Birth rates have been declining in the United States for decades, and there is little indication that the trend will reverse anytime soon. This poses challenges for many of our institutions that were built on the implicit assumption of continued population growth. Social Security is the most prominent example. Because the program relies on taxes paid by current workers to fund benefits for retirees, it depends on a steady influx of younger workers. Social Security is in trouble, and its day of reckoning is not far off.

More quietly, schools across the United States are struggling with declining enrollment. After decades of needing more—more buildings, more teachers, more staff—we’re entering an era where we will need less of all these things.

In Missouri, public school enrollment has declined about 4 percent since the turn of the century. The decline has been even steeper in many urban areas.

The enrollment decline is not a temporary phenomenon. Demographic projections indicate the trend is likely to continue and, in many places, accelerate. And unlike forecasts of the weather or stock market, demographic projections are highly reliable. We know what is coming.

Yet many districts continue to operate as if enrollment will rebound. This is understandable. School closures and staff reductions are politically difficult and often deeply unpopular. However, delaying these decisions does not change the underlying demographic reality.

Preparing for continued enrollment decline means consolidating and, in some cases, closing schools. It also means aligning staffing levels with student enrollment. With limited resources available for public education, maintaining excess capacity spreads those resources too thinly, undermining educational quality.

The demographic writing is on the wall. One way or another, our school system will need to respond. Districts that plan proactively for declining enrollment are likely to navigate the transition more successfully than those that postpone difficult decisions until circumstances leave them no choice.

The post Declining Enrollment Will Force Hard Choices in Missouri Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In this episode, Susan Pendergrass speaks with Jude Schwalbach, a Senior Policy Analyst at the Reason Foundation, about his recent article on the urgent need for school districts to either reduce staffing or consolidate to survive. They discuss the financial pressures facing many districts due to declining enrollment, the tough decisions schools must make to remain viable, the potential benefits of consolidation, the resistance from various stakeholders, innovative solutions to navigate these challenging circumstances, and more.

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Listen on SoundCloud

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post Tough Choices in Education with Jude Schwalbach appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This year with declining enrollment, Brentwood did not have enough participation to field a football team on their own, meaning that would-be players and their supporters would miss out on a beloved experience. When I saw Brentwood and Clayton were going to merge their football teams, I was excited that these students would be able to play this great sport.

Missouri is seeing population and enrollment declines, which can mean fewer sports teams, fewer elective classes, and other missed opportunities. What Brentwood and Clayton did is admirable. Clayton did not have to share its resources, and Brentwood could have just told everyone there would be no football team this year. However, these two districts came together with the interests of the students in mind, and hopefully more useful collaborations like this will take root in our state.

Building on this example, here are some ways districts can share with each other:

• Sharing facilities and/or fields
• Sharing individual classes
  • For example, a district with a physics department could offer spots for students who may not have that option in their home districts.
  • Even further, if two districts are tight on resources, one could agree to hire a chemistry teacher, while another could hire a physics teacher—pooling and sharing resources to create a stronger science program for the region.
• Merging sports teams/clubs like Clayton and Brentwood
  • Sometimes a district’s constraints aren’t financial, but rather have to do with the actual number of students who want to participate in a team or activity.
  • If a district does not have enough participation in a football team, robotics team, band, debate club, etc.; forming a shared program can provide an opportunity for students to make new friends and do something they love in their formative years.
• Sharing students through open enrollment
  • Perhaps a student wants to transfer to a smaller school to receive more one-on-one time with his teachers, or more playing time on the football field.
  • Or perhaps a student wants to learn from a state-renowned coach, or he or she is drawn to more bustling school environments.

A happier student body can build a stronger community. All students deserve the chance to thrive, and parents should have the choice to send their children to the school which will best serve their needs.

The Clayton-Brentwood football team is inspiring. The team made a solid run into the playoffs, winning two games before falling to Lutheran North in the third round. Two programs that were struggling in different ways put their reservations aside and came together for the betterment of their students. Clayton coach Doug Verby put it like this, “We joked that as long as the adults don’t mess it up, the kids will do just fine. That’s pretty much the way it’s gone. The players just want to play football.”

As adults, we must always remember that education policy should revolve around the betterment of our students. A Clayton student summed up his new experience nicely, “We didn’t know each other, and we’d never played together before. It took a while, but we’ve formed a brotherhood and we’re starting to play like a real football team.”

Policies like open enrollment, sharing classes/programs, or merging teams are needed—especially in a time where enrollment and participation is shrinking, and families want more opportunities. There may even be times when districts should merge and share a superintendent. Let Clayton and Brentwood’s football team serve as an example of what putting students first can do in a community.

The post Looking at the Tape on the Clayton/Brentwood Football Merger appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When the Spainhower Commission issued its final report in 1968, St. Louis County had 25 school districts (plus the Special School District). Those schools served 186,428 students. Asked to develop “a plan to provide equal access to educational opportunity for all children,” the commission recommended a consolidation of all St. Louis–area school districts into a single district. That call was taken up again in 2014 following the shooting of Michael Brown. Then, as in 1968, the solution proposed was to tear down those dividing district lines in the sake of unity. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board endorsed this plan in their piece, “One school district. One focus. One future: Unify St. Louis schools.”

Fifty-five years after the Spainhower report, the number of students enrolled in St. Louis County school districts has decreased by more than 53,000, but almost all district lines remain. Just three school districts have closed. At the time of their mergers, all three served mostly African American schoolchildren. In the 1970s, the Kinloch and Berkeley School Districts were forced by the courts to consolidate into the Ferguson-Florissant School District. In 2010, the Missouri State Board of Education consolidated the Wellston School District into the Normandy School District.

From then to now we have known that arbitrary boundaries drawn around school districts create haves and have-nots. We have known that assigning students to attend schools based on where they live has perpetuated inequities among students and limited access to quality educational options. And yet, the problem has been almost intractable. Why? According to James Spainhower, as reported by the Post-Dispatch’s Tony Messenger, “The only place where the report was weak, was in the thought that people could get over their biases.” I think this analysis is correct, but not in the way that Messenger implied.

According to Messenger, parents in predominantly white school districts did not want to merge with predominantly African American school districts. As we saw when students from the predominantly African American Normandy school district attempted to transfer to predominantly white school districts a few years ago, race can still be an issue. But race wasn’t the only obstacle for those Normandy students—remember, their own school district didn’t want them to leave, either—nor am I convinced that race is the primary motivating factor for those who oppose school district consolidation. People take pride in their local schools, and they do not want to see them changed. Moreover, people instinctively react when anyone attempts to force their school district to be consolidated. It is a loss of identity.

This is the problem. If we leave school districts to make this change themselves, nothing will get done. If we attempt to force consolidation on them, they will resist. This is why attempts at consolidation, except in those rare cases mentioned above, have failed in the St. Louis region. People are loathe to voluntarily consolidate their own school district unless they see a significant benefit, and they strongly resist top-down directives from the state to consolidate their schools.

It is time to change the strategy. Rather than rely on district leaders to take action or attempt to obliterate school district lines, we need to make those boundaries porous. We need to allow students to begin moving across those lines to attend schools in other school districts. We need school choice. We need open enrollment. The Post-Dispatch editorial board once championed this idea. In their call for unifying St. Louis schools they wrote, “The fastest way to move toward such unity would be for the school districts in the St. Louis region to adopt an open enrollment policy.”

Now there is an open enrollment proposal before the Missouri legislature. Yet, as Blythe Bernhard and Jack Suntrup have reported, “Missouri educators vow to fight as open enrollment plan gains steam.” This opposition was to be expected. What was not expected was the complete silence from those who previously advocated for unity among St. Louis schools.

If we continue to look for top-down solutions to this problem, in another 55 years we’ll likely be exactly where we are today—where a student’s educational opportunities are dictated by his or her zip code.

The post Open Enrollment in St. Louis Schools: 55 Years in the Making appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There is nothing inherently wrong with having a lot of school districts, provided that you are able to support them all. Researchers such as James Conant have long argued that small school districts are more costly to operate. In addition, small districts often are unable to offer the same quality or diversity of educational opportunity as some larger districts. This is one reason why some are looking to school district consolidation as a possible way to improve outcomes and decrease costs.

One argument often made against district consolidation has to do with geography. Opponents contend that many districts with low enrollments are actually very large geographically, meaning that consolidating them would require students to travel great distances to get to school every day.

There are two easy responses to this objection. First, district consolidation does not necessarily mean consolidating schools themselves. Children’s travel times don’t have to change at all; districts could just consolidate their central offices and eliminate costly and redundant staff and services.

But more importantly, the premise of the argument simply isn’t true; Missouri’s small school districts aren’t nearly as big geographically as you might think.

The table below shows the mean square miles of Missouri school districts of various sizes. These data were obtained from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s website. The average school district in Missouri covers an area of approximately 134.5 square miles. Large school districts (those with more than 1,000 students) cover more area (averaging 142.8 square miles). School districts with fewer than 350 students cover just 100.4 square miles. These districts receive additional funding form the state because of their low enrollment. Smaller still, school districts with fewer than 100 students cover just 63.9 square miles.

For perspective, an 8-mile by 8-mile square would be 64 square miles.

There may be perfectly valid arguments against school consolidation, but for districts with fewer than 100 students, size does not appear to be one of them.

The post Size No Barrier to School District Consolidation appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Unbeknownst to me until yesterday, voters in the Gorin School District approved a plan to be annexed by the Scotland County R-I School District. The vote was 49 in favor, 13 against. (Those are the actual votes, not percentages.)

Gorin voters made the right move, and they will immediately see the benefits. For starters, the property tax levy for schools in Gorin was $4.3744 per $100 of assessed valuation. Residents will now be taxed at the $3.36 rate of the Scotland County School District. Undoubtedly, students will receive a wider variety of educational options than before.

While I applaud the move by the voters of the Gorin School District, Missouri still has a glut of small school districts. 

Of these, just 50 raised more than half of their funding through local sources. By and large, small school districts are expensive to operate and require a lot of financial support from the state.

Previously on the blog, I’ve asked, “Is school consolidation an issue of local control?” Whether you believe that it is or you believe that small schools should be consolidated by the state, maybe we can agree on one thing—state taxpayers should not be forced to pay extra for the decisions of small school districts. Currently, school districts with fewer than 350 students are guaranteed a specific amount of money. Remove this hold-harmless provision and chances are we’d see more districts like Gorin making a wise decision to consolidate. 

The post The Smallest District in Missouri Has Disappeared appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Right now, there are 191 districts with 350 or fewer students enrolled. These districts get less than half of their funding from local sources, 46 percent on average. The rest comes from state (44 percent) and federal (10 percent) sources. The smallest district in the state, Gorin R-III, for example, has just 19 students enrolled. The district raises just 38 percent of operating expenditures locally, while 54 percent comes from the state. Then there is Plainview R-VIII, enrollment 81. With the low tax rate of just $2.9123 per $100 of assessed valuation, Plainview raises just 28 percent of the operating funds locally, while 63 percent comes from the state. In all, 141 of the small districts receive less than half of their funding for operating expenses from local sources.

These districts are able to exist because of generous state support. Specifically, the state legislature sets aside $15 million for school districts with fewer than 350 students. This is in addition to the funding that comes through the state’s foundation formula for K-12 public schools.

In my last post, I discussed House Bill 1292 and asked if school consolidation was an issue of local control. I received a couple of comments that said it was. Maybe they are right. Maybe it should be a local decision to join with a neighboring district. Whether these small districts should receive additional state funding, however, is not an issue of local control. It is an issue that all taxpayers and all state policymakers should have a say in.

Should school districts be too small to fail? That is, do small school districts deserve extra financial support because they may close if they do not receive extra funding?

I am completely sympathetic to arguments of local control. However, I’m concerned too many claim local control only when it suits them. It certainly seems contradictory to claim sovereignty, while going hat in hand to state taxpayers for additional funds.

The post Should School Districts Be Too Small to Fail? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Whereas larger districts often benefit from economies of scale—fixed administrative costs can be spread out over a large student body—small school districts do not. This naturally leads to higher costs per pupil; costs that many of these small districts could not bear were it not for additional state support for small school districts.

This is exactly the reason for House Bill 1292. Based, in part, on school consolidation in Arkansas, House Bill 1292 calls for the consolidation of school districts with an enrollment of less than 350 students. The Arkansas consolidation law came from a 2003-04 special session specifically targeted at fixing the state’s education funding system. Consolidation of small districts was seen as a way to save money on administrative costs.

The idea of school consolidation is sure to cause some arguments in the state capitol. Indeed, some believe it is an attack on local control of schools. However, when roughly 45 percent of funding comes from the state, as it does for the average district with fewer than 350 students, there may be a strong argument that the state has a considerable interest in the financial well-being of Missouri’s small school districts.

The post Is School Consolidation an Issue of Local Control? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When the chairman of the Black Leadership Roundtable announced his plan for ensuring Saint Louis-area students have access to a quality education—a city-county school district—he was presenting an idea that has been recycled for decades. In his 1985 book, A Semblance of Justice, Saint Louis University sociology professor Daniel Monti wrote, “A review of St. Louis County Board of Education’s deliberations between the 1950s and 1970s reveals three overriding concerns among professional educators and the lay leadership: the merger of all county districts with the city district, the equalization of school tax rates in the area, and the consolidation of districts within St. Louis County.” The idea may have some merit. Unfortunately, it is simply too pie in the sky to ever make a difference for students who need better educational options today.

It is highly unlikely that citizens in high-achieving, wealthy school districts such as Clayton would agree to a merger with the low-performing, poor school district of Riverview Gardens. Yet, even if all the area districts merged, it would not dissolve the pockets of concentrated poverty. Though it’s true that school district boundaries would be erased, the boundary lines around individual school buildings simply would become starker; essentially transferring the problem of housing decisions based on district performance to housing decisions based on school performance.

No, simply consolidating school districts will not solve St. Louis’ educational problems. The editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch realizes as much. When they called for a city-county school district in April 2014, they wrote that their ideal school district would utilize “some form of open enrollment.” The editorial board implicitly recognized that school choice must be a part of any plan to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged students in the Saint Louis area.

Though the city-county school district will likely never happen, there are ways in which we can expand options for students. For starters, it should be easier for students in low-performing schools to take the dollars allotted for their education to the school of their choice. Missouri has had a successful, voluntary inter-district choice program between the St. Louis Public Schools and county school districts since 1981. With some modifications, the law that allowed Normandy and Riverview Gardens students to transfer to higher-performing schools could be just as sustainable. Moreover, the law could be expanded to allow all students the opportunity to seek the best education possible.

Along those lines, Missouri should allow students to enroll in charter schools across district boundaries. There are many well-regarded charter schools in Saint Louis that would welcome students from Normandy, Riverview Gardens, or other school districts. Moreover, there are many charter schools that would like to open in struggling school districts. They are inhibited from doing so, however, because they can only enroll students from within district boundaries.

Finally, Missouri should create a tax-credit scholarship program to enable students to attend a private school of their choice. Fourteen states now have a tax-credit scholarship program. These programs expand opportunities for students whose needs are not being met, especially students who are disadvantaged or have special needs. What is more, tax-credit scholarships save states money.

We do not need to hold out hope for large-scale changes to area school district boundaries when these solutions are at our fingertips. If Saint Louis truly wants to dissolve the poverty cycle in urban communities, then it should support realistic solutions like charter school expansion, voluntary open enrollment, and a tax-credit scholarship program.

The post Students Need Choice, Not-Pie-in-the-Sky Solutions appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It is highly unlikely that citizens in high-achieving, wealthy school districts such as Clayton would agree to a merger with the low-performing, poor school district of Riverview Gardens. Yet, even if all the area districts merged, it would not dissolve the pockets of concentrated poverty. Though it’s true that school district boundaries would be erased, the boundary lines around individual school buildings simply would become starker; essentially transferring the problem of housing decisions based on district performance to housing decisions based on school performance.

No, simply consolidating school districts will not solve St. Louis’ educational problems. The editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch realizes as much. When they called for a city-county school district in April 2014, they wrote that their ideal school district would utilize “some form of open enrollment.” The editorial board implicitly recognized that school choice must be a part of any plan to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged students in the Saint Louis area.

Though the city-county school district will likely never happen, there are ways in which we can expand options for students. For starters, it should be easier for students in low-performing schools to take the dollars allotted for their education to the school of their choice. Missouri has had a successful, voluntary inter-district choice program between the St. Louis Public Schools and county school districts since 1981. With some modifications, the law that allowed Normandy and Riverview Gardens students to transfer to higher-performing schools could be just as sustainable. Moreover, the law could be expanded to allow all students the opportunity to seek the best education possible.

Along those lines, Missouri should allow students to enroll in charter schools across district boundaries. There are many well-regarded charter schools in Saint Louis that would welcome students from Normandy, Riverview Gardens, or other school districts. Moreover, there are many charter schools that would like to open in struggling school districts. They are inhibited from doing so, however, because they can only enroll students from within district boundaries.

Finally, Missouri should create a tax-credit scholarship program to enable students to attend a private school of their choice. Fourteen states now have a tax-credit scholarship program. These programs expand opportunities for students whose needs are not being met, especially students who are disadvantaged or have special needs. What is more, tax-credit scholarships save states money.

We do not need to hold out hope for large-scale changes to area school district boundaries when these solutions are at our fingertips. If Saint Louis truly wants to dissolve the poverty cycle in urban communities, then it should support realistic solutions like charter school expansion, voluntary open enrollment, and a tax-credit scholarship program.

James V. Shuls, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and a fellow at the Show-Me Institute.

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