By LESLIE COLLINS
Northeast News
December 18, 2013

Kansas City Public Schools has filed a lawsuit in hopes of preventing a state takeover and financial hardships due to student transfers.

Last week, the Missouri Supreme Court voted to uphold the accreditation transfer law, which requires unaccredited school districts to pay for tuition, and in some cases transportation costs, for students wishing to transfer to a nearby accredited school district.

KCPS lost its state accreditation in 2012 and failed to regain provisional accreditation this year.

“The decision of the Supreme Court, when added to the decision of the State Board of Education not to confer the provisional accreditation our scholars earned, will create irreparable harm to the ongoing growth of their achievement,” the KCPS Board of Education said in a written statement.

As a result, the board consulted with its legal counsel and agreed to pursue litigation.

Filed Dec. 13, 2013 in Cole County Circuit Court, the case names the Missouri State Board of Education and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) as defendants. In the suit, KCPS is asking the circuit court to order the State Board of Education to grant KCPS temporary provisional accreditation and for the court to determine whether or not the State Board’s decision to deny KCPS provisional accreditation this year was unlawful, unreasonable or arbitrary, among others.

According to the lawsuit, both DESE and the State Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro worked “covertly” to break up KCPS into charter schools. In addition, they pushed for Senate Bill 125 which expedited the process for a state takeover of an unaccredited school district. Senate Bill 125 became effective in July and nixed the two-year waiting period for a state takeover following an unaccredited classification and allows the State Board to take immediate action. KCPS alleges in the lawsuit that Nicastro and the State Board hired Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust) through a rigged bidding process to create a plan to break up KCPS schools into charter schools.

In a written response to a Kansas City Star article regarding CEE-Trust, DESE stated that CEE-Trust was selected through an “open and competitive bidding process” and was the “clear choice for conducting analysis and making recommendations for transforming Kansas City Public Schools.”

“Change is always hard and many will oppose change, but what we are doing now is not working,” the DESE press release continued. “We as a state and the State Board of Education have to find better ways of helping students, schools, teachers and education leadership over the barrier of failing schools. After more than 30 years of failure in KCPS, we need to seize this moment and have a community conversation about how we educate our kids.”

KCPS, however, is arguing that the district is already making strides – academically, financially and through effective leadership. According to the suit, KCPS “narrowly missed the mark” for provisional accreditation in 2012 and continued to show improvement. Under the state’s newly adopted Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP) 5 guidelines, KCPS earned 84 out of 140 Annual Performance Report (APR) points, more than enough to qualify for provisional accreditation, for criteria met during the 2012-2013 school year. To qualify for full accreditation, a district must score at least 98 points. Despite KCPS’ gains, Nicastro recommended that KCPS remain unaccredited, and the State Board adhered to her recommendation. In 2007, the St. Louis Public School District lost its state accreditation but made improvements in 2012 under MSIP 4 guidelines. Nicastro recanted her original recommendation to not reclassify the district, and the State Board granted provisional accreditation to the district in October of 2012. KCPS pointed out that KCPS earned 60 percent of the points under MSIP 5 while St. Louis only earned 24.6 percent of the points. In addition, KCPS outscored all of the eight charter schools located within KCPS boundaries, according to the lawsuit.

Only two other school districts in Missouri are currently unaccredited and include Normandy and Riverview Gardens, both located in St. Louis. As a result of the accreditation transfer law, approximately 25 percent of the students in the Normandy and Riverview Gardens school districts have requested transfers to accredited districts. DESE estimated the cost of tuition and transportation for transferring students in both districts will soar above $35 million. Unless something changes, Normandy will go bankrupt this school year.

“The State Board’s decision, at DESE’s recommendation, to maintain KCPS’s ‘unaccredited’ classification was essential to carrying out the State Board’s and DESE’s plans to break up KCPS into charter schools after CEE-Trust issues its report in January 2014,” the lawsuit stated. “Commissioner Nicastro, DESE, and the State Board are not about to let KCPS’s rapidly improving performance and new MSIP 5 status as ‘Provisionally Accredited’ interfere with Commissioner Nicastro’s, DESE’s, and the State Board’s plans to break up KCPS.”

KCPS Superintendent Dr. Stephen Green said the district’s primary concern is for the welfare of its nearly 16,000 students.

“They deserve a healthy, stable and caring school within their neighborhood. This ruling, along with an inadequate transfer law, has the potential to rip that away from thousands of urban students. That flies in the face of our community’s crystal clear desire for stable schools,” Green said during a Dec. 10 press conference. “The inaction (of DESE) to date has already been devastating and threatens every accomplishment made by our students. Something needs to be done.”