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House passes student transfer fix with scaled back private school option

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The state House has approved a plan to change a 21-year-old law that lets students transfer out of failing schools into better ones. House Republicans pared back significantly a provision that would make private schools one of the places those students could go.

Representative Rick Stream (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Representative Rick Stream carried the student transfer fix legislation in the House.  (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Transfers have been occurring this year in two suburban St. Louis Districts and the cost of paying to transfer their students prompted lawmakers to try to change the law.

Under the bill, students who have been in an unaccredited school in an unaccredited district for at least one semester could first go to a better-performing school in that district. If no space is available, those students could then transfer to a neighboring district or to a charter school or nonreligious private school in the same or an adjoining county.

The changes to the private school portion would limit it to Jackson County, St. Louis County and St. Louis City. Private schools accepting transfer students would have to follow state laws regarding safety and student performance. Local voters would have to approve such transfers.

“We have taken away every argument usually used by the folks I would call the ‘education establishment’ against the private option,” says Representative Jay Barnes (R-Jefferson City).

Some Democrats were not satisfied. Representative Margo McNeil (D-Florissant) says she spent much of the session working on the bill and now can’t support it.

“This is the purpose of this entire bill,” says McNeil. “Really it has not been about fixing the transfer problem, which was a very simple problem. It has been, ‘How do we get passed in the State of Missouri … a bill that puts public money in the hands of private schools?”

The House proposes having sending districts pay 70 percent of their own tuition costs for students who transfer, plus additional money to cover transportation. Receiving districts could also set class size standards to avoid overcrowding.

The House passage means the bill goes back to the Senate. It is expected to wind up in a conference between the two chambers.

See how House members voted on the transfer proposal

House overwhelmingly endorses student religious liberty legislation

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The House has given broad bipartisan first-round approval to a bill that, its sponsor says, is necessary to make clear for school districts what the law in Missouri says about students’ religious liberties.

Representative Elijah Haahr (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Representative Elijah Haahr (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The bill (HB 1303) is offered by Representative Elijah Haahr (R-Springfield).

He says students’ ability to express religious beliefs in schools is jeopardized not by school districts, but by organizations who take advantage of unclear state statute to sue school districts in order to block such expressions.

“As an attorney I know the money is made in the gray areas,” says Haahr. “When the statute’s unclear, the case law’s unclear, that’s where attorneys get excited and they want to make a move. If we lay out something clear … as long as a school district follows the state statutes, it makes it very hard for anyone to bring a case against them.”

The legislation won broad support on the initial, or “perfection,” vote, 128-20, including from at least one lawmaker who had earlier opposed it.

“I think what this bill does is protected already,” says Representative Margo McNeil (D-Florissant), a former teacher who voted against the bill in committee but voted for it Wednesday. “Perhaps putting it in state statute would make school districts in service their teachers on how to deal with religious issues … I think that it is a valid concern.”

Opponents argue the bill increases the likelihood of litigation against schools.

Representative Bob Burns (D-St. Louis) says some school districts can’t afford additional litigation.

“Some districts just will not challenge because they’re in such financial difficulty. They realize even having that attorney sit at a school board meeting costs an astronomical amount of money at the end of the year.”

The proposal needs another favorable vote to be sent to the Senate.

House sends $26.6-billion budget to Senate (VIDEO)

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The state House has approved a $26.6-billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The House’s proposal now goes to the Senate.

Because legislative budget makers disagreed with Governor Jay Nixon (D) on an estimate of how much revenue Missouri will receive in the next fiscal year, House budget makers propose spending up to their projection, then propose appropriations out of a new surplus revenue fund any amounts higher.

The spending plan includes a $122-million increase for K-12 education out of general revenue, with another $156-million possible out of the surplus revenue fund.

House Budget Committee Chairman Rick Stream (R-Kirkwood) outlines some key items in the House’s proposed budget (courtesy; Jonathan Lorenz, Missouri House Communications):

During Thursday’s discussion in the chamber, House Democrats offered their strongest criticism of the two-tiered approach.

House Budget Committee Chairman Rick Stream (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

House Budget Committee Chairman Rick Stream (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

“Underestimating revenue means that the $156-million recommended by the Governor for the foundation formula will not be distributed to local school districts until everything else in the state budget is funded this year,” said Representative Margo McNeil (D-Florissant). “It means that money will not be available for this school you. You cannot budget for something you don’t know that you will receive. Underestimating means that Missouri school districts will plan less and will achieve less.”

McNeil was critical of the House budget having a 1-percent decrease in the number of state employees and the change from a 3-percent raise in state employee pay partway through the year recommended by the Governor to a 1-percent increase.

Representative Jay Barnes (R-Jefferson City) says the revenue projections used by House budget makers are more realistic.

“The Governor brought us a budget based on pixie dust predictions and long shot legislation.”

The proposal does not include federal money for the expansion of Medicaid. Republicans saying accepting that federal money would increase the national debt and continue to put money into an inefficient program. Democrats say expansion would extend health care to hundreds of thousands of Missourians and would free up more money in the budget for other needs such as education.

MO House joins Governor Nixon in supporting Keystone XL Pipeline

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A day after Governor Jay Nixon (D) urged U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to support the Keystone XL Pipeline project, the Republican-controlled Missouri House has lended its voice to that discussion.

The House has approved a resolution urging President Barack Obama to support the Pipeline, and the permitting for oil production off the northern coast of Alaska.

The resolution was offered by Representative Keith English (D-Florissant).

“The approval and construction of the Keystone Pipeline will strengthen our economy, create jobs and promote American energy independence,” English said in presenting the measure.

The resolution stirred in the House debate about the Pipeline and America’s energy future.

Representative Margo McNeil (D-Florrisant) said Canada could run a pipeline through its own country to a seaport, but it doesn’t want to out of fear of what could happened if the pipeline suffered a failure.

“If the pipes do erode over a period of 10, 20, 30 years,” says McNeil, it is going to be on American soil that the oil leaks and that the cleanup is required and that our farmland and possibly our water supply are damaged.”

The House voted 134-12 to send the resolution to the Senate.

House approves two tax cut proposals along party lines

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The state House has passed two proposals for cutting taxes along very similar party-line votes.

Representative T.J. Berry (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Representative T.J. Berry (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The bill sponsored by Representative T.J. Berry (R-Kearney) would cut corporate income taxes in half and allow half of business income reported on personal taxes to be exempted. Legislative researchers estimate the bill would cost the state up to $347-million annually.

Berry says his proposal will spur job creation.

“What House Bill 1253 is about,” Berry tells colleagues, “is incentivizing the creators so that we grow, and when they grow I guarantee you everyone else gets an opportunity also.”

See Rep. Berry’s legislation, HBs 1253 & 1297

Representative Andrew Koenig (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Representative Andrew Koenig (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The other bill, sponsored by Representative Andrew Koenig (R-Manchester), would include the exemption for business profits reported as personal income and would cut individual income tax rates along with an exemption for lower-income Missourians. General revenue would have to grow by $100-million to $150-million in order for the cuts to take effect. Legislative projections are that the bill could cost the state up to $703-million by 2021.

“This is a reasoned approach and it will make our state more competitive,” said Koenig.

See Rep. Koenig’s legislation

Every House Democrat present for both votes voted against the proposals.

Representative Margo McNeil (D-Florissant) says testimony during a committee hearing on Berry’s bill indicates Missouri already has a competitive tax policy.

“We had testimony in that committee that said Missouri was the third best state in the nation for corporate income tax. I’ve also heard seventh best. In other words, we already have a pretty good tax rate for corporations in this state.”

McNeil says legislators shouldn’t be pushing tax cuts with other funding needs, such as in mental health, drug rehabilitation centers and education.

She tells lawmakers the foundation formula for K-12 education funding is, “still $550-million under-funded from what, statutorily, we were to be.”

Both bills received 106 votes, well above the 82 required to pass in the House but just shy of the 109 that would be needed to override a gubernatorial veto. Governor Jay Nixon (D) vetoed a tax cut bill last that came down to a close, failed override attempt in the veto session, when 15 Republicans sided with Democrats in voting to sustain that veto.

Governor Nixon issued a statement denouncing the bills as, “fiscally irresponsible experiments that would funnel nearly a billion dollars out of our classrooms and other priorities.”

Both bills have been sent to the Senate.

House Democrat files proposal for changing school transfer law

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House Democrats have their own version of legislation seeking to change Missouri’s school transfer law. It will be sponsored by Representative Margo McNeil (D-Florissant), a former educator who served on the House Interim Education Committee.

McNeil’s bill (HB 1294) is similar to what House Budget Committee Chairman Rick Stream (R-Kirkwood) says he will file next week in that it attempts to provide protections for both sending and receiving school districts. It also offers resources to unaccredited districts to boost preschool education and to allow for more learning time in an effort to help those districts regain accreditation.

Her bill stresses preschool education because of what she heard during the Interim Education Committees stops around the state.

“At every stop, someone talked about how important early childhood education was for closing the achievement gap and increasing test scores, and I think that’s really key to getting those districts back on track.”

McNeil’s bill would create grants available through the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for unaccredited and provisionally accredited schools to cover the cost of increasing learning time. It would also cap the amount paid by a sending, unaccredited district to a receiving district at eighty percent of the per-pupil revenue the sending district receives from the state and local sources. The bill also proposes a career planning program for students beginning in sixth grade.

See our earlier story on Stream’s legislation

House Speaker Tim Jones has said that the law is working as it was designed to, to allow students in failing districts an opportunity at a good education, and he doesn’t favor changing it. McNeil says it’s fortunate, then, that his budget director considers changing the transfer law a significant enough issue to file his own bill to that end.

Listen to the interview with Margo McNeil, 8:15

Budget director to file school transfer law bill despite Speaker’s opposition

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The House Speaker in his opening day address reaffirmed a strong stance against changing Missouri’s school transfer law, but his budget director is going to propose a bill to do just that.

House Budget Committee Chairman Rick Stream (R-Kirkwood) (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

House Budget Committee Chairman Rick Stream (R-Kirkwood) (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The law allows students in failing school districts to transfer, at those districts’ expense, to neighboring districts that are performing better. House Speaker Tim Jones (R-Eureka) says that gives students in failing districts an opportunity to immediately get a better education, and is working the way it was designed to.

In his legislative address on opening day he said, “Removing the opportunity and choice for a great education that some children have now for the first time in generations is the height of cynicism and should not even be considered.”

Many lawmakers think changing the law is a priority, though, saying it threatens to bankrupt some school districts and stretch or exceed the resources of others. One of them is Jones’ Budget Director and a fellow Republican, Rick Stream (R-Kirkwood), and he plans to file a bill next week proposing changes to the law.

Stream says his bill will seek to protect receiving districts from being overwhelmed with more students than they can handle, protect sending districts from going bankrupt by reducing the amount of money transferred to a receiving district, address long-term fixes for districts at risk of becoming unaccredited and address the needs of students in currently unaccredited districts.

He says that final aim is the most important, and he will offer unaccredited districts a number of options for unaccredited districts to improve.

“They’ll run the range … the whole gamut of options,” says Stream. “Simple things like additional mentoring or after school programs, pre-K, expanded school day, expanded school year, summer school, merit pay for teachers, all the way to the very other end of tax credits and vouchers.”

Stream doesn’t expect any resistance from Jones despite the stance the Speaker has espoused about changing the transfer law.

“I think the Speaker will certainly be respectful of caucus members,” Stream says. “He always has been, and if caucus members come to him with an issue that’s important in their district he is more than happy to certainly look at it and support it if he thinks it merits it.”

Stream served during the summer on the interim committee on education as did Representative Margo McNeil (D-Florissant) , who will file the House Democrat version of transfer law changes.

Listen to the full interview with Rick Stream, 19:46

House gives initial approval to two gun bills (AUDIO)

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On the same day the U.S. Senate rejected an expansion of background checks for gun purchases, the Missouri House of Representatives has advanced two gun rights bills.

A bill (HB 170) sponsored by Rep. Casey Guernsey (R-Bethany) would make laws passed after Jan. 1, 2013 that ban, restrict ownership or require registration of a gun or magazine unenforceable in Missouri and would make it a Class D felony to attempt to enforce them.

A separate measure (HB 436) sponsored by Rep. Doug Funderburk (R-St. Peters) would make any law that infringes on the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution invalid according to state law.

Guernsey says of his bill it is one he never thought he’d have to sponsor.

“We as a legislative body in Missouri are going to have to put ourselves between the citizens of Missouri and the federal government when it comes to one of our most basic, fundamental, constitutional rights, that of our Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms,” Guernsey said.

Rep. Stacey Newman (D-St. Louis) said Guernsey’s bill is unconstitutional.

“You talk to any lawyer that’s standing here … they’ll tell you that this bill basically benefits the trial lawyers,” Newman said. “It just gives them something else to contest in court because we all know that this bill is not going to hold any muster.”

Supporters and opponents of the bills expressed outrage at various parts of one another’s arguments. Rep. Margo McNeil (D-Florissant) cited incidents of gun violence.

“I feel that what is really outrageous is 20 children killed in Sandy Hook [Conn.] not too long ago, and six adults,” she said. “What is outrageous is 61 mass shootings since Columbine [Colo.] in 1999. What is outrageous is 17 bullets in one six-year-old’s body. That’s what’s outrageous.”

AUDIO:  McNeil’s floor remarks (1:42)

Rep. Paul Curtman (R-Pacific) countered by saying it is outrageous that state or federal lawmakers would try to infringe on Missourians’ Second Amendment rights.

“If you were to go back in time 230-some years and look at a dictionary, the word ‘infringe’ would say something along the lines of ‘to corrupt’ or ‘to corrode,’ so anything that the federal government does to restrict the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, in fact, an infringement, and therefore unconstitutional,” he said.

AUDIO:  Curtman’s floor remarks (3:27)

An amendment was adopted on Funderburk’s bill that would allow school districts to designate school protection officers. These would be teachers or administrators that would be allowed to carry concealed guns on school grounds. It was sponsored by Rep. Rick Brattin (R-Harrisonville).

“They would have to have a valid concealed carry weapons permit and also go through post-commission training … basically police officer training … this is a way of protecting our schools and our children where it matters most, at our most vulnerable areas of our society,” Brattin said.

Brattin’s proposal drew more response from Newman, who tweeted, “It’s NRA night in MO House. What’s next? Arming kids?”

Other provisions between the two bills would lower the age to be eligible to apply for a concealed carry weapons permit from 21 to 19 and allow permit holders to open carry, bar the publishing of gun owner lists, prevent medical practitioners from asking gun ownership status of patients and exempt individuals from federal background checks in private gun transactions.

Both packages would advance to the Senate with another favorable vote.

House approves legislation to battle bullying in public schools

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The House has sent the Senate legislation to have school districts add discrimination to anti-bullying policies.

Representative Sue Allen (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Representative Sue Allen (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The proposal sponsored by Representative Sue Allen (R-Town and Country) says those policies should bar bullying on school grounds, at school events and on school buses, and defines cyberbullying. It also lays out what should go into a policy and would require the State Board of Education to develop model policies by September 1.

The debate in recent years in the House has centered on whether an anti-bullying bill should specify who it protects by listing factors for discrimination: things like sexual orientation, race or religion.

Allen’s bill does not. She says a blanket approach means no children will be left out.

“I contend there is no specific profile or picture of any student, girl or boy, who is potentially a victim of bullying.”

Representative Mike Colona (D-St. Louis City) references an unrelated piece of legislation filed last year in the House in arguing that enumeration is needed.

“Fifteen or twenty co-sponsors on a bill that says we can’t say ‘gay’ in school, and I’m supposed to trust school administrators to make sure that LGBT students aren’t bullied? It doesn’t fly. It doesn’t fly.”

Representative Margo McNeil (D-Florissant) says children would be made safer and better able to learn by a bill that includes specifics about who it protects.

“Because it fails to define who or what is considered bullying it leaves huge areas of gray. I maintain that murkiness is one reason why so many children are bullied because of their sexual orientation and religion.”

Representative Jeanie Lauer (R-Blue Springs) says attempting to list all possible factors for discrimination would surely miss some children who also need protection.

“If I see somebody hurting a child I’m going to be out there taking care of them and protecting them, and I don’t care if it falls in a category or not. That’s not the issue. The issue is that we’re supposed to be here protecting our children.”

The House voted 141-10 to send the proposal to the Senate.

House advances grade cards for schools proposal (AUDIO)

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The House has given initial approval to HB 388, a proposal to give annual letter grade report cards to each public and charter school building in the state.

Representative Kathryn Swan (R-Cape Girardeau) (Photo courtesy; Missouri House Communications)

Representative Kathryn Swan (R-Cape Girardeau) (Photo courtesy; Missouri House Communications)

The bill was amended to have the Department of Education give schools not only one, overall letter grade, but a series of letter grades and associated percentage scores assessing each of the areas in the School Improvement Program. It instructs the Department to create rules for issuing a report card that is easily understood by the general public.

Its sponsor, Representative Kathryn Swan (R-Cape Girardeau) says parents don’t have easy access to understandable information about a school’s performance.

“It is available but extremely difficult to find, to navigate one’s way through the [Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s] website. It takes several clicks, and as they’re working on the website itself, then those clicks change as you try to access that information.”

An amendment sponsored by Representative Brandon Ellington (R-Kansas City) also requires schools whose overall grade drops below 70% to submit an improvement plan to the Department.

Some Democrats opposed the measure, saying letter grades are too simplistic. Representative Margo McNeil (D-Florissant) says those grades will send the wrong message.

“Schools that are labeled ‘D’ or ‘F’ will be seen as failures. Yes, I do believe that parents will want to initiate change, but the change they most likely will initiate is … moving to a different district.”

House Speaker Tim Jones (R-Eureka), who has been promoting education reform as part of his larger legislative agenda, called the bill a simple step forward.

“I don’t view this as any sort of groundbreaking education reform, but I do believe it is important for transparency and accountability.”

Another favorable vote would send the measure to the Senate.

AUDIO:  Rep. Kathryn Swan presents HB 388, 3:13

AUDIO:  Margo McNeil opposes HB 388, 4:58