Despite the Normandy school district’s recent refusal to compensate other school districts for taking in their students, the numbers reflect a reality that the current inter-district student transfer program is here to stay, bolstered by money, a need for students, and backed by legal standing and legislative inertia.
The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has made it clear that if an unaccredited school district refuses to make payments to the accredited school districts that have enrolled their students, then the state will make those payments by siphoning state money that otherwise would have went to the unaccredited districts.
Under normal circumstances, Normandy receives 49 percent of its funds from the state and 10 percent from the federal government. The other unaccredited district currently involved, Riverview Gardens, receives 55 percent of its budget from the state and 12 percent from federal sources.
Districts that will receive the most compensation are those taking in the bulk of transferring students. (As of October 25, there were 2,158 students making the trip to accredited schools, according to DESE.) The money that would have gone to pay for schooling in the students' unaccredited home districts will follow them to their new school districts—and it’s a lot of money.
For the 427 students who've transferred to the Ferguson-Florissant School District, more than $4.8 million is projected to be paid this school year.
St. Charles County's Francis Howell School District should receive about $4.7 million for its 436 transfer students.
Mehlville School District, which has received 209 students from Riverview Gardens, is expected to receive about $1.8 million during the school year.
Hazelwood will get $2.6 million, University City is scheduled for $1.2 million in payments, and Ladue will accrue $1.1 million.
The payments are over time, as the school year progresses. The Ritenour School District is receiving 102 students from Normandy and 20 students from Riverview Gardens, according to DESE. Ritenour spokesperson Michelle Mueller confirmed that in September Normandy paid the school district $63,199.82 to cover transfer students for the month of August. “This was the full amount billed to Normandy for that month,” says Mueller. “Ritenour submitted an invoice for $109,843.13 for the month of September 2013, and we are waiting on that bill.”
In the aftermath of the Normandy school board's recent decision not to pay for transfer students, DESE released a statement: Financial support of non-paying districts would cease to flow to unaccredited districts that do not make payments. “The state will withhold tuition from unaccredited districts for failure to pay after two consecutive months,” DESE stated. “The department will take this action if necessary, and if Normandy does not make timely payments to school districts receiving transfer students.”
This is analogous to a person who's seriously in debt having his or her wages garnished. Only 40 percent of Normandy’s budget comes from local taxes, and 31 percent of Riverview Gardens is from local taxes. If Normandy continues to refuse to make payments to districts receiving its transfer students, the state will divert its financial support to those other districts.
Recipient districts benefit not only from the transfer payments, but in their latitude for placing incoming students throughout the kindergarten-to-12th grade spectrum. Often, districts can put students in classrooms with below-average sizes, thereby avoiding the need to add more teachers or staff. Only when class sizes reach their limit would these districts need to hire more staff.
Conversely, origin districts that send out transfer students have a more complex problem: They cannot lay off teachers and staff quickly until they have a better idea of how many students remain and in what grades. Even then, the district needs to be reorganized to make better use of dwindling resources.
Normandy School District just announced plans to close one elementary school and lay off more than 100 employees.
The transfer program comes at a time when many districts are aware that the school-age populations in their districts are on the decline. Only three existing districts in St. Louis County saw school-age populations increase from 2000 to 2010, according to Census data.
Ladue’s population rise in residents under 18 years of age was 10.3 percent in that time span. Lindbergh was the next highest, at 1.8 percent, followed by Kirkwood at less than 1 percent. Wellston, which no longer exists as an independent district after being subsumed into Normandy, had increased its youth population by 2010 by 9.7 percent.
The St. Louis County school districts with the biggest drop in under-18 demographic, as shown by the 2010 census, were Hancock Place, with a 19.2 percent decrease; Maplewood-Richmond Heights, with a 18.4 percent decline; and Jennings, at 18.3 percent. Even Francis Howell School District saw its under-18 cohort drop by 11 percent.
Normandy’s school-age population during the period dropped by 17.2 percent. The city of St. Louis' school-district youth population loss reached 24.7 percent.
Based on that data, many school districts realize their enrollments might start to dwindle in the years ahead, and that decrease would lead to less funding.
At a time when many districts see their potential student pools shrinking, they are being offered incoming students with money following them. With those dynamics, it's doubtful the education establishment will lobby to repeal or diminish the current transfer program. Some alternations or a control mechanism is possible, but a rollback is unlikely.
