was not available on Wednesday.
This isn’t the only legal challenge involving the school transfer statute. As Normandy attempts to nullify the law, a parent continues her court fight to broaden its interpretation.
On Tuesday, an attorney for Gina Breitenfeld of St. Louis is scheduled to appear before Judge David Lee Vincent III as she fights the Clayton School District’s attempt to collect tuition from her rather than from St. Louis Public Schools. Her attorney, Elkin Kistner, also will argue that provisionally accredited school districts, such as St. Louis, aren’t protected from complying with the transfer law.
Passed in 1993, the transfer law allows children living in districts that aren’t accredited by the state to enroll in higher-performing schools at their home district’s expense. Breitenfeld and other St. Louis parents sued Clayton schools after the St. Louis district lost accreditation in 2007. The parents had been paying tuition for their children to attend Clayton schools, and asked the district to send the bills to St. Louis in accordance with the transfer law.
School districts argued that complying with the law would be impossible and that it would ultimately bankrupt an unaccredited district. Last summer, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the statute. The judges ruled that no such situation had presented itself. At that time, no transfers had taken place.
On Wednesday, Kistner said he was surprised that Normandy’s attorneys had filed the suit.
“In the abstract, it’s possible they have a new angle on the Hancock claim,” he said. “Without seeing the petition it’s hard to evaluate why the attorneys for the school district claim they have fresh material to use for a lawsuit.”
At school board meetings and public forums, some district residents and teachers openly expressed frustration that Normandy hadn’t filed a lawsuit attempting to stop transfers. The situation has left the district with fewer resources as it has also tried to improve literacy and hone in on improving science, technology, engineering and math.
“Our district has always considered a legal approach,” McNichols said. “We have intentionally waited to see what legislators were going to do.”
