LETTERS: FUNDING PLAN HELPS OUTSTATE SCHOOLS

To the editor:

The final report of the Joint Interim Committee on School Desegregation and Finance Issues, which I co-chaired, has been issued.

The committee's recommendations are, for the most part, consistent with my objectives. Those primary objectives are:

1. End the desegregation court cases and get the federal government out of our local schools.

2. Stop the waste of our tax money and spread the savings from the end of the desegregation cases across all of Missouri's 523 school districts.

The committee's report is very favorable to outstate school districts across Missouri. If the committee's recommendations are implemented, we would move more than $120 million from the St. Louis and Kansas City school districts to the outstate districts that have sacrificed for so long due to the federal court mandates. At the same time, the committee recognizes that the huge concentrations of poverty and unique social and economic difficulties of the urban districts do require some additional funding. However, the funding for those urban districts would be much less under the committee's plan than we are currently being forced to spend now.

It was important to facilitate the transition from the end of the court orders for the urban areas and to provide enough of an incentive for the parties in the St. Louis case to be willing to settle the case. The committee believes that both the large urban districts would collapse if the extra funding were cut off immediately. The cost to Missouri taxpayers would be far greater if we allow those districts to fall apart. And in St. Louis, the case would never settle if the committee proposed an immediate end to the program. That would mean many more years of litigation and huge desegregation payments. Therefore, I believe that the report provides a reasonable and balanced approach to ending the desegregation orders and spreading the savings across the state.

STATE SEN. TED HOUSE, 2nd District

Jefferson City