No end to woes of Kansas City schools

By State Rep. David Klindt

This week, the Kansas City Public School District finally lost its state accreditation. This means that the over 30,000 students of the district are being educated by schools that are officially unqualified to educate them. This is a tragedy, and it would be a greater tragedy to do nothing about it.

Last October, six months ago, the State School Board voted to revoke the district’s state accreditation. A court order saved the St. Louis Public School District from the same fate.

These children are being left behind by a deficient system. This system has failed generations of students, and we must act to change the system in a way that will afford every child the opportunity to learn.

The nearly 80,000 children of these two districts alone make up about nine percent of all Missouri students. Needless to say, the quality of their education deeply impacts our future success as a state.

At the very beginning of this year’s legislative session, several of us declared that a top issue facing our state was our urban education crisis and called for immediate legislative action. We followed-up by introducing several bills in the General Assembly dealing with the Kansas City School District, school funding, and school safety.

Among these was a measure to subdivide the Kansas City School District into several smaller districts. Breaking up this mammoth district would both cut bureaucracy and increase local control by helping parents and communities become more involved in their schools.

Another measure we submitted is, the “Year 2000 Classroom Fund” or “Y2C,” which would channel gambling proceeds directly to school districts. The individual districts would then be allowed to spend the money on their most pressing needs, be they teacher salaries, new buildings, or textbooks.

Yet another bill would provide “Opportunity Scholarships” for students trapped in failing schools, establish a teacher and principal mentoring program, and empower local school boards to remove failing teachers and administrators more easily. Unfortunately, the leadership of the Missouri House has not allowed even a committee vote on any bill addressing this crisis.

We need to take bold action now if we are to prevent the loss of another generation of our Kansas City schoolchildren to graduation from failing schools. These proposed solutions are the best choice for our schools, and they are the only ones that have been proposed. Unfortunately, they have been largely ignored, and time is quickly running out in the legislature this year. We know what doesn’t work; it’s time to do what will work.