School transfer bill sent to Gov. Nixon's desk

In fact, Rep. Clem Smith, D-St. Louis, said the bill does little more than push a voucher agenda on the backs of students in the Normandy and Riverview Gardens school districts.

“This bill does not fix the transfers,” Smith, who is African-American, said on the House floor Thursday. “It’s an experiment on kids that look like me.”

Under the measure, students who have attended an unaccredited school in an unaccredited district for at least one semester may transfer to an accredited school within their district. Once those slots are full, they can transfer to an accredited school in an accredited district in the same or adjoining county or a charter school in their district. In St. Louis, St. Louis County and adjacent counties and Jackson County, another option is available: a private, nonreligious school within the boundaries of their district, if approved by voters in the sending district.

Local tax revenue would pay for the private school transfers. 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.

This provision has caused much trepidation in both chambers and in the governor’s office. Nixon has all but threatened a veto because of this provision, saying he “draws the line” at sending public money to private schools.

The measure also does not require sending districts to pay transportation costs for transfer students, which worries some legislators. Many students in unaccredited districts rely on bus transportation to a higher-quality school. Without that, the number of students transferring could be seriously reduced.

“For the poorest kids in unaccredited districts, there is no clear fix to cover transportation to receiving districts,” Rep. Jeff Grisamore, R-Lee’s Summit, said.

Holly Adams, whose daughters transferred from Riverview Gardens to Mehlville schools, said they would not have been able to do so without the bus transportation.

“You have to do what you have to do for a good education,” she said. “But we haven’t heard anything about the buses for next year, and I’m not sure how I’ll get them to and from.”

Legislators have searched all session for a fix to the transfer law, upheld by the Missouri Supreme Court last summer, which 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 pay for tuition and transportation. Those $15 million or so in expenses are drawing down fund balances in both Normandy and Riverview Gardens.

With a vote of 89-66, the Missouri House sent an attempt at a fix to the governor Thursday. The Senate passed the bill 28-3 Wednesday. The Senate’s vote was strong enough to overturn a veto. But the House was 20 votes short of a potential override.

Some lawmakers urged the governor to sign the new bill.

“This education bill is, without question, the single most important piece of legislation to be addressed by the General Assembly this session,” Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis, said at a news conference Wednesday.

Others disagreed.

“If this (private, nonreligious provision) was so good … why isn’t it being applied to the whole state?” Smith questioned.

Smith favored a provision that would allow school district leaders to use their own reformation plan for the troubled north St. Louis County school system, but his provision was removed during the joint House-Senate conference committee on the bill.

Another point of contention is the tuition costs for transfer students.

These costs would be determined by the local school board of the receiving district. If they choose to charge less than 90 percent of their actual rate, 10 percent of the receiving district’s rate could be paid from a state fund set up for supplemental tuition, if money is appropriated into the fund. If they choose to charge 70 percent or less of the sending district’s tuition, transfer students’ test scores would not be counted for five 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.

Rep. Michael Butler, D-St. Louis, said in a news release that the plan would do little to prevent a bankruptcy scare like what’s happening at Normandy.

“The bill language that is being sent to Gov. Nixon allows the Francis Howell School District and other receiving districts to choose how much they charge unaccredited districts like Normandy,” Butler said.

The Missouri NAACP announced its opposition this week to both the private school option and the portion of the tuition rates that allows transfer students’ test scores to not be counted for five years.

“Allowing transfer students to go to private, nonreligious schools with public education dollars is not a fix, it’s a trampling of the public education demanded by our state constitution,” Mary Ratliff, Missouri NAACP president, said in a news release.

Rep. Vicki Englund, D-south St. Louis County, agrees with parts of the bill but opposes the private school transfer option. She implored Nixon to either sign the bill or veto it quickly.

“Get it over with, get it done, because then we need to call a special session to fix it,” Englund said. “Because if we are truly about solving these problems, we need to come up here and do it.”

The bill is SB493.