The issue of students transferring from unaccredited districts has generated so many questions and concerns that the Francis Howell School Board is considering hiring a staff member to deal with the response.
The position would be part time and work as needed to help answer questions from parents and the community, as well as assist in placing transfer students from Normandy.
It has been nearly three weeks since Francis Howell learned Normandy, in north St. Louis County, could potentially bus hundreds of students to the St. Charles County district. The decision by Normandy Superintendent Tyrone McNichols followed a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that said students from unaccredited districts, such as Normandy and Riverview Gardens, have the right to attend better performing schools at the expense of their home district. Since the announcement, Francis Howell has been flooded with phone calls, emails and more than 2,500 comments on its Facebook page. That’s also as many people as attended a town hall meeting last week, causing traffic jams along the way to Francis Howell Central High School.
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“I will tell you it’s taken our eye off the ball,” Francis Howell Superintendent Pam Sloan said. “It’s been a distraction from our regular work.”
The Francis Howell School Board will meet tonight to vote on the new student transfer administrator and several other policies related to the issue — including class sizes, tuition and a payment schedule.
• The class size policy under consideration sets averages not to exceed the desirable levels set by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education: 20 students for kindergarten through second grade; 22 for grades three and four; 25 for grades five and six; and 28 students for grades seven through 12 (in core subjects).
• Tuition for the 2013-14 school year for students who do not live in the district would be $11,034.
• For students from unaccredited districts such as Normandy and Riverview Gardens, Francis Howell would bill districts monthly at $1,103 for each student who attends at least one day a month. Tuition would be considered in default once payments lapse more than two months.
Lower class sizes means fewer spots for transfer students. Critics say the state’s transfer law makes no mention of turning away students based on space, but districts say they are following guidelines from state education officials. The state issued those guidelines shortly after the state Supreme Court ruling on June 11 and advised districts to set policies on class sizes. Those sizes — set between the state’s desirable and maximum levels — would then be used in determining space to enroll students from unaccredited districts.
If Francis Howell were to go with the maximum levels, that might mean five more spots per kindergarten classroom, for example.
The desirable levels are what Francis Howell has been working toward, and administrators are “just trying to maintain that direction,” Sloan said.
Even with the low class sizes, the district estimates it has about 600 spots for student transfers this year. But the number accepted depends on how many students apply by the Aug. 1 deadline and in which grades. To determine available space, administrators counted the number of seats in classes that were below desirable levels.
It still concerns Rebecca Totra, a parent of two children at Fairmount Elementary who spoke at the meeting last week in Cottleville and plans to attend tonight. She said both her son’s and daughter’s classes were at or above the class-size limits.
Totra said she’s not only worried about her own children but those from Normandy. If the tuition bankrupts the district, where will they go?
“This is too easy of a fix to actually be a fix at all. I think in the long term everyone is going to be hurt,” she said.
The new student transfer administrator would be paid out of tuition from unaccredited districts. Human Resource Officer Steven Griggs is proposing the board approve about $27,000 for the position. The new administrator would help district officials who have been trying to supply accurate information to parents and families, while also preparing for an influx of students.
“You might be answering the same question for the 10th time, but you want to get them an answer,” Griggs said.
Meanwhile, Mehlville Superintendent Eric Knost has said the district has little to no room for students from Riverview Gardens, the other unaccredited district in the area. Riverview Gardens leaders chose to bus students to Mehlville.
Knost said Wednesday that because of Riverview Gardens’ decision, he will now halt new requests from St. Louis students to attend Mehlville through the region’s voluntary transfer program. Districts no longer are required to participate in that program, which grew out of a desegregation agreement between St. Louis and county school districts decades ago.
David Glaser, chief executive officer of the Voluntary Interdistrict Choice Corp., said the state Supreme Court’s ruling will have no impact for 2013-14 on the voluntary program, and he hopes districts will continue to make spaces available in the future. Mehlville has the third-most students in the program, and its spaces for 37 new students this year already have been filled.
Mehlville’s overall enrollment has been almost flat recently. Francis Howell has lost about 4 percent of its students in the last five years after its enrollment boom in the 1990s, when the housing market exploded in St. Charles County. In 2008 the district had about 17,800 students. Last year it enrolled 17,000.
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| A school bus leaving Normandy High School | |
As of Monday, 459 students had requested to leave Normandy under the law. In Riverview Gardens there were 463. Of those requests, 196 want to go to Francis Howell, and 227 chose Mehlville.
That would mean Normandy and Riverview Gardens could each see expenses of more than $6 million for tuition and transportation for transferring students. The students who have applied are spread across all grade levels and include students from nonpublic schools — 25 in the Normandy district and 30 in Riverview Gardens. Two weeks remain for students to register to transfer.
