Education Week - September 25, 2013 - 12

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EDUCATION WEEK
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SEPTEMBER 25, 2013 www.edweek.org
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Missouri Transfer Ruling
Spurs Student Exoduses
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Supreme Court decision in June
affirmed that it was both constitutional
and feasible.
The ruling sent district and
state officials scrambling to prepare
school systems to receive
students transferring out of the
unaccredited Normandy and
Riverview Gardens districts, in
St. Louis County. Meanwhile, the
17,000-student Kansas City, Mo.,
district, which is also unaccredited,
is petitioning the state school
board to regain its accreditation
while awaiting a judge’s ruling in
a court case involving the same
transfer law.
The 20,000-student St. Louis
district, which was involved in
the initial court challenge to the
transfer law, is now provisionally
accredited.
The start of school in mid-August
was heralded as a success by
leaders of receiving and sending
districts alike after some 2,000
students switched districts without
major incident, despite having just
six weeks’ notice. But the ultimate
fate of the unaccredited districts,
and others in the Show-Me State
that could lose their accreditation
under a new system to be implemented
next year, is still unclear.
Avoiding Bankruptcy
The law does not cap the number
of students who can transfer
out, and the unaccredited districts
are likely to face major fiscal problems
if it is not revised, said Chris
L. Nicastro, the state’s education
commissioner.
“The last thing we want to see is
that the districts would go bankrupt,”
Ms. Nicastro said. “We’ve got
to get through this year.”
The state school board requested
$6.8 million from legislators this
week to prevent Normandy from
going bankrupt. Lawmakers will
hear that request in January.
Students from the 4,000-student
Normandy and 6,000-student Riverview
Gardens districts are now
attending schools in nearly 20
nearby systems. Normandy students
could attend the 20,000-student
Francis Howell district, and
Riverview Gardens students, the
Kirkwood and Mehlville districts,
with district-provided transportation.
If parents choose to send their
children to other accredited districts,
they must provide their own
transportation.
R. Stephen Green, the superintendent
of the Kansas City
district, said his district hopes to
avoid having students transfer
out. “It has the potential of creating
destabilizing factors—the
flight of students, financial impacts,”
he said.
Normandy, which has an operat-
ing budget of $49 million, is slated
to pay more than $14 million in
tuition to external districts and
transportation fees for departing
students. Riverview Gardens will
owe some $17 million to receiving
districts, according to the Cooperating
School Districts, a voluntary
co-op in St. Louis and surrounding
counties that helped coordinate
the transfers.
The shadow of bankruptcy is
particularly dark in Normandy,
which took in students from the
Wellston district, an unaccredited
district that lost students to the
same transfer law, when the state
dissolved Wellston in 2007.
Many districts surrounding Normandy
are on the cusp of being
unaccredited themselves, said Don
Senti, the executive director of the
Cooperating School Districts. The
dissolution of Normandy could
set off a “domino effect,” he said:
“[State officials] declared Wellston
unaccredited, so they combined it
with Normandy. Not surprisingly,
Third grader Warren Evans
works on a reading exercise at
Bel-Nor Elementary School in
the Normandy, Mo., school
district. Some 1,100 students
signed up to leave the district,
which lacks accreditation.
Normandy failed. Now, if Normandy
fails, and they’ll be bankrupt
in February, what will they
do, attach them to someone else?”
‘Train Wreck Coming’
In setting out guidelines for
preparing transfers, the state “assumed
some things that aren’t
technically in the statutes,” said
Susan S. Goldhammer, the senior
director of employment and labor
relations of the Missouri School
Boards Association. For instance,
the guidelines assume that receiving
districts could use class-size
requirements to limit how many
students they can receive.
“We’ve seen this train wreck
coming,” Ms. Goldhammer said.
“Although I think everyone understands
that this law needed
to be changed, it was used as a
pawn in the legislative process
to get measures passed, and
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compromise did not occur.”
Gov. Jay Nixon told the Associated
Press that the law was a “tad
clunky” and that he wanted to see
changes in it.
Still, an amended law is not a
given, Commissioner Nicastro said.
St. Louis County is home to
some 24 districts, which vary in
demographics and academic performance.
The student populations
in both the unaccredited
districts are more than 90 percent
African-American, while the receiving
districts are largely white.
“If you have a bunch of these
little districts, what you wind up
having is people divided by race
and income. You create these situations
like those that are happening
in Detroit and St. Louis,” said
Jennifer Jellison Holmes, a professor
of education policy at the University
of Texas at Austin.
“You see the demand’s really
high when you give kids the option
of attending a much better
system,” Ms. Holmes said, “but
you’re leaving the districts behind,
with higher concentrations of need
and way fewer resources.”
The state’s role in improving the
districts has been limited so far,
though a law passed this year allows
earlier intervention in unaccredited
districts. But the education
agency is reconsidering how it
works with and identifies low-performing
districts.
“We’re looking at crafting a big-
ger plan that’d allow for the state
board and [education] department
to intervene in a different way
[in low-performing districts.] The
idea here is to make the districts
better—but more importantly, the
idea is to serve children well,” Ms.
Nicastro said.
The department is working with
Cities for Educational Entrepreneurship
Trust, or CEE-Trust, a
national network of education and
governmental organizations.
Meanwhile, in St. Louis County,
a group of district and charter
leaders has been collaborating
on a plan for improving schools,
said the Cooperating Districts’
Mr. Senti. One idea that has been
floated is replicating the state-run
district in Tennessee, which takes
over individual schools.
Ty McNichols, the superinten-
dent of Normandy’s schools, said
that 1,100 students applied for
the transfer program, but only
800 had actually attended a Normandy
school last year. He said
that many families had moved
into Normandy over the summer.
Some 450 of the exiting students
now attend schools in Francis
Howell, a high-performing,
more affluent district in nearby
St. Charles County.
Mr. McNichols said that about
160 transferees had come back,
and some students who had initially
signed up to transfer never
left. Official student counts will be
taken later this month.
Optimism and Tension
Mr. McNichols, who became su-
perintendent in July, said he was
optimistic that the changes he
was bringing in would improve
the district’s culture and performance.
Still, he said, the transfer
law could sink the district.
The situation has also stirred
tensions in Francis Howell, where
more than 1,000 people showed
up for a community meeting after
it was announced that the district
would receive Normandy students,
said Marty Hoditch, the president of
Francis Howell’s school board. Normandy
had been rated as the most
dangerous district in the state by
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which
Mr. McNichols said shaded perceptions
of Normandy students.
“Initially, I was replying to some
very ugly emails,” many from parents
who feared that their students
would not be safe going to school
with students from Normandy,
said Pam Sloan, Francis Howell’s
superintendent. Normandy students
were invited to tour schools
before school started, she said, and
the year is going smoothly so far.
Anita Miller, the president of
the Francis Howell Education Association,
said teachers and students
had welcomed the transferees.
Still, she said, the law doesn’t
seem like a permanent solution to
low-performing schools.
“Yes, I think [the students who
transfer in] will get a great education
at Francis Howell. But I also
believe that if Normandy were
properly funded and they were
able to put in some of the same
safeguards we were able to put in
place, that their community schools
would be good, too.”
Sid Hastings for Education Week
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Education Week - September 25, 2013

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