Editorial

HEARINGS LOOK AT FUTURE OF DESEG FUNDING

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The first of five hearings on desegregation was held Tuesday in Cape Girardeau. The selection of our town by the joint House-Senate committee was somewhat surprising, given the primarily urban focus of this issue. Desegregation has cost Missouri more than any other state, however, and has seriously affected school budgets in every part of our state. Committee chairmen are Sen. Ted House, D-St. Charles, and Rep. Steve Stoll, D-Festus, and they are to be commended for scheduling open hearings.

The questions the joint committee confronts: Where, exactly, do we go now that the curtain is falling on nearly 20 years of urban desegregation spending? What is to be done with expected savings from desegregation spending, long mandated by federal judges? Just last week the federal court in Kansas City ruled that the state's obligation will at long last end in June 1999, less than two years off. Best estimates are that the state is looking at $160 million to $180 million in freed-up funding.

Given the manner in which our two urban districts have become hooked on the money, and given the wreckage and desolation federal judges have left, especially in Kansas City, the committee has a tough job. In the back of everyone's mind is a gnawing realization that, one way or another, the state is going to end up paying in some manner for our urban schools.

The big question is whether a change should be made from assigning money on the basis of race, as the courts have ordered for so long, to assigning money according to poverty, as one proposal had it during the last legislative session. This proposal would have assigned desegregation savings according to the percentage of students on the federal free-and-reduced lunch program. To this we answer no. Far better to take the recommendation of Dr. Dan Tallent, superintendent of Cape Girardeau's public schools. Tallent was the first witness to testify, representing both his district and the Missouri Association of School Administrators. Tallent's advice: Spend these funds on what school officials call "categoricals," referring to items such as transportation and special- and gifted-education programming. Tallent correctly points out that the urban districts would benefit by gaining some significant portion of any such funding, as would every district in the state.

Where we disagree with Tallent and his administrators' group is in their disappointing stand on charter schools. Tallent said any such innovative, pathbreaking, reform-minded schools must be controlled by local school boards. Meaning no disrespect to our friends on school boards, this would defeat the whole idea of charter schools and the spur to innovation that is their sole reason for being. Far better to have multiple charter-granting institutions: public and private universities, county commissions, the state school board or perhaps even a separate state board that exists to do nothing but charter schools. The more the better.

The prize for the most refreshing testimony must go to Kansas City School Board member Lance Loewenstein, who traveled all the way here to testify. Here's Loewenstein:

"The desegregation case has, in my opinion, done little to address academic achievement of students in our school district. Incredibly, the plan contained no core curriculum, no road map to make educational gains. Instead, it created fencing instructors, Olympic swimming pools, mock courtrooms and Broadway-quality performing spaces. At the literal expense of children living in our community." ... "The majority of the new K.C. School Board and school district patrons are committed in deed and word to changing that pattern of waste and low achievement that has also victimized out-state Missourians."

Not a bad charge for the whole committee. Here's hoping its members are up to a very large responsibility.