City firefighters sue to force county schools to accept their children
By Dale Singer, January 24, 2012
When Shawn Ryan became a firefighter in St. Louis 19 years ago, he knew the job would entail danger and uncertainty.
But he doesn’t think that uncertainty should have to carry over to whether his daughter would get a good public school education.
Ryan and fellow firefighters — who are required by law to live in the city — expressed their frustration at the situation at a news conference Tuesday morning. They announced they have filed suit against the city schools and three St. Louis County school districts because of their inability to enroll their children in accredited county schools.
Missouri’s Outstanding Schools Act says that when a school district loses accreditation, as St. Louis Public Schools have, district residents are entitled to transfer to nearby accredited schools. The home district is supposed to pay for tuition and transportation, and the receiving district is supposed to accept students without regard to how many want to transfer.
The law has been challenged in the courts in a long-running action known as the Turner case. In July 2010, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in favor of city parents who wanted to enroll their children in the Clayton school district, but the case was sent back to St. Louis County Circuit Court to work out the details. Trial in the case, which has been postponed several times, is now scheduled for March 5.
But city firefighters didn’t want to have to wait for that case to be resolved to get for their children the education that the law requires. As the Beacon reported first last October, because the firefighters have to live in the city, their choice is between unaccredited public schools, charter schools or private or parochial schools that charge tuition.
If the choice is to pay tuition, the bill can be a hefty one. Wayne Killingsworth, one of the five plaintiffs in the suit, said he is paying more than $20,000 a year for his children to attend parochial schools.
In all, the five plaintiffs filed on behalf of 10 children, against the Lindbergh, Kirkwood and Webster Groves school districts as well as the city schools. They emphasized that the lawsuit is not about the residency requirement for firefighters, which has taken its own path through the courts. It’s about making sure their children get a quality public school education.
All five say in the suit that they tried to enroll their children at Kirkwood, Lindbergh or Webster Groves but their efforts were denied. The suit asks that the county districts be ordered to take the students and that the city schools be ordered to pay the cost, as the law requires.
“This is not a fight about the residency requirement,” said Mike Fitzgerald, a member of the executive board of Local 73 of the International Association of Firefighters, who spoke at the news conference with one of his two daughters in his arms. He is not a party to the lawsuit.
“This is about grownups who refuse to enforce the law, at the expense of children.”
Ryan, who was rebuffed in his effort to enroll his child in Kirkwood, said he doesn’t mind having to live in the city, but he doesn’t think his child’s education should suffer.
“I would prefer to remain in the city and have my daughter attend an accredited school,” he said, adding that instead, she is “trapped in a failed district.”
“All we are asking,” Ryan added, “is that the Outstanding Schools Act be enforced as written. We don’t want the future to be unpredictable when it comes to our daughter’s education.”
He said he had looked at charter schools, but given their spotty academic record, he prefers to have his daughter enrolled in county schools with a proven track record.
“I don’t want to keep changing the schools or the districts my daughter goes to,” he said. “Most charter schools are unproven. I don’t want to have to go from place to place.”
Attorney Timothy Belz, who filed the suit on behalf of the firefighters, referred to the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind when he discussed the situation in St. Louis. “Today,” he said, “we have a situation in the city where every child is left behind.”
He said the firefighters’ suit is straightforward and shouldn’t have to wait until the Turner case is resolved.
“The law is so clear,” Belz said. “The Missouri Supreme Court has spoken in the Turner case. It’s kind of shocking really that the schools won’t comply with the law. These guys deserve their day in court.”
The news conference was coordinated by the Children’s Education Alliance of Missouri. Its state director, Kate Casas (at right), said the group did not have to do much outreach to find firefighters willing to join the suit. “It came from guys talking to each other at the firehouse,” she said.
Neither Casas nor Belz would discuss who was paying for the lawsuit. “That’s been worked out between me and the firefighters,” Belz said, “but it’s not really for public consumption.”
Besides the Turner case and the firefighters’ lawsuit, a third case seeking to allow city students to transfer to accredited county schools is also ongoing. In it, St. Louis County Circuit Judge Barbara Wallace ruled last June against the Webster Groves schools, saying that they must enroll a girl from the city. That ruling was appealed; the Missouri Supreme Court has set a hearing in the case for Feb. 15.
Douglas Copeland, attorney for the Webster Groves schools, said that the student involved, Jordan King-Willmann, has moved from the city to the Mehlville School District, and no filing was made in the case on her behalf, but the hearing is expected to proceed anyway.
In its brief with the Supreme Court, Webster Groves argued that the requirement that the student be allowed to transfer to Webster schools, with her home district paying the cost, amounts to an unfunded mandate on the city schools — a mandate that would be disallowed under the Hancock Amendment to the state constitution.
It also said that such a move would be counter to the settlement of the area’s school desegregation lawsuit approved by the federal court.
Tags: CEAM, Children's Education Alliance of MIssouri, Kate Casas, Kirkwood School District, Lindbergh School District, Outstanding Schools Act, St. Louis Public Schools, Webster Groves School District
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
