Education
Early Childhood Education
We support policies that expand access to high quality early childhood education programs, especially for at-risk children. We support a statewide quality rating system for early childhood programs.
Primary & Secondary
Funding
We support the Missouri’s Vision project that calls for Missouri’s schools to be ranked in the top 10 by 2020. We understand for this to be feasible, appropriate financial support from the State is necessary. Therefore, we support appropriations for public schools sufficient to fully fund the foundation formula and all state mandated initiatives for education and provide additional support necessary to implement the “Missouri’s Vision for the Future” initiative.
We support legislation mandating fair and accurate property assessments.
We oppose programs that would divert public funding into private institutions if it is detrimental to our public school systems.
Autonomy
We support the local autonomy of school districts. Local school districts are in the best position to determine the most effective use of funds and other resources and provide safe learning environments.
Charter Schools
We support current charter schools using public funding be held to the same accreditation and academic standards as public school systems and parents should have access to recent performance results to aid in their decisions on where to place their children.
Student Placement
We support identifying solutions to solving at-risk school districts in a manner that does not contribute to the destabilization of communities. Solutions that focus on equitable education for all students and allow children access to close-to-home quality public education.
We support establishing reasonable parameters for the movement of students from unaccredited districts to accredited districts. Without reasonable parameters local school boards would lose qualitative decision making authority and unaccredited school districts would be financially devastated.
Legislation should include: districts ability to set class sizes, districts must receive adequate and equitable funding for any student transfers and the transportation of these students, all costs to be paid in advance directly by the State, incoming students must be assigned to buildings at the discretion of the district, districts must not be required to employ additional teachers or construct additional classrooms to accommodate transferring students, students wishing to transfer must have been enrolled in the unaccredited school district for at least one school year prior to the transfer, accredited districts should not be required to include transfer students’ statewide assessment scores in their district’s scores for three years.
Higher Education
Funding
We support protecting core funding and stable allocations during the current budget shortfall for higher education’s workforce training and skills development programs, especially in the key areas of science, technology, engineering, math, expanding manufacturing, and for additional highly-skilled workers in the health and mental health care field.
We support plans to provide capital funding for new construction and for maintenance and repair of existing buildings and equipment for both the University of Missouri-St. Louis and St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley.
We support equity funding for higher education sectors and institutions.
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