On a misty Tuesday morning, new students – mostly incoming freshman and some Normandy transfers – filed into Francis Howell High School for “Transition Day.” Lauren Sullivan, one of the bubbly student mentors for the day, said she is looking forward to seeing the 45 new Normandy students walking in the halls.
“I’m a junior, so I’ve been with the same kids for two years,” she said. “I’m excited to meet new people.”
For a high school of about 1,950 students, 45 Normandy students will hardly overwhelm the school, said Principal Dave Wedlock. Although Francis Howell parents made national news with their irate comments about Normandy students being dangerous, Wedlock said those fears are not reflective of his students or staff.
“Eric Lee, our senior class president, has made an effort both privately and publically to reach out to the students and say, ‘We want you to enhance the culture at our school,’” Wedlock said. “And I’ve heard the same thing from our staff here.”
As of the Aug. 1 enrollment deadline, 143 high-school students living in the Normandy district had enrolled in one of Francis Howell’s three high schools. In total, 475 students living in the Normandy School District enrolled into Francis Howell schools, where Normandy will provide transportation for the transferring students.
This fall, the unaccredited Normandy and Riverview Gardens school districts will pay tuition and some transportation costs for 2,640 students to attend 22 other schools, according to numbers the Cooperating School Districts released Monday. The two districts’ costs are an estimated $35 million. That is enough to wipe out Normandy and Riverview financially by next year.
On Monday, Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro sent a letter to state legislators stating, “It appears that Normandy will not have enough resources to meet these obligations through this fiscal year; Riverview will likely get through this year, but not next.”
In June, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld a 1993 state law that gives students living in unaccredited school districts the option to transfer to neighboring districts – and the failing districts must pay for students’ tuition and transportation costs. For both Normandy and Riverview Gardens, about 25 percent of their student populations chose to transfer out of the districts.
But who will pay for the transferring students’ tuitions when Normandy and Riverview school districts run out of money? And what will happen to the students if the districts go bankrupt?
No one has those answers yet, said Sarah Potter, communications coordinator for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).
“The department will request appropriations from the General Assembly once we know when Normandy will run out of funds,” Potter said. “There is no guarantee that the legislature will cover the costs, though.”
Normandy Superintendent Ty McNichols said once the district has its final enrollment counts at the end of September, it will start making cuts to its $50 million budget. For McNichols, this is an opportunity for the district to justify working even faster to regain accreditation. But in the meantime, the district will be looking to the state legislature for financial support.
“I can’t predict if we are going to be bankrupt or not,” McNichols said. “If we end up at the worse possible scenario, I’m hoping the legislature would have made some decisions. If not else, we will have to pursue a potential legal approach to dealing with this.”
More potential lawsuits
Normandy and Riverview must also pay transportation costs to at least one school district. Normandy chose Francis Howell, and Riverview Gardens chose Mehlville and Kirkwood school districts.
The state law clearly states that Francis Howell, Mehlville and Kirkwood must accept those transferring students, said Kalila Jackson, an attorney partnering with the Children’s Education Alliance to address parents’ concerns.
Francis Howell, a district with 17,200 K-12 students, has accepted all 475 students who wanted to enroll in the district. However, Kirkwood, a district with about 5,300 students, said it could only take in 175 of the 263 students that applied to its district. And Mehlville, a district of 10,700 students, also refused to accept all of the 514 student transfer applications it received.
Several legal advocacy entities jumped to defend parents. On Friday, the ACLU of Eastern Missouri sent letters to Mehlville and Kirkwood superintendents saying their actions were unconstitutional.
“School districts cannot arbitrarily refuse to accept students, as Kirkwood and Mehlville have done,” said Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU-EM. “We are available to help people enforce the law and look forward to hearing from families who want to see this happen.”
The ACLU letter implied that they will take legal action if necessary, but no one wants to go through another lengthy legal battle, Jackson said.
“Litigation is a time consuming process,” Jackson said. “It’s best if you can come to a resolution early. Hopefully Mehlville and Kirkwood will get the message that we are concerned about their policies and reverse course.”
After the court ruling, DESE sent out guidelines to help school districts navigate the state law. In them, DESE suggested that school districts publish their class-size policy by Aug. 1, but the guidelines did not say that school districts could cap their enrollment.
Clayton School District was another district that limited enrollment. The district received 187 enrollment requests, but it only has 72 available spaces, said Clayton Superintendent Sharmon Wilkinson.
At Francis Howell, the new Normandy students are evenly spread throughout 18 district schools – adding 10 to 38 students in the elementary and middle schools. The high schools range between 44 and 54 new students.
Francis Howell High School’s front door overlooks miles of trees in the Weldon Spring conservation area, which begins right across the street. For the Normandy students who start classes there today, their new view is starkly different than the vista that students see from Normandy High School’s front gates – a 60-foot junkyard wall with a student-painted mural.
Normandy mother Rhonda Hamilton said she’s excited her children will have a change of scenery. On Tuesday, she dropped off her freshman daughter at Transition Day, and she has two other children transferring to the district.
“I heard people say, ‘We want don’t gangs out here,’” she said. “But we have gangs in everyone’s culture. We have different races of drug dealers. We have problems everywhere. I know if we work together, this thing can really work.”
