The bill passed after much debate on the effects of the legislation on struggling rural school districts.  During the initial approval process, an amendment was adopted to limit who could sponsor charter schools in provisionally accredited districts to alleviate some of these concerns.

The amendment only allows, in these districts, sponsors who meet quality standards set by the State Board of Education, the local school board or the newly created Missouri Charter Public School Commission.  The district would have to be provisionally accredited for three years before one of these sponsors could open a charter school.

HB 473 calls for expanding charter school sponsoring organizations to include:

• Any public four-year college or university.
• A community college with a service area that encompasses some portion of an eligible school district.
• Any private college or university with its primary campus in Missouri.
• A two-year private nonprofit vocational or technical school.
• The Missouri Charter Public School Commission. which would be created by this legislation,
• A nonprofit or charitable organization meeting specified requirements.

In fully accredited districts only the local school board could sponsor a charter school.

The bill also greatly increases the accountability standards on charter schools.  Provisions in HB 473 allow the State Board of Education to close a school and suspend a sponsor for poor performance or financial management.  Sponsors must also apply to be allowed to open a charter school and all current sponsors must reapply.  Reporting requirements on student performance and financial management were also increased.

CECM was glad to work with lobbyists from the Missouri Charter Public School Association and Pelopidas, LLC to pass this legislation.  The bill now moves onto the State Senate where it will likely be heard in the Education Committee on Wednesday.

In addition, any school district that owns school buildings that have not been used for classroom instruction for two consecutive school years must either sell them or make them available for use by an accredited school district, charter school, virtual school, or nonsectarian nonpublic school, free of charge. The sale or lease terms must not include a restriction on using the facilities for educational purposes.

The bill sponsor, Senator Jane Cunningham, said that she will fight to keep the rights of students affirmed under the Supreme Court’s opinion in the case and that students deserve to be educated in an accredited school district.

Provisions in SB 370, also sponsored by Senator Cunningham, were rolled into the committee substitute for the bill and would set up a scholarship program for students in unaccredited districts to enroll in a nonpublic school, charter school, virtual school, or accredited school district. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education would administer the scholarship program.

CECM has testified this session in support of multiple school choice bills that would be practical solutions to the ruling in the Turner case and help students receive a quality education and escape their unaccredited district.  We will continue to support this type of legislation throughout the session.

But compromise amendments were made in order to satisfy concerns about opening charter schools in rural and suburban districts that are performing well.  The amended bill would, after three years, allow only school districts to sponsor a charter school in the district if it has been fully accredited for five consecutive years.  This would exclude sponsors, other than the school district, in about 4/5 of the state’s school districts.

All of the accountability measures were kept in the amended bill, including a new one that would immediately close charter schools that are performing below all of the traditional district schools.  Another amendment was added that would allow suburban school districts to sponsor a charter school inside of the St. Louis Public School district.  The Mayor of St. Louis was also removed as a sponsor for charter schools.

The vote for the amended bill was 10-5.  The bill will now go to the full House for a vote.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for hearing this bill today and receiving my testimony.  My name is Earl Simms and I am the State Director for the Children’s Education Council of Missouri.  We are Missouri’s leading advocates for education reform.

Legislation expanding charter public schools statewide is long overdue to give all children in Missouri access to an educational option that has made a life changing difference to so many children nationwide.  Alternatives, like charter public schools, are desperately needed in districts that have been labeled as unaccredited or provisionally accredited where no options exist, unless you are in St. Louis or Kansas City.

Why should children in the unaccredited district of Riverview Gardens be denied potential access to an option outside of their unaccredited district?  Why should children in Malta Bend R-V, Jennings, Normandy, Calhoun R-VIII and Hickman Mills, which DESE’s September Annual Performance Reviews said were on a path to unaccreditation, be denied an option outside of their failing school districts?

Why should children in Hayti R-II, Exeter R-VI, Humansville R-IV, Ferguson- Florissant, Oregon- Howell R-III, University City, Charleston R-I, Caruthersville, Hazelwood, Scott County Central, Clarkton C-4 and Laquey R-V, all trending toward provisional accreditation according to the same September report, be denied an option outside of their failing school district?

I call out these districts by name, and have marked them on a map attached to my written testimony, to show that the need for expanding charter schools is not just an urban core problem in the St. Louis and Kansas City area.  The need for options outside of a traditional district setting is in all districts in the state, and for people of all racial, socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds.

In addition to the 20 districts that this September report said could potentially be unaccredited or provisionally accredited, there are many children all across the state that are not learning in the typical traditional education environment that could benefit from expanding charter schools statewide and become involved in innovative programs.

Two years ago I spoke with a wonderful lady who would like to turn her private French language immersion school in Columbia into a charter public school to give more access to people in that community who are interested in her program. She said her dream was to bring to Columbia a school similar to Academie Lafayette, a French immersion school in Kansas City, which is one of, if not the, top charter public school in the state.  Why should children in Columbia, Springfield, or any other area of the state, be denied potential access to these types of innovative programs?

In addition to expanding charter public schools statewide, we support the expanded accountability measures in this bill.  The promise of charter public schools is not to have charter schools for name sake, but to have high quality charter public schools.  If these schools are not performing at high levels according to the tenants of their charter, then they should close.  We do agree that the State Board should have the authority to close a school for poor performance or financial mismanagement.  We also support provisions in this bill to increase initial planning and reporting requirements on sponsors.  Quality sponsorship plays a key role in founding a quality charter school.

We also support provisions in this bill to expand the entities that can sponsor a charter school.  I recently attended a panel discussion at the St. Louis Science Center where the main question was how to increase learning in Math, Science and Technology.  I immediately thought of how great it would be if the Science Center could sponsor a charter to focus on these areas well within their expertise.  The same could be said of many other entities across the state who have a wealth of knowledge to give back to the students in their communities.

The legislature should also expand charter schools statewide as large piece of the puzzle to practically resolve the affects resulting from the Missouri Supreme Court’s opinion in the Turner v. Clayton ruling.  Not increasing educational options in failing school districts could result in the potential flooding of neighboring school districts of students from St. Louis, Riverview Gardens, and future unaccredited districts. A much more practical solution is to give these children the options that they are seeking closer to their homes.

Missouri is the only state in the country, to my knowledge, to have a geographic cap on charter schools.  This cap denies students in many other areas of the state an option that they desperately need.  It also blocks students from access to innovative programs that are showing results in Missouri and around the country.   I want to thank Representative Jones for filing this legislation and I ask each member of this committee to support this bill.  Thank you and I would be happy to take any questions.

Currently, charter schools are only allowed to operate in, and accept students from, the St. Louis and Kansas City public school districts.  Sponsorship is also limited to public, four- year universities and private universities in St. Louis.  These nationally one- of- a- kind geographic limitations have caused many of the high performing national charter school programs to pass by Missouri when seeking to expand and help more children find quality education options.

The legislation also increases accountability by allowing the Missouri State Board of Education to close a charter if it fails to meet academic or financial stability benchmarks.  The legislation sets requirements of sponsors to develop policies and procedures for reviewing charter school proposals, granting of a charter and ongoing oversight of the school.  New language is introduced in the bill that requires sponsors to have a plan in place at the start of the charter in case the school were to be closed, and plans to inform parents of their options in the event that closure occurs.

CECM is in support of the initial concepts of this bill and looks forward to working with Representative Jones, and other allies, on passage of this legislation.

Some of the key recommendations in the report include;

• Expand chartering statewide.
• Create a new statewide authorizer in Missouri to approve and oversee high-quality public charter schools.
• Prioritize state oversight by clarifying the criteria by which the State Board of Education can hold authorizers accountable for performance.
• Provide adequate resources to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) that will support its charter school responsibilities properly.
• Close chronically low-performing charter schools by creating standards of academic performance and taking action against persistently failing schools.
• Equalize resources between charter and other public schools by making charters eligible for all state-funding streams.
• Improve the authorizing environment by requiring incumbent authorizers to re-apply for their status.

Now that the groundwork has been laid, I hope to see continued progress on filing charter school legislation that meets most, if not all, of these recommendations.  The recommendations in this report are a meaningful step to moving Missouri education reform forward.  Students in all areas of Missouri deserve access to quality charter schools.

Ensuring Successful Conditions for High Performing Charter Schools

Average of scores: 17.8 out of 40 possible points

Reviewers of Missouri’s $743.5 million Race to the Top application had numerous negative comments for the state’s application as it related to charter schools and state law restricting them to only the districts of St. Louis and Kansas City.  Below are some of the comments taken directly from the review forms.

• “Low points were given to this subsection because the Missouri charter school law has geographic and sponsor limitations.”  – Reviewer #4

• “Low points are given to the Missouri proposal on this subsection concerned with charter law because the Missouri charter school law has limits on both geography and sponsors.” – Reviewer #4

• “The state has a charter school law that only allows charter schools to operate in Kansas City and St. Louis.  Although a considerable percentage of students in these locations are in charter schools, the effect of this law limits the educational choices available to students who do not live in these cities.”  – Reviewer #5

• “Missouri’s charter school law is restrictive in that it limits the establishment of charter schools to locales with populations greater than 350,000 residents.” – Reviewer #1

• “The geographic restriction for charter operations imposed by state law, has the effect of establishing a low cap on the opportunities for more charter school operations.” – Reviewer #1

• “There are concerns about why charter schools are limited to two urban school districts…” – Reviewer #3

It is clear that in order to compete for Missouri’s share of this $4.35 billion federal program that the legislature must lift the geographic restrictions on charter schools immediately.  SB 838 and HB 2200 both significantly increase the geography where charter schools could operate and increase accountability standards for authorizers beyond what the State Board of Education has requested.  These two bills should receive fair hearings in each chamber’s education committees at the next available committee meeting.  The Children’s Education Council of Missouri fully supports the passage of both of these bills.

Full scorecards and review sheets can be found online at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/phase1-applications/index.html

While the scorecards and comments for each state’s application will not be available until April, not placing in the top 16 out of 41 applications is a clear sign that Missouri’s application did not go far enough toward implementing quality reforms.  Noticeably absent from Missouri’s application was a push for expanding charter schools outside of the St. Louis and Kansas City school districts.  While leaving charter expansion out of the application may not have been the “determining factor” in not making the finalists, ten states that were among the finalists moved to lift or raise caps on charters, or had strong charter laws already in place.  Also, missing from Missouri’s application was teacher tenure reform, the main reason the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did not award Missouri a $250,000 grant to help with the application process.

Thankfully, there is still time in the legislature to pass legislation expanding charter schools to districts across the state.  Missouri’s limitations on charters, allowing them only in the St. Louis and Kansas City school districts, is clearly an artificial cap that Secretary Duncan has repeatedly said would put a state at a disadvantage for winning the much needed funding.  State Senator Scott Rupp and State Representative Scott Dieckhaus have sponsored legislation that would significantly expand charter schools throughout the state.  These bills have yet to receive hearings in committee, but should now be a top priority of the Education Committee in both chambers when they return from Spring Break.

Passing charter school expansion during the remainder of the legislative session will show the US Department of Education that our state is serious about reforming education and competing for the second round of the program. Missouri Education Commissioner, Dr. Chris NiCastro, has already stated that the state will apply for round two of the program.  Those applications are due June 1st and winners will be announced in September.