Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry Archives

Missouri State Representative Roeber still recovering from vehicle crash

May 13, 2019 By Brian Hauswirth

The Missouri House Speaker says a state lawmaker who was seriously injured in a March head-on collision will need to learn to walk again.

State Rep. Rebecca Roeber, R-Lee’s Summit, speaks on the Missouri House floor on May 12, 2017 (file photo courtesy of Tim Bommel at House Communications)

Speaker Elijah Haahr, R-Springfield, tells Missourinet that State Rep. Rebecca Roeber, R-Lee’s Summit, continues to recover. Roeber is no longer at MU Health Care in Columbia.

“Representative Roeber is now back in the Kansas City area, she continues to receive treatment but at least my understanding is her need for surgeries are done,” Haahr says.

The March collision happened on Highway 50 in west-central Missouri’s Syracuse. The Missouri State Highway Patrol says Roeber crossed the center line on Highway 50 and struck a second vehicle.

Roeber, who was first elected to the House in 2014, chairs the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee. She will not return to the Capitol this session, which ends Friday at 6 p.m.

Meantime, legislation that would allow charter schools to expand to Missouri cities and charter counties with a population larger than 30,000 is finished for the year.

Chairwoman Roeber is the House sponsor. Her bill is House bill 581.

House Speaker Pro Tem John Wiemann, R-O’Fallon, tells Missourinet the bill was removed from the House calendar because of the amount of time it sat in the calendar and was not brought up for debate.

Speaker Haahr told Missourinet recently the bill already faced an uncertain future with Roeber out. He noted that charter school legislation would have probably have had come through the Senate first, where it’s already been filibustered.

“If not, we always have next year to work on that issue,” says Haahr.

Proponents of charter school expansion legislation include the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the organization Excellence in Education in Action. Supporters say school choices benefit all in society and that expansion will give more children an opportunity to attend schools that meet their needs.

Bill opponents include the Missouri School Boards Association and the Missouri State Teachers Association. Opponents say removing students from public education impacts the overall district and that the fiscal impact of charter school expansion will hurt public school funding and programs.

Under current law, charter schools are only allowed in St. Louis, Kansas City and an unaccredited school district. Charter schools are publicly-funded schools which operate independently of traditional public schools.

Study: Missouri must step up digital education to meet top 10 by ’20 goal

January 30, 2014 By Mike Lear

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce Education Foundation has released a report that it says shows Missouri must offer more digital learning options to K-12 students if it wants to be one of the top 10 states for education by 2020.

Evergreen Education Group CEO John Watson (at podium) discusses “K-12 Digital Learning in Missouri,” joined by Chamber president Dan Mehan (left) and Brian Crouse, vice president of the Chamber’s Education Foundation.

The study was conducted by Colorado-based Evergreen Education Group. CEO John Watson says one of its key findings is that Missouri needs to offer a statewide, publicly-funded online school.

“There are some districts across Missouri that are offering these types of options for students,” says Watson, “but we remain in a time where those options are not available to all students across all of Missouri. In 2014, these options simply should be available. There’s no reason students across the state can’t have access to a full range of online and blended learning options.”

Watson acknowledges that Missouri, like other states, would have to make improvements to its broadband infrastructure, but he says that’s no reason to wait on efforts to expand online education opportunities.

“Our view,” Watson says, “is that we don’t want to wait for broadband to be available everywhere to start putting some resources into these new types of programs. It really has to be a parallel effort where we’re creating new opportunities for students and the state is creating the infrastructure so that students across the state can access them.”

Watson says his group has found that increased investment in and focus on digital public education can be cost-neutral to a state.

“A sustainable funding structure for online schools should be tapping into the funding formula that is funding students now, and if a student is going into an online school that funding should follow the student into that online school.”

Legislation being offered by Senator Ed Emery (R-Lamar) and that will be offered by Representative Kathy Swan (R-Cape Girardeau) will address online learning options.

View an overview of the report here, and read the full report here.

Missouri employers to pay more for unemployment insurance in 2014

November 22, 2013 By Mike Lear

Missouri is one of 14 states in which employers will pay higher unemployment taxes in 2014 as a result of a debt to the federal government.

Missouri began borrowing federal money in 2008 to pay unemployment insurance benefits the state trust fund was not able to cover. The debt remained outstanding after two straight years, so Missouri’s employers have lost Federal Unemployment Tax Act tax credits that count toward the tax assessed for unemployment insurance.

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry says businesses will have to pay $63 per employee next year, an increase from $42 per employee being paid against that debt.

Missouri owes $308 million to the federal government according to the Chamber.