Mid-Missouri lawmakers: School transfers debate important for entire state

The Missouri Senate could give its final approval this week to a bill defining how public school districts should handle the transfers of students from unaccredited schools or districts to better ones.

The House last week passed its version of the bill and sent it to the Senate.

The current transfer law allows students in failing districts to switch to schools in other districts - at the expense of their home district, which has meant financial hardships for some schools when students flock elsewhere.

At the heart of this year's proposals is a provision that would allow students to, instead, move to better-performing buildings within their own district.

Lawmakers say that would keep money within a school district, prevent costly expenses for busing students to other classes and keep students close to home.

Then, if there's no space for students to transfer to buildings within their home district - or there are no accredited schools in the district - both the House and Senate bills give students expanded options to transfer to charter and virtual schools.

However, most of the debate in both chambers focused on problems in the St. Louis area, with some discussion of Kansas City area issues.

Mid-Missouri senators said last week that out-of-state residents shouldn't dismiss the issue as just a metropolitan area problem.

"It could happen to any district - whether you want it to, or not - anywhere in Missouri," Sen. Mike Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, told the News Tribune. "We've got to make sure that the students have an opportunity that all of the kids before them had, so they can succeed in this country."

Retired teacher and Sen. Jeanie Riddle, R-Mokane, added: "We have thousands of Missouri students in failing schools and unaccredited schools.

"And we have to find a solution to help those students to learn what they need to learn so that they can either go on to further education or they can get a job - and have a promise for tomorrow.

"To let these students continually slip through the cracks, I feel, is a crime."

Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, doesn't know of any Mid-Missouri districts facing an accreditation problem.

However, he said, "We have a lot of rural districts around the state that are on the cusp of being in that same position.

"So, even though, in this particular instance, because we've looked at Normandy and some of the schools in the St. Louis area ... it could just as easily, and probably will be, an issue in other parts of the state, including Mid-Missouri."

Lawmakers dealt with the issue last year, too - but Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed it because one of the options for student transfers was to private, non-sectarian schools.

Since at least 1875, the Missouri Constitution has prohibited any "appropriation or pay from any public fund whatever, anything in aid of any religious creed, church or sectarian purpose, or to help to support or sustain any private or public school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other institution of learning controlled by any religious creed, church or sectarian denomination whatever."

Last year's law did not direct any aid to any parochial school.

However, in his veto message, Nixon said last year's law violated another section of the Constitution, that says: "The general assembly shall have no power to grant public money or property, or lend or authorize the lending of public credit, to any private person, association or corporation, excepting aid in public calamity."

Sen. David Pearce, R-Warrensburg, chairs the Senate's Education Committee and handled the Senate's version during the debate.

He said Nixon and his staff met with legislative leaders in December - before this year's legislative session began - "and the governor talked about what he would like in a bill and what he would not like in a bill. He did not like - the number one thing that he wanted out of the bill this year was the private, non-sectarian (schools).

"If we would take that out, then he would entertain an expansion of charter schools and virtual schools - and that's exactly what we've done in this bill. We've taken out the private, non-sectarian and, I think, we've had a very reasonable expansion of charters schools and virtual schools."

Pearce added the bill is important to all Missouri students, because "We can't lose another generation (to failing schools), and we just can't turn our backs on students who drop out of school, or who have schools that are not functioning, students who don't have options."