In only state that’s failed to authorize federal funds, GOP may cost MO schools billions
While Missouri lawmakers have been reciting poetry and reading stories in a Senate filibuster over an unfair congressional redistricting map, other important state business has gone undone. Now the state is getting dangerously close to losing about $2 billion in federal funding for schools.
The School Superintendents Association says Missouri is the only state in the nation that has not yet authorized the distribution of the federal American Rescue Plan Act funds designated for K-12 schools.
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is waiting on state legislators to accept those federal dollars to be distributed to more than 550 districts and charter schools that would help nearly 1 million students.
With that much money at stake, this should be job one for our lawmakers. But the Republican-led legislature has been fixed on one issue only: diluting the strength of the Democratic vote and muzzling the political voice of people in urban communities, particularly Kansas City and St. Louis, by proposing a gerrymandered congressional map that would result in seven Republican-leaning districts and only one Democratic district.
Right now, education needs to rise to the top of the legislative to-do list. There’s nothing to squabble about here. Act on this before the March 24 deadline. This money is crucially important to the state’s public education system.
If the deadline is not met, the money set aside for Missouri schoolchildren will be divided up among other states.
A blunder like that would cost Kansas City schools about $120 million. Such inaction would lend credence to what school leaders in the Kansas City area have been saying for years: Our legislators don’t care about public education. And, moreover, they are working to dismantle it.
Consider the school choice legislation passed last year that gives state tax credits to donors who provide scholarships to send students to private schools. That move could draw students and the tax dollars away from public districts.
Charters and districts have already submitted to the state education department plans for how they would spend the federal money.
In the Kansas City school district, the money would go primarily to “teaching and learning,” said Kelly Wachel, district spokeswoman. She said the priority is to “help keep students in school,” through the pandemic. “Because we know that when students are in school, they are served better.”
Money would also go to pay for substitutes, which is especially crucial at a time when teacher absence because of sickness is temporarily shutting down schools. The funds could also defray the costs of air infiltration systems as part of the district’s COVID-19 mitigation plan.
“This allocation of dollars only helps our kids, not only in the teaching and support arena, but in the $400 million worth of deferred maintenance for our schools, too,” Wachel said.
Contrary to what legislators may believe, Missouri schools need the federal financial support to get through the COVID-19 storm that has destabilized the educational experience of so many children in the state.
Missouri legislators cannot afford to let critical dollars for its public schools go unclaimed. That would be a dereliction of their duty as lawmakers, and earn them a failing grade in carrying out their clear responsibility to Missouri children.
This story was originally published February 14, 2022 at 10:28 AM.