Post-Dispatch Article About City to County Student Transfers

I read an interesting article yesterday on StLToday.com about what would happen if city residents were allowed to send their children to any county school they wanted. The Clayton School district did a survey amongst many city residents to see what the effects would be on their district. The answer is probably what they expected, nearly a quarter of the city respondents (22.7%) would want to send their children to Clayton Schools. That would result in about 3,600 city children who would want to attend the small Clayton district which currently has 2,500 students. That is obviously not very practical. Ideally if some sort of transfer program did take place they would have to allocate more students to go to the large districts further out that may actually be able to accommodate the vast numbers of students.

If we look at the current VICC student breakdown, (as I found in their latest board meeting highlights from June 17, 2011) there are 5,600 VICC students in Fall 2011 and their 2010 enrollment by district was as follows:

Right now Rockwood has the most VICC students at 32.4% which means about 1,800 students. Wow, I did not realize that many city students were willing to make that long drive out to Rockwood. Rockwood and Parkway together make up more than 50% of the current VICC enrollment, but even if all the "Other District" survey category was for Parkway (11.1%), that added to the 11.2% that picked Rockwood would only add up to 22.3% of survey respondents picking those two districts. Somehow they would have to limit how many people can actually pick closer districts like Clayton and require others to pick the larger, further out districts like Rockwood and Parkway. For Brentwood, who had the lowest survey percentage of 7.3%, that seemingly small percentage would translate to over 1,000 city students which is substantially more than the 800 or so total students that currently attend there. You can compare that to the 2.1% of the VICC enrollment currently at Brentwood which amounts to a little over 100 students. Already about 1 out of 8 students at Brentwood schools are city students.

I noticed in the VICC numbers that Pattonville and Ladue are still on the list of schools with VICC students, but their current numbers have dwindled to almost nothing since neither accepts new VICC applicants. I remember when my daughter was an early elementary student there were still a few city students in her class, but now (when she is in college) the total percentage in Pattonville is a whopping 0.4% which means about 25 students in the whole district. Ladue must just have a handful remaining which leaves them on the list but at 0.0%. Therefore my son has never had any city students in any of his classes. But if they allow city students to start transferring to his high school that might change. The Ladue district is already experiencing overcrowded conditions, so more students would only make it worse. And what would happen to home prices if suddenly you can buy a house in the city and then send your children to Clayton or Ladue schools? I already consider my property taxes to include "tuition" to send my son to Ladue schools. I doubt the homes in our area would have seen home assessments actually go up last year during this soft housing market if it were not for the school district and the demand for homes in the area. Just today there is a new article about Ladue Schools putting a tax increase on the April ballot. Talk about great timing, increase taxes to run our overcrowded district and then have more students possibly attending from the city.

I do feel for the city residents who want to send their children to better public schools. But I am not sure allowing them to send their children to any country public school they choose is a realistic option.