The Normandy School District dropped its lawsuit Friday against the Missouri Board of Education and 20 area school districts challenging the constitutionality of the school transfer law.
Judge Steven Goldman made the announcement in St. Louis County Circuit Court, where he had been scheduled to hear Normandy’s attorney request a temporary restraining order against the state board and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The district and seven Normandy taxpayers had filed the motion last week, attempting to stop the state board from lapsing the district on June 30 and reconstituting it under a new name the next day. The district’s related lawsuit challenging the validity of the school transfer law argued that the takeover was the result of the budgetary drain that came from complying with the school transfer law.
The impact of paying tuition and transportation to about 1,000 Normandy children had denied educational resources to 3,000 children still in Normandy schools. The suit also accused 20 receiving districts of charging Normandy inflated tuition amounts that far exceed the actual costs of educating children.
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On Monday, the state board eliminated the need for the new Normandy district to comply with the transfer law by not giving the new district any accreditation classification. The law that says children in troubled districts may transfer to better schools at their home district’s expense only applies to unaccredited districts.
The state board also relieved the financial burden of keeping current transfer students in their schools by setting a $7,200 annual cap on what the Normandy Schools Collaborative will be paying. It will be up to receiving districts to determine if that rate is adequate to keep Normandy transfer students in their classrooms this fall.
“Hopefully those will work out for everyone,” Goldman said of the actions.
But the lawsuit also asked the court to address some questions that arose during the school year, as the law’s impact nearly brought Normandy to bankruptcy. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld the law in June 2013. At that time, the transfer situation had not begun, and the ruling said school districts couldn’t argue that the law was impossible to comply with.
Even with those issues outstanding, Normandy officials chose not to pursue the suit to eliminate the potential chaos that could result, Normandy attorney Richard Ulrich said.
“The statute needs to be addressed and addressed head on,” he added. “It’s a terrible law.”
Meanwhile, an attorney representing three Normandy parents with children in the transfer program said he was about to file a different lawsuit against the state of Missouri.
The parents learned on Tuesday that their children could not continue in their new schools next year. The state board is denying transfer options to 131 Normandy children who transferred last year but had never attended the district’s schools. The transfer law applies to any child living in an unaccredited district — not just children who attend its schools.
“The majority of the people who took advantage of the program last year were longtime residents,” attorney Gaylard Williams said. He said it shouldn’t make a difference if parents had sent their children to unaccredited schools. Most had been sending their children to private ones. They “paid for the right to attend a good public school. They paid for the right with their taxes.”
