We are not sure why Missouri Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro has been speaking to the Kansas City Star through surrogates (a spokesman and a deputy commissioner) on the critical subject of the state’s contentious school transfer law for students in unaccredited school districts. But at least Ron Lankford, Missouri’s deputy education commissioner for financial and administrative services, is talking some sense on her behalf.
“The question is, ‘How do we assure each student’s right to a quality education?’” Lankford told the Star. “If choice continues to be a part of the solution, how do we make it possible without forcing a district into bankruptcy?”
Bankruptcy is an immediate, looming issue for an unaccredited St. Louis County school district hit hard by the new state law requiring unaccredited districts to pay tuition (and, in some cases, transportation) costs for their students who choose to attend school in an accredited district. Normandy is paying tuition rates to more than a dozen school districts ranging from $9,500 to $20,000. This will cost the district between $13 million and $15 million, or 30 percent of its budget, this school year. Nicastro tells the Missouri Legislature that the Normandy district needs $6.8 million in emergency funding to remain solvent.
Clearly, a law that drives school districts into bankruptcy is not the answer, unless the gradual destruction of public education is your goal. While transfer students have their own critical challenges, the plight of students in schools and districts that disappear out from under them is even more disorienting and disturbing. There has to be a better answer. Nicastro has not recommended eliminating the transfer law, and we believe that is a failure of leadership on her part. It is better to start over than try to patch up this destructive law
A group of superintendents from the western side of the state, who have been watching the situation in Normandy unfold with dread while they wait for a lawsuit concerning their districts to play out, has come up with a different answer. Naturally, school superintendents are going to be inclined toward preserving the integrity of school districts (and, therefore, the jobs of superintendents), but their suggestion that the state try to improve failing schools within troubled districts, rather than destroy failing districts, has merit.
“The transfer law may be good for some students, but it would leave the majority of the students in a low-performing district,” Center Superintendent Bob Bartman told the Star. “Our approach would be to do more interventions early on … and focus on schools that are not performing well.”
We believe Nicastro – and not a surrogate – needs to be heard about this matter, firmly and consistently. But Nicastro is not the only state official who is lurking in the shadows on this crucial issue. Jay Nixon is term-limited as Missouri governor, but he is not likely to walk away from public life when he leaves office. If Nixon aspires to elected national leadership, as we believe he does, then he needs to take leadership on the issue of public education in this state the way he took up the fight to stop Rex Sinquefield’s destructive tax policies (yet another dire threat to public education funding in Missouri). If Nixon leaves behind him in Missouri a tumbling domino trail of failing and disappearing school districts without fighting for their lives before he leaves office, then Missouri governor will be as high as Jay Nixon’s political star ever rises.
