The proverbial camel of school reform already has its nose poked under the tent of public education in Missouri. The school transfer law passed by the Missouri Legislature in 1993, and upheld by the Missouri Supreme Court in 2013, has left the Normandy School District on the brink of bankruptcy, which threatens to start a domino cascade of lapsing school districts. To save Normandy Schools – and, many fear, ultimately, the state’s public education system – the legislature must revise the 1993 school transfer law. Now.
Missouri Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro, among others, has been pushing for a reduction in tuition that unaccredited districts such as Normandy are mandated to pay to accredited districts that accept their students as transfers. If a “tuition fix,” as it has been called, is not passed this session, then at the end of June the Normandy district will lapse. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) would be faced with more than 4,500 students – many of them under-performing – with no school district. DESE officials have looked at the data that result when these students are sent to neighboring school districts, which are already struggling, and it looks bleak. This, in fact, is the fate that befell Normandy when the Wellston Public School District lapsed and its students were sent to Normandy Schools. If Normandy now fails and its students are sent to, say, St. Louis Public Schools, “at some point you reach the end of that game,” Nicastro told The American.
For this reason, elected officials who represent Normandy – particularly, state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal and state Rep. Clem Smith – are bargaining with the Republican leadership in the legislature to pass a tuition fix. The looming crisis in Normandy is what put the nose of school reform under the tent, and forced Chappelle-Nadal – a University City school board member and longtime critic of school reformers like Rex Sinquefield – to the bargaining table. Chappelle-Nadal has been widely quoted as saying there will be no education bill passed this session without a concession to school reformers. This is not her personal mandate, but rather her assessment of the political reality. Nicastro and Smith, among others, share her assessment. Chappelle-Nadal was taken to task in a Post-Dispatch editorial, where she claims she was quoted out of context. Further, she said, a pious defense of the absolute virtue of public education, such as the Post offered, is beside the point in the political reality of the Missouri Legislature where she must pass a bill. Now.
Senate Bill 493 offers a “tuition fix” by capping transfer tuition reimbursement at 70 percent. It also allows students who live in unaccredited school districts to transfer to an accredited non-sectarian private school in the same district, with tuition for the students paid out of the district’s locally generated funds. While this provision does not amount to a “tuition voucher” per se, without question it would move the camel’s nose deeper into the tent and would be celebrated as a significant victory by school reformers.
Gov. Jay Nixon has said he would veto an education bill that allows for tax relief for families that send their students to private schools. Chappelle-Nadal is already gearing up for that veto override – and talking tough. She remembers Nixon’s filing to end desegregation in St. Louis, for which Nixon was punished politically. “If we pass a bill that saves Normandy Schools and the governor vetoes it,” Chappelle-Nadal said, “that will be the second time he turned his back on black children.”
In chastising Chappelle-Nadal, the Post struck a high-minded note that ignores political reality. The Post said the local private option in SB 493 “has nothing to do with helping fix the transfer situation” and should be considered separately. That is true logically, but beside the point politically. In reality, school reformers within the Republican Party have seized an advantage created by the Normandy crisis to combine the two provisions. We might wish for a more fair-minded politics, but wishing will not save the Normandy School District. Only bargaining with Republicans can do that. And while Chappelle-Nadal’s strategy does allow more of the camel’s nose into the tent, it may be the only way to save the school district in its present form.
