JEFFERSON CITY • After more than eight hours of contentious debate on a bill to fix the problem-plagued school transfer law, Missouri lawmakers on Tuesday reached agreement on the stickiest remaining issue: whether to allow transfer students to go to private, nonreligious schools.
In the end, legislative negotiators decided to allow such transfers, but only subject to local elections and only in certain areas of the state.
Gov. Jay Nixon quickly expressed opposition to the idea, saying that sending any public dollars to private schools is where he draws the line.
The transfer law, upheld by the Missouri Supreme Court ruling last summer, has allowed more than 2,200 children to transfer from the unaccredited Normandy and Riverview Gardens school districts into higher-performing schools in the St. Louis region. The law requires the home districts to cover tuition and transportation expenses. Those $15 million or so in expenses are drawing down fund balances in both Normandy and Riverview Gardens.
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Both the House and the Senate have passed bills changing the transfer law, but the differences had to be worked out in a committee before the bill could be sent to the governor. Division and arguments marred a joint House-Senate conference committee hearing that spanned parts of Monday and Tuesday aimed at reaching consensus.
After about eight hours of debate, lawmakers developed a cohesive bill. Legislators have until 6 p.m. Friday to send the measure to Nixon’s desk.
The conference committee faced two key issues: whether to require a public vote on a private, nonreligious school transfer option; and how to set tuition rates for transfer students.
Under the bill backed by the committee, students must attend an unaccredited school in an unaccredited district for a semester before transferring. If they meet this requirement, they must transfer to an accredited building within their district until all the slots are full. Then, the students still wanting to transfer could go to an accredited district or a charter school.
Students in unaccredited schools in the city of St. Louis, St. Louis County and adjoining counties and Jackson County would have another option: With local voter approval, they could transfer to a private, nonreligious school. Local tax revenue would pay for the tuition.
However, the committee added a safeguard: If local voters fail to approve the private school transfer option and the district remains unaccredited for three years, students could move to private, nonreligious schools even without voter approval.
The Senate version of the transfer bill did not include a local vote, but the House version did.
Sen. Ed Emery, R-Lamar, said the Legislature should not require a vote for the private school option if it didn’t for the others. “We’re acting like they’re taking the money and buying one thing here and another thing there,” Emery said, adding that the money would go to education regardless.
However, Rep. Vicki Englund, D-south St. Louis County, felt the local vote was necessary to maintain the trust of taxpayers.
“When we raise that money in that fashion, we are telling taxpayers, ‘Entrust us with those dollars so we can give kids a good education,’” Englund said. “If we were then to say, ‘We’re going to send that (money) to private schools without you having any input in it,’ it would erode the confidence we built up in the taxpayers.”
Nixon argued that allowing a private school option would “open the floodgates for even more voucher schemes down the road.” But the governor did not threaten to veto the bill if that option remains in it.
Under the measure, districts where transfer students reside may provide transportation to these students, but it’s not required.
Rep. Rick Stream, R-Kirkwood, objected to that provision because many families in high poverty areas could not afford to drive students to and from a better school district. “This would seriously curtail the number of students transferring,” Stream said.
Transfer student tuition costs would be determined by the local school board of the receiving district. However, if they choose to charge 70 percent or less of the sending district’s tuition, transfer students’ test scores would not be counted for 5 years, and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education would consider that decision a factor when deciding whether to name the school accredited with distinction.
The bill is SB493.
Alex Stuckey covers Missouri politics and state government for the Post-Dispatch. Follow her on Twitter at @alexdstuckey.
