impact of fiscal inequity on at-risk schoolchildren in St. Louis (Testimony of Kern Alexander, March 12, 1996), The

Journal of Negro Education, The, Summer 1997

ALEXANDER: There are states that provide for a weighting-about 29 states provide compensatory education. These 29 do [this] in various ways. . .they use Chapter 1 funds as a measure, which [are] federal funds. . .they use AFDC [Aid to Families with Dependent Children] count, or they will use free- and reduced[-price lunches], or they will use low test scores to [decide who is at risk and should receive compensatory education]. Now those are the four basic measures that are used among the states. Some states-Florida, for example[have] a sliding scale, where the greater the [incidence] of the children, the more money, [and] the higher the weighting. Ohio has such a. . sliding scale. Michigan has a heavily weighted scale. These are states that have urban problems that are similar to [Missouri's], and it is important that that weighting be counted in order to alleviate the urban core city problems that they have.

BROSTRON: In your review of the St. Louis expenditures per pupil, how does [it] compare to other urban cities. . ?

ALEXANDER: The St. Louis expenditures per pupil are not dissimilar if you take into account the low effort that the state of Missouri [puts forth]. The core cities generally put forth higher effort. . .they tend to acquire [a] substantial portion of those expenditures from their own resources. They tend to put forth greater effort than the more affluent school districts, taxing themselves or raising themselves by their bootstraps. . .

BROSTRON: Does providing students with a choice in educational opportunities [yield]. . .an educational benefit?

ALEXANDER: There is certainly an educational benefit to providing the students and families an opportunit[y] to have an alternative education. To limit children in public schools to one school district or not give them the flexibility to move among school districts denies the fact that a child is a child of the state, not of the locality. . .

BROSTRON: If the court would terminate the interdistrict transfer program that exists in this case now, would that have a positive or a negative effect on the [element of] choice for students?

ALEXANDER: It would have [a] negative. . effect in that it would bring children back down to the core city. fence them in to the core city, not give them the opportunity that they had previously. It would tend to violate the constitutional concept of the state of Missouri. . .that. . that ...it is a state system of education and that children are children of the state and that all the taxes of the state of Missouri, whether collected state or locally, are funds of the people of Missouri and they don't belong simply to a locale. [The judge asked if there were disadvantages to transferring students. Alexander said there were because of lost classroom time while students were on buses.]

THE COURT:. . .Is there a comparison that could be made between neighborhood schools and schools where the children are transported. . .?

ALEXANDER: The disadvantage, of course, of the neighborhood school (or the neighborhood school district, where you've got several small school districts) is that there is a limitation of the movement. On the other hand, there is the advantage of having the school close to the child so that parents would tend to become more involved without going a long distance. We've found that in fact the closer the school is to the child-I'm talking about in neighborhoods where. the parents' income level indicates that they will-[parents] tend to spend more time at school. . .