Two organizations closely monitoring the situation involving children trying to leave the failing Normandy and Riverview Gardens school districts are becoming increasingly concerned that some area school officials may seek to circumvent the law.
Both the St. Louis NAACP and the Children’s Education Alliance — organizations that don’t normally align on political issues — are weighing legal options if children from Normandy and Riverview Gardens school districts are prevented from transferring to better-performing schools as allowed by state statute.
Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis NAACP, sent a letter Friday to attorneys with the organization’s Legal Defense Fund alerting them that some area superintendents appear to be ready to turn away Normandy and Riverview Gardens children for space reasons, rather than enroll every student who applies, as directed last month by a Missouri Supreme Court ruling.
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In the letter, Pruitt noted hostility he said he witnessed at the town hall meeting Thursday in the Francis Howell School District in St. Charles County, the district that Normandy district officials have designated for busing for their students who want to transfer.
Some parents at the meeting urged the Francis Howell school superintendent to ignore the high court ruling, and to lower class size numbers for the sole purpose of keeping students from both districts out. The student population attending Riverview Gardens and Normandy schools is overwhelmingly African-American. Most students in Francis Howell schools are white.
The situation hasn’t reached crisis stage, Pruitt said in an interview. But, “It is spinning that way very quickly.”
The law says students in unaccredited school districts may transfer to better schools in the same or adjoining counties, with their home district picking up tuition and transportation costs. Class size policies are one way districts are trying to control how many students they enroll based on the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education guidelines issued after the state Supreme Court decision.
State education officials say the guidelines are necessary for school districts to proceed with the transfers, while maintaining control over class size and resources.
After Thursday’s meeting in the Francis Howell district, Pruitt is concerned the guidelines will be misused.
“The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has allowed districts to set policies on class sizes, resulting in what I would term as a ‘musical chair doctrine’ providing for a means to further block transfer students from attending from enrolling,” Pruitt wrote in his letter.
Pruitt and staff at the Children’s Education Alliance, a school-choice advocacy group in St. Louis, say they’re equally concerned about how Normandy and Riverview Gardens officials have applied the state’s guidance to districts on transportation. The education department has advised unaccredited school systems to provide transportation to one area school district, and a second when the first becomes full, rather than any school district students wish to transfer to.
Both Normandy and Riverview Gardens officials chose districts with schools more than 20 miles from their schools.
“That is of great concern to us,” said Kate Casas, state director for the alliance, which has backing from billionaire investor Rex Sinquefield. “We think there was a pretty calculated move to choose those two districts.”
Casas stopped short of threatening legal action.
In 2012, the alliance connected a group of firefighters in St. Louis with an attorney so they could sue four suburban school districts for not enrolling their children under the state’s school transfer statute. St. Louis Public Schools was unaccredited at the time. The school district regained provisional accreditation last fall, making the case moot.
If children are turned away, “We are certainly leaving that open as an option,” Casas said of facilitating another lawsuit.
One week into the transfer process, 374 children in the Normandy district and 295 in the Riverview Gardens district have applied to transfer to other schools, according to figures released Friday by Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis.
Of those numbers, 168 of the Normandy students have applied for the Francis Howell district. If enrolled, they would make up less than 1 percent of that school system’s 17,000-student population.
And 136 students in Riverview Gardens schools have applied for Mehlville schools, where buses will be sent. If they enroll, they’d make up 1.6 percent of the district’s 10,600-student population.
Despite hundreds of phone inquiries from parents to other St. Louis County school districts, such as Ritenour, Hazelwood and Ferguson-Florissant, those have no more than a few dozen applications so far.
“There is plenty of room for all these kids to transfer,” said Don Senti, executive director of Cooperating School Districts.
Even a low number of transfers would translate into big expenses for the Riverview and Normandy districts, where budgets have been hit hard from a continued drop in property values. With average tuition costs of $12,000, Normandy would face tuition expenses of nearly $4.5 million if all 374 students who’ve applied to transfer actually do. Riverview Gardens would be out $3.5 million.
“The question is whether Riverview and Normandy can afford to pay the bill,” Senti said.
