Securing Educational Opportunities for All Students

To create a strong foundation for Missouri’s future economic growth and opportunity, your Republican-led legislature is dedicated to providing all students, regardless of their zip code, a high-quality education to prepare them for the careers of the future and equip them with the skills needed to become engaged citizens and leaders.

House Bill 1868, sponsored by Representative Rick Stream (R – Kirkwood), is designed to improve the educational opportunities offered to students in Missouri by reforming the guidelines for transferring students from unaccredited to accredited districts.

The State Board of Education labels school districts in Missouri as accredited, provisionally accredited, or unaccredited, and currently, three districts are classified as unaccredited. Students in these areas deserve the best education possible, so Missouri law allows them to transfer to an accredited district in their area. The students’ tuition and transportation costs have to be covered by the sending district, and the receiving district must accept the students.

Recently this policy has created tension in the St. Louis area because students from Normandy and Riverview Gardens transferred to districts in St. Louis County, St. Charles County, and the St. Louis Public Schools district. The cost has been so tremendous for Normandy that our House’s supplemental budget bill includes $5 million to keep the school financially solvent for the remainder of the school year so Normandy high school seniors can graduate from the school.

Under HB 1868 each school building in unaccredited and provisionally accredited districts would be evaluated separately, meaning there could be accredited buildings in unaccredited districts. Students in unaccredited buildings would have the option to transfer to an accredited building in their home district first.  When those schools are filled, students would be able to transfer to other accredited districts with available space. Districts sending students to accredited schools would pay the receiving district 70% of the receiving district’s tuition rate for each student and place another 5% into a transportation fund to bus students to the receiving school.

Districts receiving students would establish class size and teacher-pupil ratio limits and would not have to accept more students than they had space to accommodate. This would ensure that they had adequate resources to educate their existing pupils as well as the transferred students.

To help Missouri’s provisionally accredited K-12 institutions become fully accredited and better serve students, Assistance Teams made up of school board members, administrators, teachers, experts, and citizens would study these districts and develop recommendations for the schools to implement.

One of the greatest legacies we as a legislature can leave behind is securing Missouri’s future by strengthening our educational system. Students from every corner of the state deserve the best education possible for their lives and careers. By increasing educational choice and instituting reforms to improve school quality, we can make this good start possible for all students in Missouri.