JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Legislators hoping to put a bill on Gov. Jay Nixon’s desk changing how the state deals with unaccredited districts will need to walk a tightrope between competing interests during several conference committee hearings this week.
Rep. David Wood, a Republican, is carrying this year’s bill, which supporters hope will be the grand compromise necessary to survive both legislative chambers and avoid the fate of last year’s student transfer bill: a veto.
“In the House it’s more geographical,” said Sen. David Pearce, a Republican who sits on the conference committee. “On the Senate side it’s about keeping those who are more education reform happy while still being able to pass the bill.”
On Wood’s side of the building, much of the tug-of-war is between rural and urban legislators eyeing the impact of a provision of the bill that would accredit schools by individual building, rather than by district. In the Senate language, any student in an unaccredited building — regardless of district-wide accreditation status — is eligible to potentially transfer out of their district. In House language, both the building and the district in question must lack accreditation before students may transfer.
“When you hit some of these districts, that’s just not a possibility,” Wood said. “And a lot of these rural representatives are saying that they don’t mind what we do in terms of St. Louis transfers, but their schools do really well.”
In some parts of the state, there are huge distances between districts, and transfers become far more time consuming and costly. House members, particularly in rural districts, appear locked into their version of the building-accreditation language. A proposed compromise limiting transfer eligibility in an unaccredited building to urban and metropolitan areas is floating, but representatives from Kansas City Public Schools are objecting.
“There’s been a lot of kickback,” Wood said. “[KCPS] position is that they’ve worked really, really hard to become provisionally accredited, they have scores on the climb, and the districts around them that would receive those transfers felt like they had worked really closely with them to get them on the right track and they aren’t happy about it either.”
And that’s just one debate. In the Senate, and not unheard of in the House, is a second debate between education “reformers” and “traditionalists.” Sen. Ed Emery, who sits on the conference committee, is flatly opposed to any bill that doesn’t feature at least some expansion of charter schools in Missouri, a provision that Wood says will increase opposition from “traditionalists” in the House.
Lawmakers also have to reconcile whether or not there should be a cap placed on the tuition a receiving district can charge a sending district. Some members, like Sen. Eric Schmitt, are opposed to capping tuition, and sources say a tuition compromise is quickly coming together. Members supporting a cap, like those representing unaccredited districts, say caps will lose their vote, a position that may or may not remain tenable, depending on the final language of the bill.
The matter becomes more complex as senate members on the conference committee are largely expected to vote as a bloc. Senators involved in the education debate have informally designated individual members — Schmitt on tuition, Emery on charter schools — to oversee negotiations on their issues to craft language they can support. If each senator is satisfied, most of the conferee’s votes will be cast in singular support.
The lawmakers in the trenches on the bill say the perfect balance must be struck. Too much of the Senate position will likely knock off enough votes in the House to fail overriding a possible veto, while too much House language is a simple non-starter in the Senate.
Wood told The Missouri Times he believes the committee can have a conference report ready by the end of the week, and, in an ideal scenario, be able to send a bill to Nixon sometime next week. The conference committee will likely meet every day this week until the report is finalized and signed.
HB 42 has it’s next conference committee hearing scheduled for this evening.
Collin Reischman was the Managing Editor for The Missouri Times, and a graduate of Webster University with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism.
