Schools

School Transfer Case Could Impact Mehlville Classroom Sizes

The superintendent said the impact will not be great, but questions about funding and space remain.

A case that could change education throughout Missouri starts Monday in St. Louis County Court at 1:30 p.m. 

Formerly known as Turner v. Clayton, Judge David Lee Vincent III will begin hearing Gina Breitenfeld v. School District of Clayton in Division 9. The trial is expected to run through Wednesday, though more proceedings could follow. 

At the heart of the case is whether suburban St. Louis County school districts such as the School District of Clayton should be required to enroll students who request transfers from unaccredited St. Louis city schools. Officials representing Clayton schools argue that such a requirement would represent an unfunded mandate and violate the Hancock Amendment.  

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The parents in the case said the home district should pay the tuition for their students to attend accredited schools.

Mehlville, along with other county schools, could see an influx of students without guidance on funding or classroom space.

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For Mehlville Superintendent Eric Knost, the biggest concern is funding.

“We already have a financially-strapped education budget in the state,” he said. “In Mehlville, we will always do the very best we can with the resources we are given. And if that means welcoming additional kids from outside of this district, of course we’ll do it, we’ll embrace those kids and we’ll make them our own.”

But issues of space and classroom size remain.

“We’ve had approximately 70 inquiries over the existence of this Turner case, saying, 'The minute (the district) is accepting, we want to come there.' It’s hard to tell out of those 70 how many are legitimate,” Knost said.

Hypothetically, an increase of 70 students, if the district has control on which school to place those students, would not be seriously detrimental, Knost said. But if the students or families demand to attend a specific school, the superintendent forsees a potential problem.

“We’ve worked hard on our overcrowding and lowering our class sizes over the years, and we’ve had good luck with that,” he said. “It’s going to be about how (the outcome) is done.”

Mehlville currently participates in the Voluntary Interdistrict Choice Cooperation (VICC) program, which buses city students to suburban schools. The schools receive money to cover the cost of the students and control which school in the district the students attend.

“VICC is in place, and it’s a mechanism to allow African American students to attend county schools, and it works,” Knost said. “To me, it makes all the sense in the world to do it through VICC.”

For two years, the state legislature has been working on bills for a “Turner fix.”

This week, the judge can hand the case back to the legislature, or make a ruling for or against Clayton schools.

House Bill 1740 passed 13-9 out of the Committee of Elementary and Secondary Education, and includes a Turner fix as well as a solution to the underfunded state education formula.

The bill, sponsored by Scott Diekhaus (R-Washington), includes a $40 million funding allowance for students transferring to accredited schools through tax credits and vouchers. It also said the receiving school must admit students based on the time of application until full capacity is reached, placing a cap on the number of students who can transfer in.

HB 1740 said the tuition will be the same as the VICC program and districts will assign the transfer students to a particular building. 

While the legislation includes provisions for the Turner case and state funding, it also adds wording for teacher tenure and charter schools, making it an omnibus bill.

The bill's solution for state funding came from a previous resolution, House Bill 1043.

Under the bill, Mehlville would have received about $1.5 million more from the state than it’s predicted to receive in 2011-2012. It required a recalculation every year using a three-year average of wage data.

But the real advantage of the bill is that it doesn’t create a large discrepancy between last year and this year’s state funding for other districts, Knost said.

Other legislation or approaches varied some school districts’ funding by as much as $17 million.

The Turner case is expected to hear a decision by Wednesday, and until then, school districts have no choice but to wait.

On Feb. 7, Vincent consolidated Turner-related cases under the umbrella of the Breitenfeld case, the website Missouri Case.net states. 

Breitenfeld, a St. Louis Public Schools parent who has children enrolled in Clayton schools, is the remaining plaintiff in the case. Two other plaintiffs, Jane Turner and William Drendel, .  


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