student transfer Archives

Legislative Black Caucus member critical of caucus, Gov. Nixon for transfer bill veto

June 25, 2014 By Mike Lear

One member of the Legislative Black Caucus has strong criticism of that group and of Governor Jay Nixon (D), following the veto of legislation to change the state’s student transfer law.

Representative Courtney Curtis (D-Berkeley) says the issue has resulted in a “rift” in the Legislative Black Caucus.

Representative Courtney Curtis (photo courtesy; Missouri House Communications)

Nixon on Tuesday made good on his promise to veto that legislation, SB 493. He says it would violate the state’s Constitution by allowing, in specific circumstances, tax dollars to go to private schools. He and other critics said the bill was merely an effort to get school voucher language into state law and did nothing to address the problems created by Missouri’s 1993 transfer law.

Curtis disagrees with that assessment.

“That was a clever marketing strategy, but that’s it,” says Curtis. “If you ask me it only allowed us to continue running in place, given that Normandy’s been unaccredited for the past 20 years, as opposed to taking a step forward towards progress.”

The Normandy district will be replaced July 1 with a new entity called the Normandy Schools Collaborative, that will have no accreditation status whatsoever. The State Board of Education has voted to prohibit new student transfers from that district and deny the transfers of more than 130 students who moved to the district last summer but didn’t attend it in the 2012-13 school year.

Curtis thinks the Board has acted based on the Governor’s announcement that he would veto the legislation, and says the combination of its actions and that veto leave Normandy students and parents trapped.

“It doesn’t leave (those parents and students) in a place where they have hope for progress,” says Curtis. “There will certainly be lawsuits against the Board’s actions. Even with regard to students not being able to continue transferring when they lawfully transferred in the first place, it only creates more uncertainty there.”

Curtis wants to see a plan for fixing the transfer issue from the governor, and has a similar criticism of the Legislative Black Caucus.

“Where is the leadership of the Black Caucus with regard to this issue?” asks Curtis. “It’s only our districts that are effected by the lack of action with regard to this issue”

Some of that caucus’ members and other House Democrats who opposed SB 493 said an alternative was offered, that they referred to as a “clean” transfer fix, but Curtis says it didn’t go far enough to address all the issues related to transfers.

Attempts to reach for an interview Representative Tommie Pierson (D-St. Louis), a Legislative Black Caucus member and critic of the transfer legislation, have been unsuccessful. Pierson joined Nixon at a media conference in St. Louis Tuesday to veto SB 493. He later released a statement saying Nixon is “to be commended for the veto” and called the legislation, “an anti-public education bill masquerading as a fix to the flawed student transfer law that is pushing previously financially stable districts into bankruptcy.”

Gov. Nixon will veto proposed changes to student transfer law

May 23, 2014 By Mike Lear

Governor Jay Nixon (D) will veto legislation that proposed changes regarding Missouri’s 1993 student transfer law.

Governor Jay Nixon (D)

In a statement Nixon announced that he would reject the legislation over concerns that it would allow the diversion of tax money to private schools without accountability to voters, and says it would not address issues resulting from the existing transfer law. He also criticizes the bill for eliminating the requirement that unaccredited school districts pay for the transportation of their students who transfer.

Nixon calls the “private option” in the bill a “dangerous voucher scheme that would undermine the core principles and protections enshrined in Missouri’s constitution.

“Throughout the legislative session I repeatedly made it clear that any effort to send public dollars to private schools through a voucher program would be met by my veto pen,” Gov. Nixon said. “The General Assembly ignored my warnings, and this veto will be the result.”

The statement does not address whether a special session will be called for the legislature to address the transfer situation. Critics of the bill have urged Nixon to call one and express optimism that different results could be reached, despite having the same lawmakers work on the proposal.

See Nixon’s statement

Transfer bill sponsor: ‘No different bill would be passed’ in a special session

May 23, 2014 By Mike Lear

The House sponsor of the proposed change to Missouri’s student transfer law says a special session to revisit the issue would be a wasted effort.

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

Representative Rick Stream (R-Kirkwood) and other lawmakers who worked on the proposed transfer law fix are waiting to see whether Governor Jay Nixon (D) will veto the bill and call a special session, as the bill’s critics have called on him to do.

Stream says if those things happen, the first thing lawmakers will try to do will be to attempt to overturn Nixon’s veto. He says the Senate has the votes for the overturn, though it’s not clear if the House does.

“If it did not happen, and then he expected us to pass a different bill, he’s mistaken,” says Stream. “No different bill would be passed.”

Critics have accused the bill’s writers of only being interested in enacting a law that would let private schools draw tax dollars with transfers. Stream says the goal of the bill was to let students get out of poor performing districts as quickly as possible.

“This was one of the ways to do it,” Stream says, “To put them into charter schools and private schools close to their home, so they didn’t have to make the hour-long bus ride out to Francis-Howell or Kirkwood or Mehlville or anywhere else for that matter.”

Governor Nixon has said he will act soon on the bill.

MU Law Professor discusses constitutionality of proposed transfer law (VIDEO)

May 22, 2014 By Mike Lear

The office of Governor Jay Nixon (D) has said the state Constitution prohibits the use of tax dollars to support private schools. Backers of the legislature’s proposed student transfer law fix disagree, and say the Constitution only says tax dollars can’t go to religious schools.

That legislation contains a provision that would allow money generated by local tax levys that support unaccredited districts in Jackson or St. Louis Counties or St. Louis to go to private schools that accept students transferring from those districts’ schools. Such transfers could only happen after approval by local voters, or after three years of the district being unaccredited.

Nixon’s office says that proposal would violate three sections of the Constitution that govern the use of state funds (Article III Section 38), money that goes into the state school fund (Article IX Section 5), and the levying of taxes (Article X Section 3).

Critics of the bill are urging Nixon to veto it and call a special session to create a new one.

An Associate Teaching Professor with the University of Missouri School of Law, Brad Desnoyer, discusses how each of those sections might be interpreted in the debate, and points to one he thinks might make for a better argument for opponents of the legislation.

Desnoyer thinks opponents of the bill would be better served by Article X, Section 11(g), which deals with the operating levy for the Kansas City School District.

“This says that in Kansas City the operating levy is for schools of the district, so I think right there you have a problem,” says Desnoyer, “because you can’t be sending money in Kansas City to private schools.”

Desnoyer says the lawmakers who worked on the proposal went to great lengths to try and make it fit the Constitution. He thinks that’s why it was changed so that it no longer covers the costs to transport students who are transferring.

“One reason to get rid of the bussing is if they included the bussing, then it’s unconstitutional because you can’t bus students to private schools [on public school buses]. We know that,” says Desnoyer. “So, if we’re being cynical, the reason they got rid of that provision was to put in the [private] school choice provision.”

The proposed transfer law is SB 493.

State Education Board won’t approve cost of lawsuit against it

May 22, 2014 By Mike Lear

The State Board of Education won’t approve the cost of a lawsuit against it filed by the Normandy School District.

The District is suing the Board and 20 other school districts over the state’s student transfer law, that has left Normandy nearly bankrupt as it pays to send about 1,000 of its students to other schools. The State Board took financial control of the district in February and has issued a statement saying it will not approve the expenses related to the lawsuit.

Under the terms of the Board’s takeover of Normandy’s expenses, the Board says it should be notified before any new contracts are extended or unanticipated financial obligations are handled. The Board says the District violated those terms.

In a statement from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Deputy Commissioner of Education Ron Lankford says, “Normandy’s finances are very fragile and we need to make every effort to allow students to finish the school year in June.”

The statement says the Department has not received the lawsuit and can not comment on its merits.

The student transfer law has forced Normandy to pay transportation and tuition costs for about 1,000 children who left the district for better-performing schools.

That law has been upheld previously by the state Supreme Court.

Two House Republicans’ letter seeks to sway Nixon on transfer legislation

May 20, 2014 By Mike Lear

Two Republicans who have crossed party lines to work on Medicaid expansion say Governor Jay Nixon (D) needs to heed his own advice and work across lines to not veto the proposed transfer bill. They have written a letter to Nixon on the issue.

Representative Jay Barnes (R-Jefferson City) and Representative Noel Torpey (R-Independence) say Nixon has in more than one State of the State Address called for working across political, geographical and other lines to solve problems. Barnes says that’s what they’re asking him to do with the transfer bill.

“That’s exactly what happened with Senate Bill 493,” says Barnes. “You saw a bill that the Senate passed 29-3, the House passed it with a bipartisan majority of 89 votes – obviously a little bit closer – but this is a bill which required a lot of work, a lot of compromises all around.”

See Barnes’ and Torpey’s letter to Gov. Nixon

Torpey says the bill isn’t perfect, but he wants to work with Nixon in the interim and next session to address the problems the governor has with the bill rather than see it vetoed.

“Education is such a complicated issue like Medicaid. I think it’s important to work together and to go forward,” says Torpey, “but to simply just blow a bill up, I don’t think that’s the right approach.”

Nixon says he can’t support a bill that would allow tax dollars to go to private schools. Barnes says that would make him like “legislative absolutists,” who make progress on key issues impossible.

The pair write, “Instead of insisting on a bill which is “perfect” to you, we ask that you read the bill as a whole. If you do, we believe you will find that the private option is only a small portion of the bill – a portion we believe is vital and necessary, but a small one nonetheless.”

Barnes says Medicaid and the transfer bill are similar in that both will require compromise, but he and Torpey both say their letter is not to suggest that they won’t work with Nixon on Medicaid if he doesn’t do what they want on the student transfer bill.

Weighing in on whether to veto the transfer bill and call a special session

May 19, 2014 By Mike Lear

Critics of the bill that proposes change to Missouri’s student transfer law say it doesn’t fix anything, and want Governor Jay Nixon (D) to tell lawmakers to try again.

The bill lawmakers sent to Governor Nixon includes a provision that after three years of a district in St. Louis City or County and Jackson County being unaccredited, would allow its local tax dollars to go to a nearby private school if its students transfer there.

Opponents like Representative Genise Montecillo (D-St. Louis) say that’s all the bill was about, and they want Nixon to veto it.

“I’ve heard from all of my superintendents, I’ve heard from my constituents. I don’t think there’s a superintendent in this state that supports this plan,” says Montecillo. “Those people that understand education and what it takes to improve education outcomes opposed this plan, and yet they continued to refuse to take vouchers off the table. If that’s not about agenda, then explain to me what it is about.”

Nixon has said he opposes any legislation that would let tax dollars go to private schools, but hasn’t said what he will do with this bill.

Some lawmakers say Nixon has indicated to them a veto and special session are coming

He tells reporters he knows he must act soon, with one school district bankrupt and another close to it because of the cost of student transfers.

“We’re going to expedite a review of this bill,” says Nixon. “Obviously I’ll have to make a decision on it relatively quickly because of the fiscal timeframes involved.”

Opponents of the bill want Nixon to call a special session so that a new bill can be created. He has not said whether he will.

House Speaker Tim Jones (R-Eureka) says if that happens, he wants to see more involvement from the Governor in a solution.

“If the governor vetoes this issue, then he owns it and he has to come up with a solution,” says Jones. “I will challenge him to propose and work with us, like he did in the Boeing special session. You saw that when this governor wants to, he can actually engage with the legislature, be a leader and get things done in a short period of time.”

Montecillo says it’s not up to the Governor to propose a plan.

“We have a plan,” says Montecillo. “The problem that [Republicans] have and what they dislike about that, it is a clean transfer fix. It addresses a single problem facing the state. It is void of the agenda that they want to push and promote.”
Opponents of the bill say the Governor has some leverage over what lawmakers might or might not attempt to put into a bill in a special session through the call he would issue for that session.

Legislature sends proposed transfer fix to Gov. Nixon

May 15, 2014 By Mike Lear

The state legislature has passed a bill meant to fix the state law that lets students transfer out of failing school districts. The proposal has been a priority for many lawmakers who say that law is bankrupting unaccredited school districts, particularly Normandy and Riverview Gardens in the St. Louis area.

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

The bill contains a controversial “private option” for Jackson County, St. Louis and St. Louis County that could result in it being vetoed by Governor Jay Nixon (D). It would have the state accredit school buildings as well as districts. Students in an unaccredited school within an unaccredited district would first have the option to transfer to an accredited building in the same district. If no slots were available in those, one option would be for students to transfer to a nonreligious private school with local tax revenue from the sending district used to pay tuition.

Nixon has suggested he would veto any bill that includes any mechanism sending tax dollars to private schools, saying that is where he had to “draw a line.” The bill received a strong enough vote in the Senate to overturn a veto, but fell 20 votes short of that mark when the House passed it on Thursday. Neither chamber’s vote followed party lines.

See how House members voted on the legislation

Representative Clem Smith (D-Velda Village Hills) said he was the only lawmaker in either the House or the Senate who represents the Normandy School District, and he opposes the bill. He says it shouldn’t be called a transfer bill, joining other critics who said it was really an attempt to break the barrier keeping tax dollars from going to private schools.

“You’ve got kids in Normandy and Riverview that have been used to push vouchers,” said Smith. “And it’s a forced voucher, because you can vote it down in an unaccredited district but after three years it’s forced, it’s rammed down your throat … in my view, that’s all this bill is about.”

Some Republicans were also opposed to the private option. Representative Jeff Grisamore (R-Lee’s Summit) says he campaigned against using tax dollars in private schools when he first ran for the House, but said he was “torn” on how to vote on the bill.

“Public schools should be publicly funded and private schools should be privately funded, period,” said Grisamore. “And why would we take away funding from public education, give it to private education, when we are not meeting our obligations fully for the formula for public education.”

Proponents argued that the private option was a small piece of the legislation and called the bill a compromise that would stave off disaster in failing schools. Representative Kevin Engler (R-Farmington) says opponents of the bill including Nixon don’t have a plan of their own that would pass the Senate.

Engler argued if the bill does not become law, school districts in danger of becoming bankrupt would have to be supplemented from state General Revenue.

“We’re going to have to put money in the budget that’s going to come from my school district to keep them alive,” says Engler. He says opponents of the bill including Nixon don’t have a plan of their own that would pass in the Senate.

Representative Vicki Englund (D-St. Louis) worked on the conference committee that came up with the final version of the bill. She urged Nixon to sign the bill but said whether he signs or vetoes it, he should act quickly.

“Get it over with, get it done, because then we need to call a special session to fix it,” said Englund. “Because if we are truly about solving these problems we need to come up here and do it.”

See the legislation here

Lawmakers further tweak ‘private option’ in student transfer proposal

May 13, 2014 By Mike Lear

House and Senate lawmakers have made more changes to language in a proposed fix to Missouri’s student transfer law that would allow public tax dollars to go to nonreligious private schools.

A conference committee of legislators from both chambers voted to allow local tax dollars from public schools that are unaccredited for three years pay for their students to nearby private, nonsectarian schools. Such transfers could only happen if there are no openings in accredited schools in the same district. Districts could vote to allow such use of local tax dollars before the three years are up.

Committee Chairman David Pearce (R-Warrensburg) says the provision is limited to certain urban areas of Missouri.

“This is not every district across the state. It’s very limited, in fact this is in St. Louis City, St. Louis County and Jackson County,” says Pearce. “The thought was these districts aren’t performing … and with three years, regardless of whether [the district holds] an election or not, to have the private, nonsectarian option, then [students] will have that option.”

Legislators have made several attempts to refine the so-called “private option.” Supporters say in some unaccredited school districts, allowing transfers to private schools would offer the only option for some students that wouldn’t require them to travel long distances each day to school. Several senators believe the legislation would not pass out of the Senate without a private school provision.

Opponents say the entire bill is merely an attempt to divert public tax dollars to private schools and call it a step toward vouchers. Governor Jay Nixon (D) has said he can not support legislation that includes a private school provision.

The committee met for seven hours Monday. It continues its hearing Tuesday morning and Pearce hopes to complete its work today so that both chambers can consider a transfer fix before the close of the session on Friday.

House passes student transfer fix with scaled back private school option

May 1, 2014 By Mike Lear

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 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