TAXPAYERS WON'T SEE MONEY SAVED ON DESEGREGATION

First, the good news:

An agreement between Missouri officials and the Kansas City School District will likely reduce the state's court-ordered desegregation payments by $80 million in the coming school year. This is the result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month.

The agreement, which is only a step along the way to total resolution of the costly desegregation effort, doesn't end state funding for desegregation costs in Kansas City -- yet. Since 1985 the state's taxpayers have paid more than $1.1 billion for the programs ordered by U.S. District Judge Russell Clark of Springfield.

The agreement, announced last week by Gov. Carnahan and Attorney General Jay Nixon, phases out state support by the end of the 1999 academic year. That means four more years of state funding, but at much lower rates.

Now the bad news:

Missouri taxpayers won't reap any tax refund or even a reduced tax burden because of the agreement. Why? Because Senate Bill 380, the costly Outstanding Schools Act that imposed the biggest tax increase in the state's history, is going to gobble up the savings.

Most voters are very likely unaware that provisions of SB 380 earmarked any savings from desegregation costs for the school foundation formula. This is the system whereby state funds are doled out to school districts all over the state under a complex set of calculations. Obviously, legislators had a pretty good idea when they were passing SB 380 that the Kansas City desegregation case was likely to come to an end in the not-too-distant future. And they locked up the money before anyone could think about how else to use it.

One way, of course, would have been to give it back to taxpayers. Instead of needing $190 million for the Kansas City desegregation case -- the amount included in the fiscal 1996 budget that went into effect July 1 -- the state will only spend $110 million.

But because of SB 380, the school foundation formula will be "more fully funded." This might be happy news, except other requirements of the Outstanding Schools Act border on the ridiculous and raise serious questions about where public education is headed in Missouri.

The next time taxpayers file their Missouri returns and their eyes pop at the amount, they need to remember SB 380 and the desegregation savings that they didn't get. It won't help the pain, but it may make them more painfully aware of how the Outstanding Schools Act is, in reality, the greatest boondoggle in recent memory.