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Press release: Funding Assistance for Missouri’s Struggling School Districts

NEWS Missouri General Assembly

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

May 8, 2014

 

              CONTACT: Rep. Rick Stream

573-751-4069 

 

 

   
     

 

Budget Chairman Rick Stream Highlights

Funding Assistance for Missouri’s Struggling School Districts

 

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – As the Missouri General Assembly gave the final stamp of approval to a state operating budget that takes K-12 education funding to record levels, House Budget Chairman Rick Stream highlighted the legislature’s commitment to providing financial support to the state’s struggling districts.

 

Stream noted that the Fiscal Year 2015 state operating budget includes more than $13 million in funding for programs that will improve the educational experience for young people in the state’s three unaccredited and a few provisionally accredited districts. Stream said the figure includes $750,000 for intra-district transportation; $3.5 million for additional reading instruction for students; $400,000 for math and science and tutoring; and more than $4 million for a preschool program. Stream said that another $3 million is included in the budget for the Teach for America Program that works to teach children and effect change in under-resourced school districts.

 

“This budget represents a significant investment in our struggling districts that puts an emphasis on ensuring students have better access to the resources they need to achieve academically,” said Stream, R-Kirkwood. “I’m proud that my colleagues came together to address this problem in a fiscally responsible manner. When combined with the student transfer legislation we hope to pass, it will put our unaccredited districts on a much better path toward providing a quality education for our children.”

 

Stream also noted that a supplemental budget bill approved by the legislature provides another $2 million to prevent the struggling Normandy School District from going bankrupt.

 

The Fiscal Year 2015 state operating budget bills now go to the governor for his signature. With his signature they will take effect July 1 of this year.

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