The Francis Howell and Mehlville Backlash Heats Up on Unaccredited Transfers

Photo from stltoday article

Last night Francis Howell hosted a board meeting to address concerns about the potential transfers from Normandy, and 2,500 people showed up. Wow, that is as big of a crowd as the entire enrolled population of the Clayton School district! Francis Howell is a large district with about 17,000 students, but I was duly impressed with that huge of a turnout. It is interesting that when Normandy or Riverview Gardens have meetings to discuss the transfers a few hundred residents show up, but at Francis Howell it draws thousands. I was also interested to hear FHSD may accept up to 600 transfer students from Normandy which is substantially more than I was expecting would fill their capacity. That amounts to almost 4% of their current enrollment, or 1 or 2 students in a class of 20 to 25. It sounds like Mehlville has much less extra room for transfers, and I doubt their number will be nearly that high.

It appears that Normandy is trying to convince parents to keep their students there within the district, but many are planning to transfer, not only to Francis Howell, but also to other St. Louis County districts.  It sounds like so far they have processed applications for 300 transfer students (about 7% of their 4,200), so with many of those opting for closer schools, Francis Howell should not have to worry about hitting that 600 number they could accommodate. Riverview Gardens is a slightly larger district with about 6,000 students right now and if a similar 7% of their population decided to transfer that would amount to over 400 students. Mehlville, unfortunately with 10,600 students is substantially smaller than Francis Howell and has less extra capacity, so they are unlikely to be able to take 400 students from Riverview Gardens. Luckily other districts like Ferguson-Florissant will be able to take some of them.

I personally will be interested to see if any of the transfer students end up in any of my son's classes at Ladue Horton Watkins High School. If any do transfer there, they will likely not know anybody in their classes and will be one of only a handful who will transfer to the high school from their district. At least Ladue does have a reasonable African American population of 17% (substantially higher than either Francis Howell or Mehlville) so the transfers may not "stick out" as much as they would in less diverse schools. If they were transferring in at the elementary level is one thing, at the high school level fitting in with a particular "clique" at a new high school would be particularly daunting. I would think any student transferring into any of the "non-bussed" (i.e. not Francis Howell or Mehlville) high schools may have a tough time initially adjusting. At least the ones headed towards the "selected" school districts should have other students there they know. I wish them all the best of luck.