The deadline to fill out applications for students to transfer out of the troubled Normandy and Riverview Gardens school districts has now passed. Parents who missed the deadline are being sent away at school district doors.
Outside Riverview Gardens' family resource center in Bellefontaine Neighbors, Latonya Dethrow walked away with tears in her eyes as she clutched the paperwork needed to transfer her daughters, 14 and 16, to higher performing public schools.
Dethrow works from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. She had taken the day off to transfer her children. The district's website states that applications would be accepted until 3 p.m.
"I asked, 'Are my kids basically stuck in Riverview then?'" she said after being turned away. "I'm really upset right now.”
Today was the final day for students in the unaccredited Normandy and Riverview Gardens to fill out transfer applications if they wish to attend higher performing public schools under a Missouri Supreme Court ruling.
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One women yelled angrily at an officer at the door, and a district official who said the transfer registration could not begin for her 8-year-old son.
"Where is my son supposed to go?" she said.
More than 2,200 students have applied to transfer, Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis, an umbrella organization coordinating the transfer process. Staff with the organization are preparing to get the enrollments underway. If the number of students applying to any one district exceeds space available, a lottery will be held at the organization's offices in west St. Louis County. Parents should receive a phone call Friday as to where their children will attend school this fall.
As of this afternoon, the two school districts that Riverview Gardens has selected for bus transportation will be taking more students than previously announced. Mehlville schools have room for around 200 students, and Kirkwood schools may be taking closer to 175, according to school district and Cooperating School Districts sources. And Francis Howell schools appear to have enough room for every Normandy student trying to transfer there.
According to numbers released Wednesday, 2,256 students have applied to leave both districts – 1,029 from Normandy and 1,227 from Riverview -- at a combined estimated cost of $30.2 million.
At Riverview Gardens, a district spokeswoman the process had to end, according to the guidelines set by the state.
"For those parents (who were turned away), we understand their frustration," Melanie Powell-Robinson said.
Normandy Superintendent Ty McNichols plans to hold a press conference about the school transfer situation later this afternoon.
