Chronic Absenteeism in Missouri

Posted on by Avery Frank

With the removal of the minimum school day requirement beginning in the 2019–2020 school year and the rapid rise of the four-day school week, Missouri schools have been scheduling fewer days of instruction. In the 2017–2018 school year, students were in school an average of 171 days. Fast forward to 2022–2023, and that average is now 162 days. It should be noted that instructional hours have not declined by as great of an amount.

Missouri students not only have fewer days of school, but they have also been missing more days of school. Chronic absenteeism has become a major problem in our schools. Students who miss more than 10% of school days in a year are considered chronically absent.

If a student was at the minimum threshold of being chronically absent—missing 11% of school days every year—by the end of their K-12 experience they will have missed well over a full year of instruction.

Below is a graph that displays attendance trends broken down by demographics in Missouri. The graph uses proportional attendance rates. Proportional attendance rates measure the number of students who attend school 90 percent of the time or more. Let’s say a district of 10 students has a school year of 100 days. Then, let’s assume that 6 of the 10 students attend more than 90 days of school, and that the other four students attend school for 82 days. The district’s proportional attendance rate would be 60 percent.

Figure 1: Missouri Proportional Attendance Rates by Student Group

Source: Department of Elementary and Secondary Education: Current and Historical Missouri State Report Card

While COVID-19 certainly hurt attendance rates, they have not bounced back in the years following. In the 2012–2013 school year, all Missouri students had a proportional attendance rate of 88 percent. Free or reduced-price lunch students were at 83 percent, White students were at 89 percent, Black students were at 82 percent, Hispanic students were at 87 percent, and Asian students were at 94 percent. Today, the gap between all students and free or reduced-price lunch students has doubled. The gap between white students and black students has tripled.

Changing the funding formula to diminish the importance of attendance could make this problem even worse. Would giving families the option to pick the school that best meets their needs increase attendance? It is clear that state officials need to do something, and fast, before too many of our students fall too far behind.

How Missouri and Other States Can Foster Entrepreneurship by Reforming Local Regulations

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

Entrepreneurship is the backbone of vibrant local economies, yet many cities unintentionally stifle this vital engine of growth through cumbersome regulations. And if Kansas City and St. Louis hinder their local economies, all of Missouri is affected. A new playbook, “Cities Work,” created by the Institute for Justice (IJ), outlines the pervasive regulatory barriers faced by entrepreneurs and provides a comprehensive guide to reform.

The playbook highlights how excessive occupational licensing, convoluted permitting processes, and outdated zoning laws create significant hurdles for small business owners. For instance, starting a barbershop often involves not only obtaining city permits but also navigating state-mandated requirements such as barbering school and licensing fees, adding unnecessary time and cost. Punitive late fees, illogical license renewal cycles, and restrictive home-based business rules further complicate the landscape for aspiring entrepreneurs.

One major recommendation is the establishment of one-stop shops for business registration, such as KC BizCare, which can streamline the process by allowing entrepreneurs to complete all necessary steps in one place. This approach reduces confusion and inefficiencies, helping business owners navigate regulatory requirements more easily. Additionally, the playbook suggests cities adopt more flexible licensing terms and graduated fee schedules to lower initial costs for new businesses, particularly those started by lower-income residents.

A separate policy report written exclusively for Kansas City, Missouri, included conversations with a number of local entrepreneurs to determine the most significant barriers facing business start-ups. The report made several recommendations—including improving the KC BizCare program—and the IJ Cities Work team pledged to remain involved in Kansas City’s efforts, including collecting feedback on the success of reforms and even drafting ordinances.

The playbook underscores the importance of reducing regulatory barriers to foster a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. By adopting its recommendations, cities in Missouri and elsewhere can create more dynamic environments for small businesses to flourish, ultimately contributing to stronger local and state economies.

Prime Examples of Bad Government in St. Louis County Cities

Posted on by David Stokes

In case you needed it, reason 8,191 why Missouri should not allow municipalities to just do whatever they want—local control and all that—can be found in some recent north St. Louis County news.

First, Ferguson has decided that it is going to pull the business licenses of businesses that are behind on their property taxes. America learned in the late 1700s that it was a bad idea to throw debtors in prison because, well, how can they pay their debts if they can’t work because they are in prison? Robert Morris—one of the underappreciated founding fathers—was the poster child for these changes. If Ferguson policymakers were only considering pulling the licenses of businesses that owned their property, they would at least have an argument. But Ferguson has decided to pull the licenses of businesses that rent their space, meaning they aren’t late on their taxes at all because they don’t owe any property taxes—their landlords do. So, if the landlord doesn’t pay the tax, the rent-paying business will lose their license. That is, to put it bluntly, an atrocious policy.

Nearby in Bellefontaine Neighbors, the city has decided to address a budget deficit by instituting a fee to be a landlord in the city. It is a $300 annual fee per home or apartment being rented charged to every landlord. The fee was enacted in late 2022, but is in the news now because a landlord just sued over it. This fee is on top of the existing—and more understandable—inspection ($75) and occupancy permit ($40) fees that landlords and tenants already pay. Of course, they pay property taxes, too. The city was facing a projected budget deficit of a few hundred thousand dollars when it created the fee. I guess the easiest solution was to just stick it to landlords.

I hope both of these bad policies will lose in court. Ferguson shouldn’t deny a business license to people (the renters) who don’t even owe the property tax in the first place. Bellefontaine Neighbors’ voters did not approve the new tax, and I don’t know how the city can call it a fee when it already charges existing fees to cover the costs imposed by landlords and renters.

The Missouri Constitution says all local taxes have to be authorized under state law. Thank God for that. Cities, as seen in these two examples here, are constantly looking for opportunities to raise revenue improperly even with the state law (as the City of St. Louis successfully did with its payroll tax). I can’t imagine how bad local taxes and fees would be without it. We would probably be an entire state of Macks Creeks.

Missouri Court Rules in Favor of Remote Workers Against St. Louis Earnings Tax

Posted on by David Stokes

On May 29, David Stokes joined Mike Ferguson in the Morning on NewsTalkSTL to discuss a Missouri appeals court decision exempting remote workers from St. Louis’ 1% earnings tax, ruling that the tax doesn’t apply to work performed outside the city.

Why Exactly Do Food Truck Workers Need a Passport Photo?

Posted on by David Stokes

One of the staunchest opponents of limited government is often the government itself, in the form of the bureaucracy. Complicated codes and rules may be bad for society, but they are great for government workers. The City of St. Louis just held a hearing on food truck regulations, and members of the board of aldermen seemed genuinely surprised to hear how overly burdensome the rules are for food trucks in the city.

For example, why do all food truck employees have to wear an ID badge with a passport-quality photo on it? Restaurant employees don’t have to do that. That regulation seems insane, and at least some members of the board of aldermen appear to agree. As a Riverfront Times (RIP) reporter described it:

Committee members were shocked. When it was time for questions, Ward 8 Alderwoman Cara Spencer began with this: “My first question is, are you — and then there’s an expletive — kidding me.”

Show-Me Institute analysts have been writing about food regulation issues for years. In fact, we may have done more videos on food trucks than any other topic. It’s a great topic for us because it perfectly encapsulates how entrenched interests (in this case, restaurants) and their allies in government have worked together to stop a popular new way of doing business.

But back to the city. I think one of the reasons why the aldermen were so surprised by the level of red tape food trucks deal with is that they didn’t intend for it to be this difficult. But when you read the current legislation, one thing jumps out at you. The current ordinance governing food trucks gives the street director, the parks director, and the license collector authority to institute further rules they deem necessary. Here is one example from the ordinance (section 5.M):

The Director of Streets shall formulate any additional rules and regulations necessary for the proper administration of this chapter. Rules and regulations shall be maintained in the office of the Director of Streets and shall be available for public inspection during ordinary business hours.

This isn’t a hypothetical issue. The question of how legislators grant authority to regulators to set law is the subject of a major supreme court case right now. President Eisenhower stated that engineers went far beyond his original intentions with the Interstate Highway System by including intra-city highways without his knowledge, as just one example of this problem.

It may sometimes be necessary for elected officials to trust regulators to set rules under wide authority. However, there is serious risk to this approach. The idea that regulators are setting these rules fairly outside of their own system of pressure, bias or favoritism is hard to believe.

I hope the city will address the overregulation of food trucks with this excellent, newly proposed bill. After, all, it’s probably time for us to make another video . . .

Think Twice before Supporting a New Tax

Posted on by David Stokes

A version of the following commentary appeared in the Platte County Landmark.

Everyone wants to help kids thrive, right? Who could be against a new tax in Platte County to help kids get more mental health services? Well, we are. Politicizing charity and mandating it through law is a dangerous path to take. Platte County citizens would be well served to think twice before going down this road.

There is an ongoing petition drive in Platte County to create the Platte County Children’s Services Fund. If approved by voters, the plan would institute a new sales tax to fund mental health services for children in Platte County. It would create a new board in charge of overseeing the collection and distribution of the funds as grants to eligible children’s charities.

Charity should not be politized, yet that is exactly what this proposal will do in Platte County. Several years ago, the children’s service fund in St. Louis County became a flashpoint in the county executive’s race. The fund was slow to distribute money and had grown to a balance of $78 million. That large balance became a point of contention in the campaign, made worse when questionable activities with the funds led to the firing of the children’s service fund director and an FBI investigation. Even without that level of controversy, charities will still be forced to play politics. Board members of various Platte County charities that might receive funds will have to start taking that into consideration when they decide whom to support in various county political races. One can’t risk backing the wrong horse and putting the charity’s funding in jeopardy. It’s machine politics at its most insidious.

Any future Platte County Children’s Service Fund would be a special taxing district, and the last thing Platte County needs is another obscure taxing entity with little accountability and even less oversight. The children’s service fund in Lafayette County, on the eastern edge of the Kansas City region, provides a useful case study for those problems. The fund had operated for years with almost no oversight. Those operating it routinely engaged in improper activities, including funding charities that were affiliated with board members, funding charitable activities that were not eligible for funds in the first place, and funding a private business that wasn’t a nonprofit. After a whistleblower brought this to light, the state auditor investigated and referred the fund to authorities for possible Medicaid fraud. If you think the future Platte County children’s fund will be immune from these incidents, you should disabuse yourself of that notion.

If Platte County voters pass the new tax and create a children’s service fund, will some kids benefit? Of course some will. But citizens need to consider all the possible effects of this endeavor. Creating a new taxing agency with no oversight, entangling philanthropy with politics, and making charities dependent on government largesse is not a recipe for making life better in Platte County. Let’s allow these charities do what they were intended to do—help kids—without the heavy hand of government involvement.

Government Infrastructure Costs Are Out of Control

Posted on by David Stokes

A version of the following commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

 

We have all seen the television ad where the man walks into the sandwich shop and orders bread but nothing inside of it because that’s all he can afford. “Everything is so expensive these days,” he says.

That may well be how many Americans are feeling, but I only wish that were true for our government. The price tags for government’s infrastructure “improvements” are becoming astronomical, and at some point we have to recognize that this isn’t an unfortunate fact of life. The high cost is a choice, not a requirement.

Let’s start with the high-speed rail disaster in California, which was originally approved in 2008 for an estimated cost of $33 billion; the current estimate is $135—for a system that won’t have anything completed until the 2030s at the earliest. Actually connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, as promised, is many more years away. All this for a system that hasn’t laid any track 15 years after it was approved.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In Spain, they built an entire 2,500-mile system of high-speed rail for $62 billion. That’s obviously a lot of money, but it got them an entire, advanced rail system for less than half of what California will spend for two routes at best.

Unlike high-speed rail, elevators have been around for a long time. There is nothing fancy about an elevator. Yet in New York City, a project to replace 70 elevators at transit stations cost taxpayers $5.5 billion, or about $80 million per elevator. Elevators for subways may indeed be more expensive than in office buildings, but in Germany they have managed to hold the cost to less than $10 million per elevator per transit station. Something is deeply wrong with how we fund government infrastructure in America.

Closer to home, St. Louis County is considering several options for its governmental complex in Clayton. The most expensive and most comprehensive plan—which includes replacing the main county administration building with an entirely new building among other projects—is estimated by the county to cost around $600 million. If that sounds preposterous, it should. The key part of that proposal—the new administration and public safety building in downtown Clayton, is estimated to cost $250 million for a 190,000-square-foot building. (This doesn’t even include the cost of demolishing the existing buildings.)

Currently, a 21-story residential tower has been approved by the city for downtown Clayton. It would have 299 units, some retail space, and over 300,000 total square feet. What is the total estimated cost of that project? $106 million. This residential tower would be significantly larger than the new county building, yet it would cost approximately $150 million less. Based on cost per square foot, the proposed county building is almost four times as expensive.

In Robert Caro’s book The Powerbroker, about Robert Moses, the autocratic boss of New York city and state infrastructure projects for four decades in the mid-20th century, Caro spent an entire chapter detailing the way Moses employed various interest groups to get his projects going, no matter the cost. Moses had support from a wide cross-section of interest groups because he made sure that they all made money from his projects. Construction companies, contractors, labor unions, consultants, banks, law firms, the list goes on. If any politicians started opposing his projects, there was an orchestrated campaign of pressure from all these groups to get it approved. The people who benefitted from these enormous expenditures benefited greatly and quickly. The taxpayers or commuters who paid more than they should have did so in small increments over time via higher taxes, tolls, or other fees, but they didn’t feel the higher costs all at once. So the taxpayer shakedown has continued on to the present day.

In simpler terms, the developer of the high-rise in Clayton is spending its own money to build it, where St. Louis County officials are not. The county is spending taxpayer money, obviously, and when you do that in Missouri’s largest and richest county you can get away with spending a lot of it. Taxpayers aren’t going to revolt over an extra $50 a year in taxes spread out over 365 days of sales tax on purchases or mixed in at the end of the year with a dozen other property taxes on their bill. This is why you end up with a proposal for a new county building that costs four times more (per square foot) than a new, private building nearby.

Addressing this overall problem is going to be extremely difficult. Every option for change involves cutting off someone else’s golden goose. For now, let’s just hope St. Louis County government doesn’t put the New York Transit Authority in charge of the new elevators. Then it’s going to really get expensive.

Protections from EV Charging Station Mandates—for Some

Posted on by Avery Frank

At the end of the most recent legislative session, the Missouri legislature sent House Bill (HB) 2062 to the governor. While this bill has numerous issues, it does have a silver lining—increased protections against electric vehicle (EV) charging mandates.

Certain municipalities, such as the City of St. Louis, have mandated that if certain residential and commercial businesses engage in new constructions or major renovations, they must install, maintain, and operate EV charging stations on their own dime.

HB 2062 would provide statewide exemptions for churches and nonprofits from EV charging station mandates. But what about everyone else?

As I have written before, these types of mandates are an unnecessary government intrusion into the free market. All businesses should be protected from EV mandates—not just churches and nonprofits.

At the local level, the City of St. Louis has also included some exemptions from its mandate. Businesses that the city council has determined a visitor wouldn’t typically stay long enough at to warrant charging their vehicle are exempt from the mandate. Currently public-level charging is exceptionally slow (which is part of the reason why installing them is wasteful), but what happens when charging improves and people use charging stations during shorter stops? Will many of these businesses no longer be exempt?

A stronger version of a state law with more than just narrow exemptions would render these concerns at the municipal level moot. While it’s nice to see protections from these mandates offered to some, shouldn’t those protections be extended to all businesses in our state?

One Education Policy That Could Use Some Momentum for Next Year

Posted on by Avery Frank

For the fourth consecutive year, open enrollment (allowing students to enroll in any public school in the state, regardless of where they live) has died in the Senate after passing through the House. This is a policy that Missouri needs. My colleague, Susan Pendergrass, outlines here what an ideal open enrollment policy would look like.

But why has it been so difficult to pass open enrollment?

Apparently many legislators (particularly those in rural areas) are fearful that students would leave their school districts given the opportunity. It’s true that there are students who would change their schools. Some students will transfer out, and some students will transfer in. A mass exodus, however, is unlikely.

Parents often have sentimental attachments to the place they grew up in—they want their children to be able to experience all the same things they did. Strong attachments can help strengthen the community that supports the district. But these sentiments aren’t shared by everyone. Maybe someone is being bullied or struggling because the class size isn’t right for them. Or maybe families would prefer a five-day school week instead of four. Wouldn’t school districts improve if everyone who was there wanted to be there?

A professional advocate for “Rural School Advocates of Iowa” argued that open enrollment had bolstered rural districts in the state, as many students prefer smaller class sizes and sports programs that give them a better chance to get playing time. Perhaps additional studies on the effect of open enrollment on consolidation rates and enrollment trends could be useful in further addressing this concern.

There have also been reservations about the actual process of districts accepting students. Will districts only accept the best students from other districts? The best version of an open enrollment policy includes mandatory open enrollment. That means districts are not allowed to pick and choose students.

But what about special education students? If districts are required to accept all students, what if a district does not have special education staff on hand—will it be forced to make room?

There are already special education students in Missouri who live in districts without adequate resources to teach them. With open enrollment, I believe parents with special needs students would be more likely to choose a district with an adequate special education program.

As I was researching viewpoints on this issue, I came across an interesting story. A superintendent from a district in Minnesota was lamenting the lengths the district had to go to in order to retain students. The district created a new program that helps students with their post-graduation careers and allows them to earn certificates when they graduate.

Isn’t this what competition is supposed to do? Competition forced this district to create a new program that helps students with their careers after graduation. The desire to attract students to districts breeds innovation. Open enrollment can improve schools and increase options for students and families. Next year, I hope it finds the momentum it needs.

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