Hearings in St. Louis, KC filled with woes of urban schools

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The occasion was the evening of January's special election. We Republicans had just made history by winning two of three contests in northern Missouri to be entrusted with an 18-16 majority in the state Senate for the first time since 1948. A celebration was under way in the fourth-floor Capitol office of this writer. Asked by reporters what I saw as the biggest issue facing Missouri, I answered that it was the deplorable state of our urban schools, with Kansas City and St. Louis two of the most troubled and dysfunctional urban systems in America. The pledge was made by this writer to convene a special Senate committee on urban schools to look into the situation and recommend courses of action.

On Nov. 13 and 14, this writer as chairman convened the special panel of senators for hearings, first in St. Louis and the next night in Kansas City. We are indebted to A.G. Edwards and Sons for allowing us the use of their meeting room in St. Louis and to the University of Missouri-Kansas City for a room on that campus. Present at one or both were three of four Republican members (one was out of the state) and all three Democrats. Each hearing featured several dozen witnesses and lasted from a 6 p.m. until past 9:30 p.m. with no breaks. We videotaped each hearing in order to establish a record.

Out of respect to the established authorities, we allowed the superintendents of each school district to begin the evening by presenting testimony. Taking us up on this offer were Dr. Cleveland Hammonds of St. Louis and Dr. Bernard Taylor in Kansas City.

No effort was made to stack the hearings in any fashion. Still, I refuse to apologize for the hearings' stated purpose: Less to hear from those authorities than to glean testimony from parents, taxpayers, employers and grassroots education-reform activists. What followed for the balance of the seven-plus hours of exhaustive hearings was a parade of overwhelmingly minority witnesses. It is precisely these citizens who too often are trapped in our failing urban schools. In the main, the preponderant message of these witnesses and activists -- including one African American mother who told me she and I shared a classroom in the late Prof. Jim Hamby's philosophy class 25 years ago -- may be summarized:

We need more choices of where to send our children to school. One size doesn't fit all. The existing system isn't serving us well. It isn't right that you have to go to an assigned school based on your ZIP Code. We want and need the opportunities offered by public charter schools. We want vouchers. We want tax credits. We want a multiplicity of alternatives to the one-size-fits-all system. The existing authorities in charge of the two city school systems say they want parental involvement but will run you out of school if you ask too many questions they don't like." (This was documented with an especially egregious incident in the St. Louis schools, where an African American mother was run out of the school her taxes pay for merely for asking to attend an assembly so she could hear the subject matter.)

Asked by Kit Wagar of The Kansas City Star for a reaction, I said both hearings left us with the same impression: "These were ringing calls for school choice from a heavily minority audience. I don't know how any lawmaker with an open mind can listen to these students and parents and not be moved by it."

Stay tuned. The battle for school choice is under way in the Show Me State.

Peter Kinder is assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.