Failure to do so will result in a mass of children from the unaccredited St. Louis Public School district transferring to accredited schools in St. Louis County districts virtually overnight.  The ruling also appears to allow students from the unaccredited Riverview Gardens School District to transfer to schools in neighboring St. Charles, Jefferson and Franklin counties.

Missouri currently has nine provisionally accredited districts, two of which, Kansas City and Normandy (St. Louis County), are close to being unaccredited.  One district, Hickman Mills in Kansas City, is on track to go from accredited to unaccredited by 2011.  With an additional eight districts on track to losing full accreditation by 2011, this ruling could have a drastic, statewide impact on the future of problem schools and districts and their neighboring schools and districts.  Three significant reforms could alleviate the burden that these districts will no doubt feel as a result of this court ruling.

First, the legislature must remove the geographic caps on opening public charter schools beyond the St. Louis and Kansas City School districts.  Allowing for quality, accountable charter schools to open in all areas of the state will give parents of children who are stuck in failing school districts many more options than just transferring to another zoned school site.  Expanding charters across the state will provide an incentive to many of the high performing charter school operators to open schools in Missouri. Just as critical, the legislature should pass laws to increase accountability on charter school operators and sponsors.

Second, the legislature should pass legislation expanding the private sector’s current use of tuition-assistance programs for disadvantaged families in Missouri.  The St. Louis region has an effective and efficient way of providing immediate scholarships to families located within the City – through programs such as the Today and Tomorrow Educational Foundation.  In the last three years alone, more than 1,700 children have found alternatives to government assigned schools – without state assistance.  With enabling legislation allowing private charitable contributions to a state program available to other families in financial need, Missouri could join other states like Florida and Iowa that have successful private contribution-based, tuition assistance programs.

Finally, open enrollment legislation across school districts should be enacted into law.  Open enrollment would allow for the orderly transfer of public school students wishing to find another public school option nearby.  Both Iowa and Arkansas have flexible working policies that Missouri lacks.  These laws and rules provide for early, reasonable transfers to other public schools of choice without litigation to any school district or the State Board of Education.

While this case was remanded back to a lower court for further review, the court was clear that Missouri law was written in “straightforward and unambiguous language” allowing students in unaccredited districts to transfer to a school in the same, or an adjoining, county at the cost of the unaccredited district.  To not undertake significant education reforms in the 2011 legislative session that allow for expanded parental choice in educating their children could result in a free-for-all of transfers to schools in neighboring counties.  With 18 districts scattered across the state provisionally accredited, or close to losing full accreditation, how long will it be before such a costly free-for-all spreads statewide?

Since 1875, the Missouri State Constitution has said the General Assembly “shall establish and maintain free public schools for the gratuitous instruction of all persons in this state.” (Article IX, Section 1(a)).  The children of every zip code, not just those residing within 63105 (Clayton) or 63124 (Ladue), deserve the best our state can offer.

This piece was published as an OpEd in the outlets linked below:

St. Louis Beacon 7/28/2010

St. Louis Post Dispatch 7/29/2010

Columbia Missourian 8/7/2010

Kansas City Star 8/15/2010

The original amendment exempted the districts of St. Louis and Kansas City, but Representative Don Calloway, a Democrat from the St. Louis County area of Bel- Nor, successfully added an amendment that would have included the St. Louis Public School District.  Representative Calloway argued that St. Louis is the “flagship failing school district” in the state and children there should be able to leave the district if they choose to do so.  Representative Dieckhaus was in favor of this amendment and also asked a Representative from Kansas City to propose an amendment that would include that city’s district as well.

Opponents of the amendment argued hypothetical, and often seemingly one in a million chance, problems with the policy of open enrollment.  These objections ranged anywhere from schools not being able to plan budgets to concerns that students would essentially endlessly jump around from school to school.  This despite the fact that students have to apply to the receiving school well in advance of the next school year and students could only go open enroll to a school outside of their assigned zone district one time.  Opponents even tried to call this a voucher system which is ridiculous considering that vouchers are illegal under the Missouri State Constitution.  Proponents of the amendment stuck to the simple philosophy that a child stuck in a school district that is failing or not a good fit should have an opportunity to go to another district.

While the amendment failed by a vote of 34 – 122, the debate on the issue put education reform and school choice front and center in the Missouri House for most of the day’s session.  The issue is not dead for the year, as there is an Open Enrollment bill in the Senate Education Committee that has been heard, but has yet to come up for a vote.  The Children’s Education Council of Missouri hopes that the debate on this important issue continues sometime during the session.  Children trapped in failing schools deserve the opportunity to look for alternatives in order to receive an appropriate education.

The conference also served as a changing of the guard as Dr. Howard Fuller retired from the Board Chairmanship and Washington, D.C. reform activist Kevin Chavous moved into the Board Chair.  Also, it was the first symposium for new BAEO President Kenneth Campbell.  He was selected to follow Gerrard Robinson, who was appointed the Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Virginia.  One of the sessions at the conference featured both new leaders where they discussed their vision for the organization.  The main topic was the expansion of BAEO, which will focus on a strategy of expanding into southern states where many African Americans are without education options.  Both also made a commitment to increasing membership in the urban areas where BAEO currently has chapters.

The item earning the most attention at the beginning of the session is the issue of open enrollment.  Open enrollment is a policy that allows students to transfer to a school in a district outside of where the student lives, so long as the receiving district has the capacity for the student.  This policy could be beneficial to parents seeking to move their child from a failing school district to a higher performing one.  Many parents are also frustrated by being assigned to a school based on zone boundaries, often decades old, when they have a school in another district much closer to their home.

The Joint Committee on Education conducted a study on the issue in the interim session, hearing from parents and advocacy groups who were in favor of open enrollment and school administrators and teacher union representatives who were opposed.  The main opposition was over one of the four areas of special education, transportation, funding and planning for capacity.  But, the study released by the committee shows that almost all 14 states studied have policies that deal with these topics.  These topics are also covered in the first bill filed in the 2010 session on open enrollment, Senate Bill 603, by Senator Rob Meyer.  The bill was referred to the Senate Education Committee but has not yet been scheduled for a hearing.

The Children’s Education Council has previously discussed how open enrollment can benefit special needs students.  In addition to being able to move their child to a district with better services, the parent would also be able to find a district that practices policies that a parent believes is best for their child.  For example, I had a conversation recently with the organizer of an anti- seclusion website in Missouri, and she was very interested in open enrollment.  She explained that she pulled her autistic child out of her zone district and is now homeschooling due to the district’s policies on seclusion and restraint.  She also cited Missouri as being one of the few states that still allows districts to use corporal punishment on students.  She would like to take part in this policy so she could look for a public school district close to her who has better policies on these issues.

The Missouri Education Reform Council (MERC) has taken the lead on this issue and has received a great deal of media attention around the state. MERC is a group of former school superintendents and administrators who support education reform.  The Children’s Education Council will continue to support MERC and the passage of open enrollment during the 2010 session.

There are few scholarship programs that exist for special needs students, especially if you are in a high school grade level. While there are financial assistance programs for early intervention of younger students, they are usually focused on a few specific disabilities and are limited in the scope of what the assistance will cover. The dollar amount of these programs is usually not enough for a parent to remove their child from a school district and place them in private services.

A common piece of advice that a parent receives is to call an IEP meeting to review their child’s goals and the progress toward those goals. The IEP is the Individualized Education Plan that is put together for a special needs student outlining goals for that individual student’s education, and how they will be met. Parents who call our office report their frustration with the IEP process. They state that no one in the meeting is on their side and education terms are not clearly defined. The overall feeling is that they are railroaded into the plans put together by the teachers or agencies in the meeting and have very little input. Meetings called by a parent to review a struggling student’s IEP often begins with a long delay in even holding the meeting and ends with the student’s little progress being excused away. The parent eventually gets tired of fighting this system and begins to seek a way to remove their child from the district that is failing them.

When a parent begins on this road, they quickly find that it is very difficult to move their child. In St. Louis and Kansas City, public charter schools may be one option. Unfortunately, there are no charter schools that focus only on special needs. The main roadblock to this is that, per Missouri’s charter school law, students must be admitted by a lottery process and not screened in any way before entry. It remain to be seen if a charter school in St. Louis or Kansas City built for special needs students would be successful solely based on the thought that only parents of special needs students would apply to a lottery for their school. According to the Center for Education Reform, there are 85 special needs charter schools in the country, mostly in Florida and Ohio. Even if these schools were to open in St. Louis and Kansas City and be successful, what option does a parent outside of those two districts have? Missouri is the only state in the country that has a geographic cap on charter schools. This cap limits charter schools to opening only inside of the St. Louis and Kansas City Public School districts. The schools can also only accept students who live in these districts.

Parents who call our office usually know that the law requires a free, appropriate public education to be afforded to their child. Therefore, they ask “can’t I just transfer my child to another district with better services?” The answer is unfortunately “no.” This ideal is called open enrollment and Missouri has yet to join the 40 other states in the country who have some form of open enrollment. Open enrollment simply allows parents to transfer their child to a school outside of their assigned district if the receiving district has room. For more on open enrollment, check out our previous post on how open enrollment would help special needs students.

Parents also call in and ask if there are special schools in their district only for special needs students. Twenty three districts contract with Special School District (SSD) of St. Louis County, who operates five special education schools. This leaves 500 districts in the state of Missouri without this option. Parents also report to us the difficulty of getting their child moved into SSD. One parent reported their child being suspended 11 times in the current school year before the district would discuss SSD as an option. According to the parent, this child was on an IEP the previous year and had far fewer behavioral incidents, but was removed from an IEP in the current school year, against the parent’s wishes.

The bottom line in all of these stories is that the parents of the 133,000 Missouri children with IEPs have very few options when they feel the assigned local district is not able to meet the needs of their child. Implementing real education reforms in Missouri will have a positive impact on special needs families. Open enrollment, charter school expansion and scholarship tax credit programs are all good ways to give parents options when their assigned local districts are not educating their children. Districts should look at this recent United Supreme Court case as evidence that the law gives parents great powers when seeking the appropriate education for their child. Districts should jump on board for reforms, or risk paying for children to go to specialized schools, even without their consent. Furthermore, having options will help these children on a path to become productive members of society. Isn’t that what everyone should be working toward?

In some cases, as Meta, MO mother Lois Wankum testified to the committee at their October 20th hearing, students are much closer to a school in an adjacent district than the one to which they are assigned. In other cases, parents are simply looking to remove their child from a failing school district and enroll them in ones that are better performing. For many special needs parents this policy could unlock the doors of educational opportunity for their child that is trapped in a district that does not have the appropriate services to help their child.

Open enrollment would allow for these parents, who often do not have the means to send their child to a private education service such as TouchPoint or Giant Steps, to move their child to a district that may have better services. For example, the Rockwood School District in suburban St. Louis County gave an excellent presentation on their special needs services at the St. Louis meeting of the Interim Committee on Autism Spectrum Disorders. At the same hearing a mother gave desperate testimony on how her autistic child was having many problems in his local school district and she could not afford to send her child to a specialized private school. “I am drowning here” was the phrase that she repeated over and over. Why should her head continue to be held under water by outdated school district lines? Why should these district lines trap her son in the boundaries of receiving an ineffective education instead of receiving a possible lifeline of intervention leading to a productive, healthy life?

A study in Minnesota, one of 25 states that have open enrollment, shows that “the families of special-needs students are increasingly using the open-enrollment option and are satisfied with their choices.” This same option could be a reality for the families of 133,000+ IEP students in the state of Missouri, should the state choose to allow this policy. These families are not concerned with outdated school boundaries, only with seeing that their child has the best possible education options, and thus the best chance for leading a productive life.

“This bill includes several important provisions to move education reform forward in the state of Missouri,” said CECM State Director Earl Simms. “The winners today, if the bill is signed by Governor Nixon, are the children of the state.”

Among the highlights of the bill are studies to be conducted by the Joint Committee on Education regarding the issue of open enrollment and a study comparing the performance of charter school students with a group of district students representing an equivalent demographic and geographic population. The bill also establishes the Teacher Choice Compensation Package for the St. Louis City School District to allow for performance-based salary stipends upon the decision of a teacher. Teachers would have to leave the tenure program to be eligible and could receive stipends up to $15,000 for entering the program.

“The members of both the House and the Senate, especially the chairman of both chamber’s education committees, Senator Mayer and Representative Wallace, should be commended for their hard work on this bipartisan bill,” added Simms. The bill now heads to Governor Jay Nixon’s desk to be signed into law.

Other provisions of the bill include legislation that:

• Prohibits any school discipline policy which confines an unattended student in a locked space, except when awaiting law enforcement personnel.
• Establishes the Missouri Senior Cadet Program to provide opportunities for twelfth graders in public school to mentor kindergarten through eighth grade students.
• Allows the Governor to establish the P-20 Council as a private not-for-profit corporation to coordinate the preparation of students for entering the workforce.
• Requires the State Board of Education to provide seven days’ written notice of board meetings to members. The number of members needed to request a meeting of the board is reduced from four to three. Any business before the board must be made available by free electronic record at least seven business days before the meeting. All records must be available by free electronic media within 48 hours after a meeting. Any materials prepared for board members must be delivered to the members at least five days before the meeting.
• Requires public schools to develop teaching standards by June 30, 2010.
• Establishes a bill of rights for the parents of children with individualized education programs and requires the department to publish a guide in clear concise language that includes, but is not limited to, the parents’ rights to participate in meetings, to obtain copies of records, to have an advocate present, and to receive a nonexclusive list of services to which a child may be entitled.
• Specifies that school districts offering virtual courses to resident-enrolled students will receive state school funding for those students.
• Establishes physical education standards for elementary schools as of the 2010-2011 school year that include moderate physical activity for an average of 30 minutes per day.

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