LITTLE ACCORD ON FUNDING URGAN DESEG

Legislation designed to deal with Missouri's two urban desegregation cases advanced this week in the Senate Education Committee. The latest version of Senate Bill 781 passed out of that panel on a 7-6 party-line vote, with Democrats backing it and the committee's six Republicans opposed. The battle lines are forming up for a protracted fight that will likely last the rest of the legislative session that ends in May. It is by no means certain that the General Assembly can produce a bill in any year, much less an election year such as this.

At issue is the bill's proposal to spend $1,000 per child more on students in the St. Louis and Kansas City school districts than is spent on children in the rest of the state. This, we are told, must be done because of "concentrations of poverty" in the inner cities that make educating students there uniquely difficult. This sum, proponents say, represents the "soft landing" these urban districts must have as desegregation ends. It is, we are told, the minimum necessary if the state is to have any chance of buying our way out of the desegregation case in federal court in St. Louis. (The Kansas City case is ending in any event.) Proponents say that even with this extra per-pupil spending, there will be approximately $30 million in annual savings over current desegregation payments.

One problem with that last point is that there is no guarantee what the federal judge will do in response. Or, stated another way, is the state being asked to buy a pig in a poke? Former Washington University chancellor William Danforth is the court-appointed mediator in the St. Louis case. He estimates that this is the minimum needed for the judge to end the case, but even he concedes he doesn't know.

Another issue concerns the nature of poverty: Isn't a poor kid a poor kid, whether he resides in St. Louis or in Pemiscot County? Why should the state spend $1,000 more for poor kids in the city?

The issue of how the state buys its way out of the two most expensive desegregation cases in American history is one of the thorniest ever confronted by the General Assembly. It is a serious challenge to representative government, and much rides on the outcome.