Four families file suit against school district in St. Louis County

St. Louis Daily Record & St. Louis Countian, Nov 8, 2007 by Allison Retka

A legal battle that began last week could determine if the St. Louis Public School District should foot the tuition bills of city students who enroll in accredited St. Louis County schools.

Four St. Louis families claim that because the district lost its accreditation in March, state law requires it to fork over the thousands of dollars in tuition the families pay annually to educate their children in Clayton public schools.

The families asserted that claim in St. Louis County Circuit Court by filing suit against both districts late last month.

The Clayton School District insists it is properly following state law in billing the St. Louis parents annual tuition rates of $9,500 for each elementary student and $13,900 for each student in grades 6 through 12.

District spokesman Chris Tennill also pointed out that the parents of the six children affected -- the students range in age from 6 to 15 years old -- enrolled them in Clayton schools long before the St. Louis district lost its accreditation.

Currently, the Clayton School District has a policy of not accepting unaccredited students from the city of St. Louis, Tennill said. St. Louis students who enrolled before the ban may remain if they continue paying tuition.

"We have been handling this in a matter that we feel is legally appropriate ..., and that's obviously being challenged right now," he said. "A lot of how we move forward in the future could depend on the outcome of this litigation."

The attorney for the families, Elkin Kistner, describes the situation as parents being forced to cough up thousands of dollars for a public school education that should be free.

"The families want to provide a good education for their children," the Clayton lawyer said. "They believe the St. Louis public schools haven't met their needs. The loss of accreditation in the spring would seem to reaffirm the families' lack of confidence in the St. Louis public schools."

The lawsuit points to a Missouri state statute, Section 167.131, that requires unaccredited districts to pay the tuition and transportation costs for its students to attend accredited schools in the same or adjoining county.

The suit cites the school district in Wellston, which, when it lost state accreditation in 2003, paid for some 100 students to enroll in the Clayton School District.

The problem is that Wellston -- which, according to the State Board of Education, paid out $1 million a year in mandatory tuition to St. Louis County schools -- was delinquent in its tuition payments to the Clayton district and still owes $180,000 in education costs, Tennill said.

What's more, the State Board of Education decided last year that the Wellston children who enrolled in Clayton schools after the district's loss of accreditation could remain in the Clayton district until their high school graduation.

Kistner said that no matter the outcome, the Clayton district's willingness to bill Wellston -- not Wellston parents -- and its refusal to direct tuition bills to St. Louis public schools are problematic.

"It does seem discriminatory in the sense of being arbitrary," he said. "It seems incongruous at best."

The payment problem

The Wellston situation featured prominently in a Clayton School Board discussion on Aug. 29, when board members discussed whether to accept unaccredited students from St. Louis.

"We still have those [Wellston] students," Clayton superintendent Don Senti said at the meeting. "This is accruing debt; it's not getting any worse and not getting any better."

In an audio recording of the board meeting available on the district's Web site, board members express a desire to "do the right thing" and accept students from a floundering St. Louis school district.

But they also fretted about a disruption to the district's student-teacher ratio and that Clayton schools would take a financial hit if tuition payments went unpaid.

Senti discussed the two state laws detailing tuition payments for out-of-district transfer students.

"One allows us to take tuition from students like we do; [people] who pay," the superintendent said at the August meeting. "There's another law that's allowed unaccredited kids to transfer. The question is, does one trump the other? And that's never been addressed by anybody. Which would prevail if it were put before a judge?"

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is not offering answers to those questions. Department spokesman Jim Morris said Wednesday that the dispute over mandatory tuition payments is between the local school districts -- not the state agency that governs them.

"I understand the problem," Morris said. "The circumstances have played out when 100 kids transferred from Wellston. [Wellston] was in financial straits, was delinquent in paying those fees. I understand the position of officials in other districts who may be concerned about ... whether tuition would ever be paid."

But the state education department is under no obligation to deal with the fallout of a school district refusing to pay for its students to attend public schools elsewhere, Morris said.