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Supporters of SB493 blast State Board of Education Normandy action

SAINT LOUIS, Mo. — Lawmakers and lobbyists that most strongly supported the sweeping changes in the student transfer law now bound for a gubernatorial veto blasted the Missouri State Board of Education’s decision earlier this week to dissolve Normandy School District and revoke accreditation status.

On Monday, the state school board moved to eliminate the Normandy School District and, as of July 1, replace it with the “Normandy School Collaborative.” The board also placed newer, tighter rules on transfer eligibility and tuition costs for transferring students.

Sen. Eric Schmitt
Sen. Eric Schmitt

As of Monday, districts receiving students transferring out of Normandy will have to accept a set tuition rate of $7,200 per pupil. State Senators Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, and Eric Schmitt, R-Kirkwood, both blasted the decision. Schmitt and Chappelle-Nadal were part of a small group of senators that worked through most of the session to craft SB 493.

Schmitt says that with Nixon’s promised veto of the bill, students in the St. Louis area are “back to square one.”

“[SB 493] dealt with all kinds of things,” Schmitt said. “It dealt with tuition by allowing the local people to decide what to charge, it dealt with keeping kids in accredited buildings to lower the number of transfers, it provided options. Now, we have no clarity or certainty on those issues.”

Nixon promised to veto the bill a few weeks ago over a provision allowing unaccredited districts to send students to private, non-sectarian schools within their district if public options are limited. Nixon said he wouldn’t sign any bill funneling public funds into private schools. Supporters of the bill say the private option is so narrowly drawn it would only apply to about 3 schools in the state.

New state board policies on Normandy are likely to be felt by local students. Any Normandy student that resided in the district last year but did not use the transfer program is likely going to be unable to transfer. Chappelle-Nadal called the board’s decision to revoke unaccredited status “practically criminal.”

“They are still the same school, but they just aren’t going to call it unaccredited,” Chappelle-Nadal said. “And now, suddenly, they aren’t technically unaccredited, so they don’t fall into the transfer law, but why not? It’s still a district that is failing.”

Kate Casas, State Director for Children’s Education Council of Missouri — a group supporting private options for public school students — said Normandy’s rejection of accreditation status flies in the face of 5 years of work.

“The State Board just spent 5 years on the new evaluations for our schools, the MSIP V, and now, after all that work and all this to do about how we are holding schools accountable, that same Board is just going to let Normandy ignore it,” Casas said.

Normandy will no longer fall under the “unaccredited” designation drawn in the Outstanding Schools Act, meaning its students will not be eligible to transfer unless they utilized last year’s transfer system. However, the way the new policy is written appears to be overly broad.

Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal
Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal

If Normandy were to accept unaccredited status, a student who was too young to attend Normandy school’s in 2013-2014 would be technical ineligible to begin transferring in 2014-2015, thanks to the broad language used in the new rules. It also means a student who lived in Normandy but attended private school to avoid the failing public facilities will never have the option of applying to Normandy and then transferring to a better public school.

“It’s obviously an oversight,” Chappelle-Nadal said. “We’ve been working on this for a year because it’s complicated and there is a lot of difficulty on this issue. They are just doing this fly-by-night and they screwed up with language like that.”

Chappelle-Nadal, perhaps the most vocal supporter of SB 493, said Nixon has “utterly failed” to engage lawmakers or present an alternative education plan. The University City Democrat told The Missouri Times that she did have the support of at least one other prominent Democrat: Attorney General Chris Koster.

According to Chappelle-Nadal, Koster told her earlier this month at the annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner that he liked most of the bill, and that it was his preference that Nixon sign it into law. Koster’s office did not respond to requests to confirm or deny Chappelle-Nadal’s account of the conversation.

Schmitt says that the real problem is that the “legislature has acted,” only to be rebuked by Nixon without the offer of an alternative. Schmitt also said that while he sympathized that the State Board was in a “difficult position,” he felt that the legislature was the appropriate place for policy to be written for failing districts.

“We wrote a bill not for a few thousand kids, but for the state,” Schmitt said. “We had 70 percent of the legislature on board with a huge, massive change to our transfers. And to have that reject and have no alternative or no other ideas brought forward, it’s just so disappointing after the work we put into it.”

Observers on both sides of the debate are eyeing St. Louis Public Schools with concern. The new MSIP V program could push the struggling region’s schools back into unaccredited status as soon as next fall, effectively creating an educational refugee crisis with more than 10,000 students eligible to transfer to various St. Louis County schools.

Without SB 493 or other legislation, schools are not in a position to turn away a single student.

Such a crisis would likely impact rural schools as well. When urban districts feel the financial strain of losing students and paying for their out-of-district transportation, they go to the state for support. When Normandy was awarded a supplemental budget earlier this year, the money came from funds dedicated to the foundation formula, which heavily funds rural schools.

“The more of that foundation money you’re spending in Normandy or St. Louis, the less of it is in the pot for those rural schools that use those dollars a lot more,” Casas said.

“I’m not sure what avenue is available to people at this point,” Schmitt said. “We’ve acted as lawmakers as best we can. We’ve shown what our plan is, and we want a solution that is going to benefit these kids. Unfortunately, there’s been a serious lack of leadership or even participation on the Governor’s part.”