Last month, the St. Louis Public Schools Board of Education voted to close six schools due to declining enrollment numbers.
When Superintendent of Schools Kelvin Adams called for the schools to be closed, he asserted that this plan should come with establishing a city-wide plan for what the education system will look like going forward. No such plan exists, meaning that according to SLPS Board Chair Dorothy Rohde-Collins, “a lot of services … are duplicated.”
“All the decisions about school openings are being made in isolation, and that’s coming at a detriment to kids, because there isn’t a cohesive plan for where those schools are going to be located, or how to make sure that children in every neighborhood have access to schools,” Rohde-Collins said.
The St. Louis metropolitan area’s system of dozens of municipalities, each with their own municipal services, leads to certain services being replicated. This dynamic of redundant services is replicated in SLPS, where the 103 district schools and charter schools in St. Louis are not working under any unified plan means that, according to Rohde-Collins, special education, transit and food systems for different schools are working in a redundant capacity.
The district operates 110 schools, serving 49,939 children. In 2007 there were fewer schools — 103—serving a student population that was higher by over 10,000.
At Tuesday night’s board of education meeting, a resolution calling for a moratorium on the construction of new schools passed unanimously, with a 7-0 vote. Some Charter school advocates in St. Louis, however, see this move as a strike against the development of the school-choice movement.
Charter schools in St. Louis have grown to encompass 40 percent of the student population of the St. Louis Public Schools, making the St. Louis education system one of the most heavily charter-based in the country.
Tuesday’s resolution declared that a moratorium on new school construction was necessary because “the local, state, and federal support for school choice programs continues to create a system of schools and programs that fight over a declining population of children.”
Board of Aldermen to consider
Next, the resolution will be delivered to the St. Louis Board of Aldermen.
Some charter school advocates have opposed the measure. A statement from the Missouri Charter Public School Association stated that the moratorium “isn’t the solution.”
Further, they suggested that, “When it comes to education, research shows that families don’t leave cities because there are too many options, they leave because of a lack of quality options. If education improves, enrollments increase, benefiting families and the entire St. Louis community as a whole.”
While the moratorium passed in St. Louis, a bill that could have major implications for what education in St. Louis looks like in the coming years is in committee in the Missouri House and Senate.
The bill, HB 137 in its House iteration, and SB 218 in the Senate, was developed by the same charter school advocates who opposed the new-schools moratorium. This bill would change the way funding is assigned to charter schools, meaning that a greater percentage of the overall SLPS budget would go to these schools, compared to the district schools.
Charter schools are funded based on property values as they were in 2005, rather than based on current property values as district schools are. This leads to charter schools being funded less per student than district schools, though that funding is supplemented to varying degrees by philanthropic money.
“As time has gone on, property values have increased, which is a good thing, but the portion of property tax dollars that the charter schools receive is locked in 2005,” Doug Thaman of the Missouri Charter Public School Association, said. “It has not held true as we have gotten more and more years away.”
Though this bill would mean less money goes to district schools, Thaman said, “public tax dollars are not the possession of an institution. They are tax dollars that belong to the taxpayer, to the family. And so, if the family is making a choice to place their child in a charter public school, then those tax dollars should go to that charter public school.
“If they’re making the choice to place their child in a St. Louis Public School, a district school, then their tax dollars should go to the St. Louis Public School District.”
Angie Banks, budget director for SLPS, said at Tuesday’s board meeting that, if the proposed charter funding legislation is successful, it could have a “significant impact” on the district’s budget, which is currently in a relatively stable place due to the school consolidation measure passed last month.
A unified plan
Some signs of a unified plan between charter and district schools are present. As announced Feb. 8, SLPS has agreed with some charter leaders to form the “St. Louis Schools Collaborative.”
Candice Carter-Oliver, CEO of Confluence Academies and co-chair of the collaborative, said, “The best way to get ahead of these challenges is to work together, combine our experience, our thinking and, where appropriate, our resources. This approach will better address the problems of today and plan for the future.”
The Collaborative said in a news release that they are beginning an 18-month process of developing a plan to address resource distribution in a school system that was designed to accommodate many thousands more students than it currently serves.
As Rohde-Collins put it, this all comes down to St. Louis not having a plan for what we want education to look like.
“Ultimately, St. Louis has to decide what we believe about education — what purpose we want it to serve in our city and in our community. Because the way that we’re going, without an overarching plan we all commit to, we run the risk of waking up in five years, in 10 years, with an education system we don’t recognize.”