Kurt Bahr Archives - Missourinet

House turns Common Core elimination bill into plan to develop new standard

April 8, 2014 By Mike Lear

The state House has turned a bill that would have completely scrapped in Missouri the Common Core education standard into one that will give it a chance, while developing its potential successor.

Representative Kurt Bahr (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The original bill filed by Representative Kurt Bahr (R-St. Charles) would have prevented the implementation of Common Core State Standards in Missouri without legislative approval. The bill was amended on the House floor to allow those standards to progress while a commission is created to create a new standard.

Bahr says the amendments came from language the Senate is considering.

“We’re going to create the process in which we’re going to look at the standards and say, ‘How do we want to move forward for standards for the State of Missouri?'” Bahr tells Missourinet. “Are we simply going to blanketly accept Common Core standards or are we going to have Missouri standards written by Missouri teachers, Missouri parents and the stakeholders within Missouri and then change our assessments so that they are in-house?”

Some lawmakers who say they didn’t oppose Common Core did have problems with how its impact would be assessed, saying teachers might have suffered poor evaluations as a result of poor student performance while adjusting to the new standards. One of the amendments to the bill would prevent assessment test scores from the 2014-15 school year from counting toward school accountability or accreditation.

Representative Genise Montecillo (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

“I think this sort of alleviated some of the members’ concerns,” says Representative Genise Montecillo (D-St. Louis). She says with the changes approved Tuesday the bill, “was a good compromise and it doesn’t put districts in a bind that they have to dismantle what they’ve been working towards.”

The proposal would create a 14-member work group with members selected by the state’s professional teachers’ organizations, associations of state school boards and charter schools, the speaker of the House, the Senate president pro-tem, the governor, the lieutenant governor, the commissioner of higher education and the heads of state-approved baccalaureate-level teacher preparation programs.

That group will develop standards for English, language arts, math, history and government and present recommendations to the Board of Education next year. Those standards would then be implemented in the 2016-17 school year.

Bahr says during the two years before implementation, while Common Core is in place in Missouri, it will be evaluated and recommendations could include partial or full implementation of it.

The proposal would need another favorable vote to go to the Senate.

House lawmakers offer messages of support to stricken sponsor of breastfeeding bill

March 26, 2014 By Mike Lear

The state House has given initial approval to legislation meant to lift restrictions on breastfeeding and give breastfeeding mothers the ability to opt out of jury duty. The original bill was offered by Representative Rory Ellinger (D-University City), who is battling liver cancer and was not able to be at the Capitol as the bill was debated.

Representative Rory Ellinger (courtesy Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Ellinger filed a bill addressing the jury duty issue in response to an incident in which a judge in Jackson County found a Lee’s Summit woman in contempt of court and put a $500 fine against her on hold until the end of the legislative session, to see if lawmakers would weigh in on such situations.

An amendment offered by Representative Kurt Bahr (R-St. Charles) changed the bill to require judges to excuse breastfeeding mothers from jury duty if the mother requests it and has a statement from her physician that she is a nursing mother.

His amendment would also clarify that a mother can nurse a child or express breast milk in any public or private place she is otherwise authorized to be and requires only that she use discretion. It would also specify that breast-feeding a child does not fall under the state’s statutory definition of sexual conduct or contact, or violate laws against public indecency or indecent exposure.

See the legislation, HB 1320

Bahr says he and other lawmakers wanted to address other concerns for mothers while making sure Ellinger would get the credit.

“I filed the same language that the Senate had,” says Bahr, “One of the reasons I wanted to go ahead and change his bill as much as I did is so that the Senate would in fact accept his bill and pass his bill, so when it’s signed by the Governor it will be Representative Ellinger’s bill number.”

Ellinger was said to be listening to debate from home, and lawmakers offered him emotional messages of support among their comments on the legislation.

Representative Genise Montecillo (D-St Louis) said, “Representative Ellinger and I didn’t always see eye to eye in policy but I think we both are very passionate when we come from our positions. The one thing I never doubted was his dedication to what was important. Rory, I hope you’re doing well. You’re in my prayers.”

The legislation needs another favorable vote to go to the Senate.

Earlier story: Proposed jury duty exemption stirs discussion of breastfeeding age limit

‘Tin foil hats’ line item leads to tin foil-covered desk for representative

February 20, 2014 By Mike Lear

A day after one House Committee proposed budgeting for tin foil hats to make a statement about opposition to Common Core Standards for public education, another House Committee will hear a proposal to bar the implementation of those standards in Missouri.

A picture circulating on Twitter late Wednesday night shows the desk of Representative Mike Lair (R-Chillicothe) in the Missouri House of Representatives’ Chamber covered in tinfoil.
(courtesy of Twitter user @abemesser)

The House Appropriations Committee on Education on Wednesday approved a recommended budget for K-12 education that includes $8 for tin foil hats. The line item’s exact language reads, “For two rolls of high-density aluminum to create headgear designed to deflect drone and/or black helicopter mind reading and control technology.”

The provision was inserted by the committee’s chairman, Representative Mike Lair (R-Chillicothe), who intended it to suggest that some lawmakers’ opposition to the Common Core Standards is based on paranoia.

Some opponents of Common Core tie it to things like the collecting of data on students and indoctrination of children.

Lair told the committee, “When you deal with conspiracy theorists, you do logic first.”

He noted legislation he filed that would limit the sharing of data and that would prevent the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) from mandating curriculum or textbooks.

“If you can’t deal with folks with logic,” Lair continued, “I always felt you use humor.”

The jibe may have earned Lair a measure of in-kind retribution. A photo circulated late Wednesday night on Twitter showed his desk in the House of Representatives’ Chamber covered in tin foil, along with his chair, laptop, voting box and microphone stand.

Representative Mike Lair (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The appropriation bill containing the $8 for tin foil goes to the full House Budget Committee for consideration.

Thursday the House Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education is scheduled to hear a bill filed by Representative Kurt Bahr (R-St. Charles) that would prevent the State Board of Education from adopting and DESE from implementing Common Core State Standards. It would void all actions taken to adopt those standards after its effective date, August 28, and would make any statewide education standard subject to the approval of the General Assembly.

That hearing is scheduled to begin 30 minutes after the House adjourns for the morning in House Hearing Room 3, in the Capitol basement.

Republicans add to majority in state House

November 7, 2012 By Mike Lear

The Missouri House of Representatives will continue to have a Republican majority following yesterday’s election. The chamber will have the greatest number of Republicans ever, at 110.

Representative Kurt Bahr (R-St. Charles) won re-election to the Missouri House in Tuesday’s General Election.

Now, the House GOP caucus must meet to sort out who will be its leadership. Representative Kurt Bahr (R-St. Charles) says that will happen later today at the State Capitol in Jefferson City.

“We’re going to vote for our party leadership. Obviously we’ll go ahead and support Tim Jones (R-Eureka) for speaker of the house because we’ve already made that vote, but we’ll decide who’s going to be the majority leader, who’s going to be the majority whip, who’s going to be the caucus secretary, caucus chair, other party positions and vote for those positions of leadership.”

Bahr explains why the majority leadership positions are significant. “When the speaker of the house and the majority leader strategize on what legislation do we as a caucus, as a party want to propose and push for and what bills do we want to support or try to prevent from happening, each of those members gets a seat at that table. So, even the caucus secretary, a less than glamorous position, has a seat at the table to have their input on leadership and strategy meetings. So who we vote for for those positions has a impact in public policy for our state.”

Click here to see the Missouri House majority and minority leadership.

Having 110 members means House Republicans have enough members to vote to overturn a governor’s veto in that chamber. A two-thirds majority vote would also be needed from the Senate to complete an override attempt.

House proposal would bar enactment of the Affordable Care Act (AUDIO)

April 17, 2012 By Mike Lear

The House has given first round approval to a proposal that would bar enforcement of the federal Affordable Care Act, and makes it a crime to try to enact any portion of it in Missouri. House Democrats found a number of reasons to oppose the bill.

Representative Kurt Bahr (picture courtesy, Missouri House Communications)

Its sponsor, Representative Kurt Bahr (R-St. Charles) said while introducing the legislation that the federal healthcare law is unconstutitional. “It is our duty as state legislators, as the sovereign State of Missouri to uphold our end of the Constitution … of this interstate compact of the Constitution, and when the federal government oversteps its bounds it’s our duty, our obligation, to stand up and say, ‘That is not what the Constitution allows the federal government to do. We will not allow you to implement that piece of legislation on our citizens.'”

Representative Genise Montecillo (D-St. Louis) asks Bahr if the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling on the constitutionality of the Act, and she somehow missed it. “My understanding is that is still open to interpretation. We probably disagree on the constitutionality of that but you kind of assert that with some authority.

Bahr concedes, “We are still waiting on the Supreme Court to make their final decision on the constitutionality of the Accordable Care Act.”

Representative Margo McNeil (D-Florissant) says the state should allow the ACA to stand, for all the ways it will benefit Missourians. When Bahr restates his assessment that the Act is unconstitutional, she questions how he comes to that conclusion. “According to the representative from the 19th District (Bahr)?”

Bahr answers succinctly, “Yes.”

See the proposal, HB 1534

House Democrats also say Missouri has no power to resist the Act if it becomes law. Representative Chris Kelly (D-Columbia) says the bill oversteps the legislature’s authority. “Just because you don’t like the federal law, and it’s somebody else’s job to find whether it’s constitutional or not, does not give us the power to leap way, way out of our obligations. This is the antithesis of limited government.”

Kelly summed up his feelings about Bahr’s proposal, “This is breathtaking in its contempt for the Constitution of the United States.”

The bill was perfected 109-41 on a roll call vote. Another positive vote would send it to the Senate.

AUDIO: Representative Genise Montecillo inquires Representative Kurt Bahr, 2:56

AUDIO: Representative Margo McNeil inquires Representative Kurt Bahr, 9:24