Few families file for transfers out of Kansas City school district
Twelve families, 23 children.
Amid all the anxiety over the damage Missouri’s student transfer law may bring on the Kansas City area, that is the number of transfer requests Kansas City Public Schools says it received for the coming school year.
Nothing close to the more than 2,000 students who left two unaccredited St. Louis-area districts in the current school year and put the districts on the verge of bankruptcy.
The low number could change the dynamics of education reform battles consuming lawmakers in Jefferson City.
It undoubtedly gives the Kansas City district some breathing room as it tries to keep its families and teachers on board in the struggle to regain accreditation.
“I don’t think families wanted to send their kids where they are not wanted,” Kansas City parent Lyne’t Smith said, starting off her list of reasons she thinks most families passed on the chance to attend any of several neighboring accredited districts, with their tuition paid by the Kansas City district.
Several of the surrounding districts had tried — and failed — to get the state court system to throw the transfer law out as unconstitutional.
Many families already have taken the option of public charter schools, Smith said — an option not available to families in the unaccredited Normandy and Riverview Gardens districts in the St. Louis area.
Parents didn’t like the idea of “bouncing their kids around” or having to drive “umpteen miles to get your child,” she said. Besides, she added, Kansas City seems to be improving.
Smith does not think the low number is due to families being unaware of the choice or not knowing the school districts had applied the state-recommended February deadline on families to make transfer requests for the 2014-2015 school year.
“Everyone was talking about it,” she said. “It was on everyone’s lips.”
The missing rush for transfers continues to shift the ground in Missouri’s wide-ranging efforts to improve the quality of education for children in low-performing school systems.
For several years, bills in Jefferson City that aimed to ease the impact of the transfer law on schools have become staging grounds for lawmakers who want broader education reforms, such as anti-teacher-tenure measures, charter school expansion and tuition tax credits for private schools.
With Kansas City’s improving fortune, lawmakers negotiating from the western side of the state aren’t so stretched over a barrel.
The crisis remains in St. Louis and needs the state’s attention, said state Sen. Jason Holsman, a Kansas City Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, but the relief in Kansas City’s situation gives lawmakers “the flexibility to really hold the line on policy.”
“Just because they have found a crisis to latch onto doesn’t mean we will accept bad policy,” he said.
One major bill addressing reforms —
by Sen. David Pearce — passed out of the Senate with an amendment that would allow for students in unaccredited schools to get some tuition relief for private, nonreligious schools.
It is headed to the House, where many observers expect lawmakers will try to attach more reforms. The House has its own bills, too.
The state needs to look at a variety of reforms, said Rep. Randy Dunn, a Kansas City Democrat.
“I strongly support the public schools system, but I think we have to keep everything on the table,” Dunn said. “Whatever is ultimately best for students — whether that’s through a voucher system or through charter schools or whatever — as long as our children are receiving the highest quality education possible, that’s what I’m going to support.”
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon made it clear he would not support diverting any public education funding to private schools. He told an audience of St. Louis educators Saturday that such a move would undermine schools and “open the floodgates” to more experimentation.
“Our voices must be clear and united,” he said,
“Public funds belong in public schools.”
The situation is still dire, lawmakers say.
Earlier this year, Kansas City was the focus for reform. The upheaval around the smaller Normandy and Riverview Gardens districts were feared as precursors to a heavier hit in Kansas City.
The state’s education department under Commissioner Chris Nicastro was working toward a Kansas City reform plan that it intended to guide the state’s approach when intervening in unaccredited districts.
Concerns over the planning process spurred resistance from Kansas City Public Schools, which has a lawsuit pending seeking to be declared provisionally accredited and gain relief from the transfer law and any state takeover plan.
Now Kansas City Superintendent Steve Green is speaking with growing confidence that he thinks the district will score in the provisional range again this August and possibly leave its unaccredited status behind.
The state has shifted gears and is developing an overall framework for state intervention in unaccredited districts and putting off any Kansas City plan.
“We’re gaining public confidence every day,” Green said. “If we were spiraling downward, I think the interest in the choice to leave would’ve been greater.”
For surrounding districts that have been trying to answer concerns and questions from their communities, the low transfer number eases some pressure — although only temporarily.
“The steam does seem to be let out of the pot,” North Kansas City Superintendent Todd White said. “But it’s tragic what is happening in Normandy. It’s not good for anyone to be put in that situation.”
The thousands of students who stayed with Normandy, roughly 80 percent of its enrollment, are attending a school system that needs $5 million in emergency funding from the state to stay afloat.
White wishes the job of reforming the state’s work with unaccredited schools would rest primarily with the state school board, which can be more singularly focused than the legislature.
The bills in the works are already loading up with measures that are likely to have unintended consequences, he said, if any are able to beat long odds and make their way to law.
Proposals in some of the bills, such as mandatory retention of low-testing students and open enrollment between districts, are losing sight of the original intent, White said.
For its part, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is carrying on its work, planning to present its proposal for a state intervention plan at the March 21 state school board meeting, spokeswoman Sarah Potter said.
It is working “within the confines of the current law,” she said. The department and the board so far have declined to try to make a policy end run around the transfer law.
That includes not making special dispensations for Kansas City Public Schools. Even though the state is working with Kansas City essentially in the same manner that it is proposing to work with provisional districts in its drafted plan, the district remains unaccredited.
Unless there is a court decision or a change in course in the department, Kansas City’s fate probably will depend on the next state report card in late August. If it achieves a provisional score, the state board likely will consider a new accreditation status sometime this fall after the school year is underway.
That would mean the 23 students, if their families still want it, would be dispatched to their new districts. They would have to come back if Kansas City is no longer unaccredited, but Green said the district would not pull them back in the middle of a school year.
It’s not a good situation right now for anybody, said Raytown Superintendent Allan Markley.
Kansas City is showing enough promise, he said, that he thinks “parents who are so confused by all the things that are unknowns want to stick with what they know.”
There isn’t much of a reprieve, Markley said. Kansas City is showing promise, but its future is still uncertain. Other districts are in trouble. St. Louis Public Schools, unless it shows improvement, could be exposed to loss of accreditation in 2015.
Rising state benchmarks and the prospect of tougher performance tests over the next several years could bring even more districts in touch with the transfer law.
“We’re going to deal with this every year,” Markley said, “until we fix it.”
This story was originally published March 9, 2014 at 7:21 PM with the headline "Few families file for transfers out of Kansas City school district."