WELLSTON • Inside the Normandy High School gymnasium, Raquan Smith stood at the microphone, his hands clasped behind his back.
The high school senior told state education officials that the uncertainty surrounding the future of his school district and school took him back four years to when he was an eighth-grader in Wellston, at Eskridge High School.
Like Normandy, the tiny Wellston district was unaccredited. Student transfers were costing more than the school system could afford. In the end, the Missouri Board of Education dissolved the district and sent its students to Normandy schools.
“I’m hearing the same conversations I heard at Wellston and it’s tearing me up inside,” Raquan said told the 150 or so gathered inside the gym. “It makes you feel inadequate. It makes you feel you don’t count.”
It was the second and final state hearing concerning the future of the Normandy School District, which is reeling financially under the weight of the school transfer statute. Missouri Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro and other high-ranking education officials listened as students, teachers, parents and civic leaders expressed a range of emotion about how the transfers have affected their district, and raised questions about the district’s future.
Henry Watts of the Normandy School Board told state officials to back off. “We need to solve our own problems in our own community,” he said.
District resident Dryver Henderson held up signs urging the district to file an injunction to stop the transfers. Paul Davis, whose son transferred to Francis Howell schools, said the choice was a right that all children should be allowed.
Students said the debate and the uncertainty of it all left them anxious and the cutbacks resulting from $15 million in transfer expenses left them confused, because the district is under pressure to improve.
Robert McRath, a Normandy senior, said he was losing his math teacher, “who puts things in a way we can really relate to.” Sydney BoClair, a student at Normandy Middle School, said the cutbacks meant the elimination of the gifted and talented program.
“You laid off our teacher,” Sydney said. “Some of us might not get A’s because we’ll be bored in class.”
Education officials say they’ll consider the input as they develop a long-range plan to address the state’s most troubled districts, such as Normandy, Riverview Gardens and Kansas City. Nicastro is expected to present a draft of that plan to Missouri Board of Education in January.
A plan supported by school superintendents would put struggling schools into one large achievement district, removing them from local district control.
On Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the law a second time this year, in a lawsuit involving the unaccredited Kansas City school district. The transfer process is expected to begin there next school year.
The transfer law allows students in unaccredited districts to transfer to higher performing schools and requires the home districts to pick up the costs. The $15 million in tuition and transportation costs of about 1,000 transfer students could result in the Normandy district’s insolvency by spring. Riverview Gardens is shouldering a similar expense for about 1,200 transfer students.
Deputy Education Commissioner Ron Lankford told the crowd that neither his department nor the state Board of Education had anything to do with crafting the law.
“One thing the state board could not do was stop the transfers because it was in statute,” he said. “The statute needs to be addressed.”
The State Board has expressed dissatisfaction with the law and its impact, and emphasized it again on Wednesday.
“Moving children from one place to another is not the answer,” Board President Peter Herschend said in a press release. “It creates hardships for families and has the potential to destroy communities.”
Several Missouri lawmakers have filed bills to alter the transfer law and change how Missouri addresses struggling schools. The issue is expected to become a contentious one once the Legislature reconvenes in January.
Nicastro has come under fire in recent weeks for how her department is working to develop this plan. A growing number of lawmakers are calling for her resignation after emails that became public called into question the way the education department hired a consultant to develop a turnaround plan for Kansas City Public Schools.
When asked if such pressure has been a distraction, Nicastro said, “We keep our heads down and stay focused on the work.”
Staying focused is certainly the challenge, Normandy students at the hearing said. High schoolers told education officials that the atmosphere at Normandy High was better this year — attendance is up, fights are rare. But they’re worried about what may happen this spring, if the Legislature doesn’t send $6.8 million to keep schools open. They say they don’t want to be forced to leave.
“I’m asking DESE, help,” Raquan said into the microphone, using the acronym for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. “I’m asking you not to do to us what you did to Wellston, my first home. ... Tell us what we need to do to stay open.”
