The clock is ticking for the Normandy School District, which in addition to being unaccredited, is expected to run out of money to pay its bills by April.
That financial insolvency, coupled with the academic deficiency, could lead to the dissolution of the district, unless last-minute funding is found. Normandy’s revenue shortfall may prevent it from being saved by strategies that the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is devising to prevent the state’s two other unaccredited districts, Kansas City and Riverview Gardens, from experiencing the same fiscal fate that has beset Normandy.
Under state statute 167.131, students living in an unaccredited district can transfer to a school in an accredited district, with their home district paying tuition and transportation costs. Those costs have led to Normandy’s slide to its current near-bankrupt condition.
On Monday, the Missouri State Board of Education listened to a proposal aimed at turning around unaccredited school districts. But that proposal and others may arrive too late for Normandy.
Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro says the turn-around proposals for troubled districts focus on how to improve public education within the failed district. Any change that is made to the transfer program is “in the hands of the legislature,” she says.
“The plan that we ultimately come up with and the State Board of Education approves would be advanced irrespective of whether or not the legislature chooses to make changes in the transfer program," Nicastro adds. "If they do not make changes, then the current situation is that the transfer program would continue, and we would do our best to offer additional quality options within the boundaries of the district, whether that is Kansas City, Normandy, or Riverview.”
She believes the transfer program is “not sustainable” as currently constructed. Changes to the program have been proposed in the legislature, including a set tuition fee reimbursement and a consistent formula to determine how many students the receiving districts will accept.
“Ultimately, any district that ends up sending students to another district with the current tuition calculation will end up going bankrupt,” Nicastro says. “If they want to continue the transfer program, they are going to have to make some changes in it. But that is an entirely separate issue from what we are talking about, which is 'How do we appropriately support and, if necessary, intervene in districts that are unaccredited?'”
If Normandy runs out of revenue before any alternative program is adopted for unaccredited districts, the state has two basic choices: 1) The entire district would be absorbed by an adjacent school district, or 2) Divide up parts of the Normandy School District, and have those parts taken over by some or all of the five districts that surround it. Normandy shares borders with the school districts of Ritenour, Ferguson-Florissant, Jennings, University City, and the city of St. Louis.
“Districts that cannot meet their financial obligations dissolve, and the students are either split up into other districts or the district is merged with another district,” says DESE spokesperson Sarah Potter. “There are no procedures or funds to help bankrupt districts remain open.”
Despite a lack of obvious solutions, Normandy Superintendent of Schools Ty McNichols was in Jefferson City last week, seeking about $5 million that he says will enable Normandy to remain open in its current configuration until the next school year. Daphne Dorsey, spokesperson for the Normandy School District, expressed optimism that some funding could be found on the state level. “Dr. McNichols was meeting with state legislators personally to talk to them about what is going on in the Normandy School District and the impact to the district if we do not get the funding that DESE is requesting we get through the governor’s supplemental budget,” she said.
Dorsey added that Normandy already has cut back as much as it can. “We’ve always maintained we would run out of money if nothing happened," she said. "We’ve laid off more than 100 people at the end of the first semester. That included teachers, administrators and other staff. We also closed one of our school buildings.”
Cost-cutting has saved about $3.5 million this school year, Dorsey said, and it should lead to about $7 million in savings for next year. “We had to take those steps as a result of the state-mandated student transfer program,” she said. Dorsey estimated that about 250 students who are transferring from Normandy to other districts moved into the district to enroll in the program, even though “they never attended school within the Normandy School District.”
Due to two Missouri Supreme Court rulings that supported state statute 167.131, passed in 1993, students living in unaccredited school districts are entitled to attend public schools in accredited districts in the same or an adjoining county. About 1,000 students from Normandy and 1,100 from Riverview Gardens chose to transfer.
Under Senate Bill 125, passed last session, the state has more options to address the academic problems of an unaccredited district, says Mike Jones, vice president of the Missouri State Board of Education. “We had a lot of people tell us we should dissolve the Normandy board and put in a special administrative board, but that doesn’t change the finances or the calendar,” he says. “Riverview Gardens is an example. There isn’t any magic to a [special administrative board]. The biggest issue Normandy has that separates it from Riverview Gardens is that Normandy was financially thinner when this started, and ended up with a bigger transfer bill. Riverview Gardens will be in the same shape sometime next year.”
If Normandy cannot pay it bills, the state has the requirement to “lapse” the district, which basically means “to put it out of business,” Jones says. Last year, Normandy received 49 percent of its funding from the state and 10 percent from the federal government. If the district is lapsed, that money and local district tax dollars would go to funding the education of Normandy students, whether they stay in district schools or transfer.
If Normandy receives interim funding from the state, it could hang on until next school year, and by that time one of the plans presented to the Missouri State Board of Education might be in operation. The proposal by Indiana-based Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust) would set up a nonprofit Community Schools Office to run the system services in an unaccredited district, but it would leave budget, staffing, and curriculum decisions up to individual schools.
DESE will consider other plans for troubled districts. There are three unaccredited districts and 11 provisionally accredited districts in the state, including Jennings and the city of St. Louis' public schools. If a district becomes unaccredited and is taken over by one of these plans, DESE believes it might not be considered unaccredited, as it would have new management and be given time to reach accreditation status; therefore, it might not be part of the transfer program.
Either way, approving and implementing a plan might take months to happen, and that would be too late for Normandy.
Kate Casas, state director of the Children’s Education Alliance of Missouri, believes the school superintendents’ plan for troubled districts is “extremely flawed” because it does little to improve an unaccredited district. “It just changes what we call them," she says. "It would offer children no choice about where they would go to school. They would be forced to go to unaccredited schools, because we now call them academically stressed.”
The CEE-Trust plan is better, she believes. “It would bring in new, proven operators and change the way schools are governed and managed," Casas says. "No child would be forced to go to a school in the CSO; therefore, if a school were not good, no one would have to go there.”
DESE will make its recommendations to the state board in February, but there is no guarantee how long the board might take to decide—and if it would be in time for Normandy.
