Unfortunate Ruling In Clayton
I’ll leave the legal analysis to others here at the Show-Me Institute, but I wanted to highlight this regrettable ruling in Clayton that will allow suburban school districts to continue to refuse to educate young people from the unaccredited city of St. Louis school district. (This will be, in my opinion, the ultimate result — not necessarily the immediate result.)
Is it regrettable (1) because these students don’t get a Clayton education at St. Louis tax rates, (2) because the law should require a school district to pay for the sins of another school district that happens to share its border or (3) both?
Comment by Tom — October 29, 2008 @ 2:41 p.m.
Neither. It is regrettable because the law allows children in an unaccredited district to attend other public school districts. The St. Louis County districts have refused to accept them, even with the fact that the old district would have to pay the new district the cost of educating the child. So the city school district would be paying the same amount of money for the child, they would just not have to be the ones to educate the child. County districts should accept kids from the city, and the money that comes with doing so. They spend more per child in the city than most, though not all, county districts.
That is why I sort of clumsily added the last line – to explain that I was talking about the big picture and long run. The immediate result of the ruling: that those city families who had already been paying Clayton to send their kids there (as my parents did for two of my brothers) must continue to do so, is less of a concern to me. At least the children are being well educated.
Comment by David Stokes — October 29, 2008 @ 3:01 p.m.