KINDER'S COMMENTARY: SCHOOLS NOW UNDER STATE CONTROL

Across Missouri next Tuesday, voters in local school districts will trudge to the polls to choose board members in free and fair elections. These locally elected board members will make all the decisions involved in governing their local school district, right? Well, not exactly. Two years after its passage, as I have undertaken to inform Missourians about the meaning of Senate Bill 380, I have been intrigued at just how little most Missourians know about that measure's massive transfer of power from local school districts to Jefferson City.

Now, to every objection I have raised, the answer comes from state school board members, pro-SB 380 lawmakers, officials of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the governor's office and other defenders of SB 380: "But you don't understand. The reforms are purely voluntary for local districts. The new curricula won't be mandated. Local districts can pick and choose." As Missourians this spring are figuring how to pay the higher taxes that Gov. Mel Carnahan brought them via SB 380, Partnership for Outstanding Schools director Paul Tandy reached a new low in intentional deception, telling a Kansas City television reporter that SB 380 "empowers local school districts" to improve themselves. Time for an answer.

The brutal, unpleasant truth is this: For the first time since Missouri became a state in 1821, state bureaucrats answering to an unelected state school board are today -- to use Paul Tandy's word -- "empowered" to annihilate local school districts. That's right. Thanks to SB 380, DESE director Bob Bartman can send his folks out to descend on local personnel, take over the district, declare it "academically deficient," hold state-ordered recall elections of locally elected board members, suspend staff contracts, wipe the district off the map and merge it with a neighboring school district whose board members DESE finds more compliant. State education bureaucrats tend, like Paul Tandy, to speak in soothing platitudes, but behind those reassuring cliches there is this iron will connected to a mailed fist. Call it Bob Bartman's Final Solution.

Nor is this fanciful. The last year has seen determined DESE attempts to eradicate at least one Northwest Missouri school district and probably others of which I am unaware. In 1993, at about the time of SB 380's passage, I was conversing with a member of the state school board who was telling me why I should vote for it. I mentioned that I was hearing from folks in the Nell Holcomb School District that the bill wouldn't be good for them. I was stunned by the blunt repsonse: "Peter," this state school board member informed me, "that school district shouldn't exist."

The argument that SB 380's reforms are voluntary rests on a thin reed in a single section of the law: Section 3, subsection 3 regarding the state "curriculum frameworks." There the bill states, "The curriculum frameworks shall provide guidance to school districts but shall not be mandates for local boards in the adoption of written curricula." This language would seem to indicate that at least this portion of the reforms -- the curriculum frameworks -- are voluntary.

But let's look further into the law. Section 4, subsection 1 directs the state board of education to set up a statewide "assessment system." This assessment will determine the degree to which students are proficient in the "performance standards" mandated in subsection 1 of Section 3 of the law. Section 9 of SB 380 then directs the STATE board of education to develop criteria for determining that a school district is "academically deficient." In making that determination, the STATE board is directed to consider the results of the STATE assessment in making that determination. The law then sets up a series of penalties for a local district's failing to meet the state-mandated assessment. These penalties include a state-ordered recall of locally elected school board members, the suspension of staff contracts, and ultimately the dissolution of the district -- a complete DESE occupation and takeover.

State-developed "performance standards." "Curriculum frameworks." A statewide "assessment system." Two of the three are clearly mandated for local districts. Are these reforms "voluntary"? No, they aren't. A law with penalties attached is never voluntary.

It is abundantly clear that the letter and the spirit of the law that is Mel Carnahan's proudest boast is directed toward a state-mandated system for all local school districts in Missouri. SB 380 violates the very essence of local control. Anyone who tells you different is either misinformed or, more likely, is engaged in intentional acts of deception. Welcome to education reform in Mel Carnahan's Missouri.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.