Governor Jay Nixon (D) has had the legislature’s proposed changes to Missouri’s student transfer law on his desk less than a week. The state representative whose district includes the school district at the heart of that issue wants Nixon to veto that bill.

Backers of HB 42, that would change Missouri’s law that lets students transfer out of failing districts to better-performing ones, say it will help struggling districts like Normandy, but Representative Clem Smith (D-Velda Village Hills) said what that school needs is a cap on the tuition it must pay for the students that leave it.

“You have the Normandy School District paying $20,000, $18,000 to districts that students transfer to, but they don’t even spend that amount on the students that are there in the district,” Smith told Missourinet. “The students that decided to stay and the families that decided to stay in that district are put at a disadvantage.”

Smith wants Nixon to veto that bill and call a special session to deal just with tuition.

“Everything else can be put in another bill, other legislation, but we have to get a cap on the amount of money that a sending district is spending,” said Smith.

Smith said the transfer law issue should concern rural Missourians too.

“We’ve got a lot of rural districts that are in trouble, that are right there. That could go to provisionally accredited or unaccredited at any time once the new testing comes out, the new standards are laid forth,” said Smith. “They’re going to have to deal with that issue.”