Jun. 2—Most folks want to pay teachers more, but the question is always how, and no clear answer to that exists within more than 150 pages of a new Missouri law, rural education leaders have said.
Gov. Mike Parson, a second-term Republican who will leave office in early January 2025, signed Senate Bill 727 into law earlier this month. Called an omnibus bill, SB 727 tackles many concerns at once, with reference to Show Me State K-12 schooling. It raises the state adequacy payment from $6,375 per enrolled pupil to $6,670, as part of some $500 million in total spending. The result is seemingly good news for educators, but SB 727 poses lots of uncertainty in the future.
“If we should run short of funds in Missouri in the future, that’s something that’s going to have to be cut,” said State Rep. Dean VanSchoiack, R-Savannah, who voted “no” on SB 727 in the Missouri House. “And, typically, when cuts are made, it’s the education budget that gets cut first.”
SB 727 sets the new minimum salary for a full-time teacher at $40,000, and reserves funds to pay the salary and benefits of such employees for districts, if they claim financial hardship. It also allows people to donate money to pay for private school tuition on behalf of qualified students, and then receive a tax credit for those donations, so long as the donations statewide in a given year don’t add up to $75 million.
According to Superintendent Danny Johnson of King City R-I school district, who serves families in Gentry County, Missouri, SB 727 is of significant concern to school leaders. No long-term funding mechanism for its investments exists, and the current Legislature has no power to force future lawmakers to create one. Missouri is currently in a state of good fiscal health, with a budget surplus approaching $8 billion. Yet, Johnson said, it is easy to imagine the $40,000 minimum, as one example, being a burden in the future.
“As the pool of money potentially dries up in Jefferson City, is there going to be money to continue to fund these raises? Will we see other programs eliminated to pay for that? … At some point, you know, you’re probably going to struggle to continue to fund all of this,” Johnson said.
Locally, the urgency of the problem is explicit. A St. Joseph School District budget deficit of at least $4 million will exist in the Fiscal Year 2025 when it starts on July 1, administrators told the Board of Education on Tuesday. That is primarily because the board decided to set a minimum full-time teacher salary at $40,000 without waiting for a tax election to see if local voters are willing to pay for that. The district spends about $156 million per year.
VanSchoiack said he is also concerned about SB 727 authorizing charter schools in Boone County, which surrounds Columbia, Missouri. Although it does not affect his constituency yet, this is the first time in which charter schools — privately run schools that receive direct state funds, and are subject to certain state regulations — have been authorized outside of Kansas City and St. Louis. The argument in the past has been that charter schools are needed in places where deeply troubled local public schools lacked accreditation.
The Boone County precedent does away with that, and opens the door to future charter school expansion elsewhere. VanSchoiack said he does not want that, as it would inevitably deprive public schools of money.
“So, we’ve got a lot of things going on here in this bill, and that’s what they tried to sell, it’s something for everybody,” he said. “But there’s also something in there for everybody to dislike, as well.”
Johnson said that he hopes the Missouri General Assembly will eventually give up on omnibus legislation. If a $40,000 teacher minimum salary is warranted, he said, then lawmakers should just pass that specific idea, and also the funding mechanism to pay for it, on its own.
“If we can’t pass it, then let’s just not pass it,” Johnson said. “That’s just my two cents.”
Marcus Clem can be reached at marcus.clem@newspressnow.com. Follow him on Twitter: @NPNowClem
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