As I recently noted, Kansas City’s new interim superintendent is Dr. John Martin, who served as the deputy superintendent for the St. Louis Public Schools as the district went through the process of losing its accreditation. Today, the Post-Dispatch reports that the Jennings School District will pay $230,000 to buy out the contract of Superintendent Kay Royster, whom Jennings hired after she served as the "chief academic officer" for Riverview Gardens School District as it slid toward its loss of accreditation. Before her ill-fated term at Riverview Gardens, Royster served as the superintendent for Peoria, Ill. — where the district eventually bought out her contract because of "mismanagement" claims. And before Peoria, Royster was bought out of her superintendent’s contract in Kalamazoo, Mich.

The unsettling message here is that some school districts are handing hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to administrators whose recent history casts significant doubt on their ability to effectively improve the performance of their new districts. In the case of Kay Royster, the Jennings School District had to have known about her past issues when they hired her, yet now the district must pay a ridiculous sum of your money just to get rid of her. Missourians — parents, students, and taxpayers alike — deserve and ought to demand better.