New rules from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will reduce the number of children eligible to leave the Riverview Gardens School District for better schools this fall, potentially giving the troubled system some financial relief.
Guidance to area districts released Thursday says that new students wishing to transfer out of the unaccredited north St. Louis County district this fall must have attended Riverview Gardens schools for at least one semester in the 2013-14 school year. This does not affect current transfer students — but about a third of 157 children who applied to transfer this fall for the first time.
For those students who do transfer, the department is asking area school districts to charge Riverview Gardens about $7,200 per student in annual tuition — much less than most have been charging.
The guidance reflects many of the same rules that were put in place Monday by the Missouri Board of Education for the reconstituted Normandy school system, a 3,000-student district that will fall under state control July 1.
People are also reading…
Restarting Normandy allowed the Missouri Board of Education to take steps to get the district out from under the transfer law by erasing its accreditation status. In the new Normandy Schools Collaborative, no new transfer applications will be accepted. And of the children who transferred to other schools last year, only those who’d previously attended Normandy schools will be allowed to stay.
The 2013 Missouri Supreme Court ruling upholding the school transfer law has drained the budgets of Riverview Gardens and Normandy, the two unaccredited school systems in the area. Under that law, a collective 2,200 children transferred into higher performing districts this past year.
The resulting $1.5 million or so in monthly tuition and transportation expenses forced both to make cuts. Normandy closed a school and laid off about 100 staff, mostly teachers. State funds kept it solvent through the end of the school year.
A larger savings account has allowed the 4,000-student Riverview Gardens to remain financially stable. But the district could face bankruptcy next spring if tuition and transfer numbers aren’t curtailed.
The guidance potentially could save Riverview Gardens about $5 million and protect it from Normandy’s fate. In a letter to superintendents, Ron Lankford, deputy education commissioner, said their acceptance of the guidelines “will keep that district from being in the identical position one year from now.”
A spokeswoman from the Riverview Gardens said district staff was reviewing the guidelines.
The recommendations are not binding. It will be at the discretion of area school boards whether to knock down per-student tuition bills, which ranged from a high of $20,768 a year in Clayton to a low of $7,927 in Mehlville.
“Who knows whether the boards will follow through,” said Don Senti, executive director of EducationPlus, which coordinated the transfer program last year.
Lankford asked receiving districts to notify the education department by June 30 if they’ll be rejecting the guidance.
The decision to close the door to new Riverview Gardens transfer students who haven’t attended school there reflects language in a bill passed by the Legislature. Gov. Jay Nixon has said he will veto the measure.
At a School Board meeting Thursday night in Francis Howell, a Crestwood resident and retired teacher asked the board to allow the 350 or so Normandy students who transferred there this year to return.
“I thought we had something good here and now that was squashed Monday in Jeff City,” Bob Miller said. “I just kinda hope that maybe … you’ll accept these kids. Maybe we could forget about money.”
The board had no discussion or vote in open session on whether it would allow the students to return under the new tuition rate, but the board did approve a preliminary budget for the 2014-15 school year without factoring in about $3.4 million in revenue it brought in from Normandy this year. Administrators said that because of uncertainty about the program and Normandy on the brink of bankruptcy when planning began for the budget, the decision was made to not include any revenue or expense in the budget for the coming school year related to transfers.
Jessica Bock of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
