They talked three different times over teleconference calls during the school year, but on Tuesday, students from Normandy and Parkway North high schools got to meet face to face.
“Nice to see you all in person,” said Christian Wallace, a senior, as he walked into the library to greet the Parkway students.
As part of a civics class, the Parkway North students have been discussing the Missouri Supreme Court ruling that triggered the transfer of more than 2,000 students from the unaccredited Normandy and Riverview Gardens districts this year. The discussions were organized by Education Plus, the group formerly known as Cooperating School Districts.
“I hope this gives you a sense of what it’s like on the other side of the fence,” Normandy Superintendent Ty McNichols told the group.
Teacher Scott Moeller said he thought getting the perspectives of the Normandy students had been valuable. Initially, both groups had stereotypes of each other, he said.
“It’s opened their minds quite a bit,” he said. “Actually connecting with the Normandy students has really caused pause on their part.”
And Wallace said he assumed that the Parkway students didn’t really want to listen to them, that it was only about completing a school assignment. But the students wanted to know a lot of what led up to the district’s loss of accreditation, and what could be done to change the situation.
“It felt real,” Wallace said.
On Tuesday, the Parkway students pulled into the high school on one of their buses. Wallace and several other Normandy students gave the Parkway class a tour of the school, including the dance studio and the culinary arts kitchen, where students prepared a lunch of chicken alfredo, salad, bread and brownies for the guests. Parkway brought cookies to share.
While they ate, the students asked each other about extracurricular activities, fights at school and the ACT.
They also talked about the uncertainty Normandy faces next year.
Paying for tuition and transportation has drained the districts of millions of dollars this year. Normandy is expected to run out of money this summer; Riverview may follow if the law remains unchanged.
The district is awaiting decisions by the Legislature and a special task force appointed by state education officials. For the underclassmen at Normandy, they’re unsure where they’ll attend school next year.
“I would be, like, majorly stressed out,” Meagan Nalepa said to one of her fellow Parkway North students as they walked outside afterward across Normandy’s campus.
Later, Nalepa said she liked that Normandy had opened up to them.
“I can tell that the school has a lot of potential to be a great school,” she said. “It would just be really sad to see all this go to waste.”
