Millions more to Kansas City charter schools? Missouri Senate passes revised education bill
Charter schools in Kansas City and St. Louis are poised to receive millions more in state funds each year under compromise legislation approved by the Senate on Wednesday.
The bill, which passed 29 to 5, seeks to remedy a debate over how the schools — which operate independently — should be funded. Unlike a previous version of the bill, which would have taken money away from Kansas City and St. Louis public schools, the increased funding would come directly from the state.
It now heads to the House, where lawmakers can either vote to send it to Gov. Mike Parson’s desk or propose additional changes.
“We decided to take the calculation of the difference in funding in Kansas City and St. Louis between traditional publics and charters and basically roll that into the foundation formula,” Senate Majority Leader Caleb Rowden said earlier this month. “Now the state will take on that part of the responsibility.”
The legislation comes as Kansas City’s charter schools are expected to enroll more students than its traditional public schools after years of trailing public school enrollment. Advocates have argued for years that the state’s charter schools should receive their fair share of state money and have sought to close the funding gap between public schools and charters.
Opponents to the push to increase charter school funding have said that the schools don’t have the same state oversight as public schools and, therefore, should not receive the same amount of funding.
Missouri’s charter schools currently receive local property tax dollars based on a 2005 assessed valuation of property, which some advocates have called a “glitch” in the formula. Because of this outdated formula, a child attending a charter school in Kansas City is funded at a rate of about $1,700 less than a student attending a public school. In St. Louis, charter students receive about $2,500 less.
Under the bill that passed the House last month, Kansas City Public Schools would have had to contribute to charter schools roughly $8 million or more a year, according to a fiscal analysis produced for lawmakers.
The Senate’s revised bill, which was seen as a compromise among lawmakers, would fuel charter school funding through an increase to the state’s foundation formula, which is used to calculate school funding.
It would cost the state an estimated $62 million in fiscal year 2023, according to a Senate analysis. That number would likely increase by roughly $2 million each year.
The 20 charter schools that operate in Kansas City would receive about $36 million in additional state aid in 2023, according to the proposed bill.
The bill sets some state oversight requirements for Missouri charter schools, including a provision that each schools’ board members be state residents. It also requires charter schools to publish their annual performance reports on the school website and states that companies that manage charter schools must be non-profit organizations.
A fix in school funding?
Charter schools first formed in Missouri in the late 1990s and sought to create a system where schools could operate with freedom from traditional district rules while still receiving public dollars.
In 2019, Kansas City Public School officials told The Star that they estimated that about $200 more per student, or roughly $2 million total, should be going to charters. That was lower than estimates by charter school advocates of about $15 million at the time. In total, KCPS spends more than $15,000 per student on average, including federal, state and local dollars, according to state data.
Kansas City Public Schools’ enrollment fell by more than half in recent decades as more families left for charters or suburban districts. KCPS lost state accreditation, and over the past decade had been working to improve attendance and student achievement to gain it back.
The district, which gained full district accreditation in January, has seen enrollment remain more steady in recent years. Roughly half of public school students in Kansas City, more than 13,000, now attend charter schools. There are more than 25,000 charter students in the state, with about 40% of students in St. Louis going to charters.
