by Chelsea Birchmier

After the Kansas City Public Schools district in Missouri lost its accreditation Jan. 1, school and community leaders started to ask themselves what they could do for the district.

At STA, leaders are asking “What can we do as a private Catholic school to act as the dear neighbor to the students in the unaccredited district?”

Meanwhile, the leaders of Kansas City are asking “What can we do as a community to save the district for the well-being of the city?”

But right now, no one seems to have any clear answers.

What happened to the district?

According to the Missouri commissioner’s district report card (an analysis of each school’s test scores), schools in the district have not met Missouri Assessment Program standards in communication arts or math for the past four years. Last year, they met just three out of 14 state standards overall. The graduation rate dropped to 57.3 percent last year, compared to Missouri’s overall rate of 86.7 percent. And composite ACT scores from 2010 for high schools in the district do not exceed 16, with the exception of Lincoln College Preparatory Academy’s average of 22.4.

Because of these scores and a lack of focus on student achievement, Ms. Chris Nicastro, Missouri’s commissioner of education, along with the Missouri Board of Education, decided in September to strip the district of its accreditation. The district now has two years to find a system that works before the state takes it over. At a Board meeting in December, Nicastro cited a letter from 10 years ago, in which district leaders promised they would improve the system if they had more time. Nicastro responded to that letter by saying that time had run out for the district to turn itself around on its own.

“We are talking about the future of the 17,000 children in the Kansas City schools today,” Nicastro said at the December meeting. “The District has been dysfunctional and underperforming for decades. This systemic failure cannot be allowed to continue.”

The district website says that the loss of accreditation will have no immediate effect on students and for high school seniors, should not harm their chances of acceptance to college.

Lincoln’s principal Carl Pelofsky agrees that accreditation plays a minor role in college admission.

“Colleges look more at the individual school than the district,” Pelofsky said in an email interview. “Duke University wants to know about Lincoln’s academic program, not the status of the Kansas City school district in relation to state accreditation. Lincoln offers AP courses, a full IB program, dozens of extracurriculars and the students who take advantage of these offerings will remain very strong candidates for colleges.”

Even so, Pelofsky says that in 12 months Lincoln should receive accreditation from AdvancED, the same organization that provides STA’s accreditation.

“Our standards extend beyond simply gaining accreditation; we want to have the best school we can have,” Pelofsky wrote. “Accreditation is the minimum expectation.”

While Pelofsky feels that the district’s loss of accreditation will not disrupt the school environment, many in the district remain concerned about the accreditation situation.

“Parents and students are concerned, of course,” Pelofsky wrote. “More than anything, they are worried about the unknown. Since so much is unknown, it’s difficult to predict. As they see our school go on with a ‘business as usual’ approach, they become more comfortable.”

However, STA’s principal for academic affairs Barbara McCormick argues that students and parents should be concerned about the effects of accreditation on college admission.

“To graduate from an unaccredited high school can be detrimental to your post-secondary education,” McCormick said. “Colleges are expecting to see an accredited diploma. Students’ diplomas are in jeopardy. That should concern us as a society.”

Sophomore Emma Mullen, though, who transferred to STA from Lincoln this year, said her former classmates have not shown much concern regarding the future of the district.

“I have seen a bunch of Facebook posts that were like, ‘Oh man I am so ready to leave this district, I can’t wait to get out of here,’” Mullen said. “But for the most part, with my close friends, it doesn’t really seem to bother them. My neighborhood friend still has the exact same story in middle school of ‘Yeah, it’s great, I love it,’ which I find really interesting.”

What’s next for the district?

At the December board meeting, Nicastro also discussed several options for governance of the district, such as implementing mayoral control, forming an advisory board or administrative board and even dissolving the district. She also said that she believes a community consensus is necessary to make a decision worth presenting to state legislators.

At an emergency District Advisory Committee meeting in January, a group of parents, students and community members joined to discuss a preferred method of governance that they could hopefully show to legislators in March. After completing various surveys, they created a plan focused on decentralized management and collaborative leadership among teachers, principals, parents, students and community members in addition to an elected board.

“It’s reasonable that people closest to the problem know best how to address that issue,” committee representative Jennifer Wolfsie said.

Members also discussed moving student achievement back to the top of their priorities.

“It’s not just that we need to save the district,” committee leader Jamekia Kendrix said. “We need to make sure student achievement improves.”

 

Possible methods of governance for the district:

status quo: The district would continue as is.

mayoral control: The mayor would take over the district

dissolve the district: 1) The boundaries of the district would change, and pieces of the district would attach to neighboring districts or 2) The district would remain intact, and neighboring districts would take charge over the schools in the district.

special administrative board: A board of members appointed specifically for aiding the district would replace the current elected Board of Education.

advisory board: Members of this board would advise current members of the Board of Education on helping the district but would not replace the current Board.

 

How will STA respond?

After serving as a public school teacher for many years, STA’s president Nan Bone sympathizes with students and administrators from the district. She also believes having an unaccredited district poses a risk for the entire city.

“It’s a very unfortunate situation for the Kansas City school district,” Bone said. “But oh boy do we need to solve it because it actually hurts us too. If someone was being hired and moving here, they might choose to move to the Kansas side, which hurts businesses, the economy. It’s really just a domino effect.”

While some argue that a failing district may increase enrollment at STA, Bone does not believe this is the best method for receiving new students.

“Some people say it affects [STA] positively because the Kansas City school district is not solid,” Bone said. “Parents don’t want to send their daughters to a school that’s not going to educate them well. So what they’ll do is send them to some of our Catholic feeder schools which then feed into us.”

But Bone believes gaining students in this way may not be best for the school. She thinks students should come to a school because they want to, not because they have no other options.

“In every school, every business, you don’t want to become lax,” Bone said. “You don’t want somebody to just to feed you students because [the district is] not good. If you are always at your best at whatever you do in life, you’re going to draw people to you. You keep everybody competitive that way.”

However, even if students in the district wanted to come to STA, many of them don’t have the option of attending a private school like STA because of costs. In every high school in the district, the percentage of students on the National School Lunch Program, a program that provides low-cost or free lunches to children with financial need, is at least 60 percent. At one district school, Southwest Early College, 78 percent of students are on the lunch program.

STA’s principal for academic affairs Barbara McCormick says that it’s difficult for STA to support these students financially because it cannot increase the amount of money given in scholarships.

“The doors are open and welcoming, and [students from the district] can come in through the admission process,” McCormick said. “But the amount [we give in scholarships] is not changing. In these hard economic times, our current families are struggling. It’s a grave challenge.”

In some states, the government gives students vouchers, subsidies that support students financially, so they can afford to go to any school, even a private school. Since Missouri does not have such a program, Mr. Dan Peters, superintendent for Catholic schools in the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, welcomed students from the district to the Catholic school system in a newsletter he sent out in November.

“Education is a human right,” Peters wrote. “We have a moral imperative to ensure that all children have access to quality, safe and accredited schools. This is a moment when some parents–Catholic and non-Catholic alike–will decide that a Catholic school eduction is the option for their children. We want to serve all who embrace our mission.”

Like Peters, McCormick believes that, as a Catholic school, STA should do as much as it can to be aware of the situation and to welcome students from the district.

“I’m just praying for all those people because no matter what, it’s going to affect the city,” McCormick said. “As the dear neighbor we need to be cognizant of what’s happening and how we can be of service to those people and the community.”