St. Louis School Transfer Insanity Climbs Even Higher!


Now that the vast majority of the students who wanted to transfer out of the unaccredited Normandy and Riverview Gardens are preparing to start school in new districts, I thought the insanity would start to die down. But I was mistaken! Not just one, but two organizations are helping parents file suit against both the Mehlville and the Kirkwood school districts for not allowing their children to attend there. The NAACP is filing suit against both Mehlville and Kirkwood, and the CEAM is just filing against Mehlville. Does anybody really think Mehlville and Kirkwood did anything maliciously wrong trying to limit how many students could enroll in their districts? I thought trying to limit class sizes to state recommended ratios was a good thing!

The outcome here is making Normandy appear like the brilliant district now by picking a "free transportation" district large enough and far enough away so that the supply of available slots was greater than the demand for the slots. Francis Howell said they could accommodate over 600 transfers, and with "only" 475 transfer requests they could satisfy all the students and they can avoid a lawsuit! Francis Howell ends up looking pretty good here. Riverview Gardens was trying to find a district as fitting as Francis Howell to select, but first picked Mehlville which unfortunately does not have as much student capacity and received even more requests for transfers than Francis Howell (514 versus 462.) After Riverview Gardens realized this happened, you would think they would have learned to pick a larger district that could handle more students, but instead they selected Kirkwood. Why not Parkway or Rockwood or Hazelwood? And now Kirkwood may be filed with a lawsuit for having the very bad luck of being picked by Riverview Gardens! Why not file the suit against the illogical district administration that selected them? It was certainly not Kirkwood's idea to be selected, and the 263 transfer requests they received represented over 5% of their 5,100 student population. The idea of these lawsuits is sheer lunacy. I feel for the Riverview Gardens parents and students who want their children to attend an accredited school and cannot afford the transportation to a "non selected" district, but I do not feel a lawsuit is the answer.  Can someone not figure out a way for them to be transported to and attend an accredited district with more space? You would think that would be Riverview Gardens' problem and not Kirkwood or Mehlville's problem (i.e. the district that made the bad decisions, not the ones at the receiving end of them).

The Cooperating School Districts has been a very busy place the last couple weeks, and yesterday they released the total number of transfers by district which was reported on StlToday.com. The Post did not sort them by number of have a pretty graph, so that is what I created instead! Leading the pack is Francis Howell, of course, with 475, with Ferguson-Florissant not too far away with 425. Next is Hazelwood with 289 and then Mehlville with 209. My graph at the top of this posting shows the totals in descending order with the "free transportation" districts in red. This truly does not give the full picture since some districts are much larger than others. I decided to make a graph with the number shown as a percentage of their 2012 enrollment:
Leading the pack is tiny Brentwood, where the 35 transfers represent well over 4% of their less than 800 students. Ferguson-Florissant is next where their 425 transfers make up nearly 4% of their 11,000 students. In third is University City, whose proximity to the unaccredited districts gave it 94 transfers, over 3% of their 3,000 students. Taking up 4th and 5th on my chart are two of the "free transportation" districts, both at over 2.5% with Kirkwood's 143 transfers versus their 5,100 students and Francis Howell's 475 transfers versus over 17,000 students. The next three are just under 2%: Ladue with 94 out of 4,000, Clayton with 51 out of 2,500 and Pattonville with 107 out of 5,500. The final "free transportation" district, Mehlville, has 209 transfers versus 11,000 students but already had some overcrowded elementary schools before any of this transfer business came up. The only other districts over 1.0% are Hazelwood (289 out of 18,000), Ritenour (91 out of 6,000) and Maplewood/Richmond Heights (14 out of 1,100.)  There are actually a lot of districts with under 1% including some very big ones and some very reputable ones (notably Parkway, Webster, Lindbergh and Rockwood.) Perhaps instead of filing frivolous lawsuits, those attorneys could try to provide some transportation so those students who want to attend other districts could be sent to one of these other districts that are not so overcrowded.

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