St. Louis Public Schools Exemplifies the Need for Educational Transparency

St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) has been in the news a lot recently, and not for the best reasons. The superintendent is out, the largest school bus vendor cancelled its contract, and chronic absenteeism plagues the district. The most surprising revelation, arguably, is the report that SLPS has moved from a 17-million-dollar surplus to 35-million-dollar deficit all in one year. The state will conduct an audit of SLPS, and hopefully it will shine a needed light on exactly what happened.

Maybe I should have seen this coming, as SLPS was the second-to-last district to have its Annual Secretary of the Board Report available on the Department of Secondary and Elementary Education (DESE) website-and it was months behind schedule.

Transparency is important in public institutions. Parents deserve to know what their money is being spent on in public education. The Show-Me Institute created MOSchoolRankings for this very purpose, providing needed transparency regarding the performance and spending in our public school system. DESE ought to provide this information, but its spending and performance data website is woefully inadequate.

Missouri's education system has struggled with transparency. In fact, in 2023, the Heritage Foundation ranked Missouri 46th in educational transparency-a very poor ranking, but a slight improvement on Missouri's 51st rank in 2022.

Increased transparency can come in many forms, one of which is a Missouri Parents' Bill of Rights. Additionally, the sunshine law needs to be strengthened, as school districts have demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars from Institute researchers to access curricular documents. The sunshine law needs to have "teeth," perhaps in the form of significant financial consequences for violations. That way, this law will not just be seen as a mere set of recommendations that can be violated without consequences.

SLPS is facing an uphill battle this year. We will see what we can learn from the state audit. In the future, increased transparency may be able to head off some of these problems before they become a crisis.