While it can be challenging to help transfer students get acclimated and caught up, it’s also a joy for me to get to know them. Some of my fondest memories come from students who arrived mid-year and found a good fit. 

That wasn’t the case for Darius. When he walked into my seventh grade classroom, I introduced myself. “Thanks, but don’t get too friendly,” he stated wryly. “This is my fifth school this year, and I doubt I’ll be here long.” 

I fixed my face to hide my shock. In over a decade of teaching, the amount of student turnover has gone up every year. But five times in a year was a new record. I checked his file later, and he wasn’t kidding. Constant switches, from school to school, all within our same district. 

And he wasn’t kidding about his tenure, either. Two weeks later, he was gone. An administrator told me that his mom complained about getting “too many phone calls” from a teacher and transferred him to a new school. 

I felt a flavor of frustration I don’t typically experience as a teacher. There are many valid reasons for students to change schools mid-year: moving, family emergencies, health. But I knew that transferring him was a mistake. He had barely given our school a chance, and changing again so close to the end of the year would do more harm than good. It was just as likely to end up in the same outcome: an interrupted education, devoid of relationships with supportive peers and trusted adults.

No student should be stuck at a school that isn’t right for them. Giving families the choice to change is one way to address this problem. But if we don’t acknowledge the cost of churn that’s baked into our system of school choice, we are in denial about an extremely damaging problem.

Mid-year turnover isn’t just like arriving late to a movie, although it sometimes feels like the plot of one. Students enter classrooms with seating charts already filled, usually getting the last desk available. They have to find a spot in the cafeteria and fit in with a group of friends who’ve known each other for months. They must get people to remember their name after the icebreakers have long passed. 

They must trust a new set of adults, while catching up on content they may not have learned at their last school — some students transfer just in time to take a test! They might be able to join sports teams, but the cutoff has probably passed. They may be waiting a few days for a bus assignment. High school credits may have to be re-earned. If they have a disability, they need to have a move-in conference, and their paperwork documenting their services may take weeks to arrive from their old school.

There are real, tangible impacts on a students’ learning and wellbeing at every churn — especially mid-year. These students see , including . They also experience . Students who switch high schools have and , and are more . While we’d hope a student may switch from a poor-fit school to a better one, too often, students end up at another school that they leave.

In spite of the harms, student churn is getting more common. While mobility used to be typically limited to the summer, a growing number of families are considering and schools . Especially since the pandemic, this type of mid-year transience has skyrocketed, and not equitably. Low-income students change schools than wealthier ones, and urban students suburban ones. A sample of students in foster care averaged . Some critics blame charter schools for disenrolling students mid-year due to academic, attendance or behavioral issues, but the data supporting their contribution to churn is limited and mixed.

So what can be done to address the churn while preserving the choice? 

First, states should provide educational navigators that follow students, similar to health insurance navigators. Right now, schools all pay for their own record-keeping, and the myriad platforms rarely talk to each other. The many social service and housing agencies supporting these students operate in silos. We must keep better track of students as they move. We need centralized information that follows the student so that receiving schools can be better prepared. And we need a single, dedicated point of contact for each family to prevent highly mobile students from getting lost in the cracks. Some states and districts to support students experiencing homelessness or in foster care. Let’s scale them to include all students.

Second, states should implement transfer windows at semester breaks, unless there is a qualifying life event, such as a change in address. This limit on choice is far from unusual. Open enrollment windows are standard insurance policies. When a doctor prescribes a new medication, patients are barred from switching rapidly to avoid side-effects and interactions. Even colleges typically prohibited mid-semester enrollment. In every other sector, we regulate choices to minimize collateral consequences. Why not in K-12 education?

And third, parents and students need meaningful and accurate information about schools beyond what shows up on a billboard or a website. Students need exposure to a school environment – sample classes, shadow days, summer building tours, extracurricular events, even having lunch in the school cafeteria. Private schools typically require students to visit the school and meet teachers for informational interviews before enrolling. This is also the norm in higher education and most preschools. Let’s make this the expectation at all K-12 schools, regardless of type.

I hope that after leaving us, Darius ended up at a school that he was successful and could call home. But data and logic tell me that this probably wasn’t his fate. School choice is empowering to families, but that power instills responsibility to steward a child’s education with stability. We should structure the system of choice to encourage that.

The is a compromise , one sponsored by Democratic state Sen. Nicole Cannizzaro and the other supported by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo. It passed unanimously in the Senate on June 1 and with a 38-4 Assembly vote June 2.

Lombardo said in a June 3 that the Legislature “passed historic education choice and accountability, so that every Nevada student can graduate career or college ready.” The bill was sent to his desk June 6. 

More than allow interdistrict open enrollment, according to the nonprofit Education Commission of the States. Nevada’s new system will let students transfer to schools outside their residential zone if there’s room in their grade.

It will also provide transportation subsidies for students trying to leave low-performing schools. Many states don’t require transportation to be provided for open enrollment students, as it is for residents, according to . In New Hampshire, for example, lawmakers recently passed an that places responsibility for transportation on parents. Families can drive their child to a bus stop on an existing route if they are attending a school outside their attendance zone, according to the bill.

Multiple times a year, districts will be required to publish open enrollment data online, including school vacancy numbers and the total number of students who transferred in and out of their attendance zones.

Nevada school boards will have to create a method, such as a lottery, to determine which open enrollment students are accepted into a grade that reaches capacity. 

Schools that deny a student’s application will have to explain why. The bill prohibits districts from considering factors like disability, English learner status, athletic ability and residential address when evaluating applications. Schools will be required to create a priority lottery for students who have low academic scores.

Students can be denied if they were expelled or suspended for 10 or more days during the previous school year. Parents can appeal a rejection to the district superintendent.

The Nevada Department of Education will have to provide transportation for students who want to transfer from a low-performing school but have no way to get there. According to the bill, the department will award grant funds “to the extent money is available” to local organizations that provide transportation.

The bill will also create a for districts and charter schools. The department could intervene in persistently low-performing districts by replacing leadership or assuming state control.

“We implemented open zoning so our children can attend the school that best fits their educational needs, and we provided resources to allow those children trapped in underperforming schools transportation to attend the school of their choice — regardless of their zip code,” Lombardo said in his statement. “Simply put, we have instituted more educational accountability measures than during any legislative session in the history of Nevada.”

Angela Gleason knew something was wrong with her son’s education by the time he began first grade in Omaha Public Schools. 

The district moved Teddy, who has autism and is nonverbal, from a behavioral skills class to general education. His struggles brought on outbursts of running around the room and disrupting his classmates, leading to near-daily phone calls asking Gleason to come get him.  

Feeling hopeless, Gleason applied for a transfer to Millard Public Schools in 2018. But the nearby district said its special education program had no room for Teddy.

Year after year, Gleason applied to Millard and received the same response, even as the district later accepted two of her other children, who didn’t need special education services. She tried other Omaha-area districts. Westside. Then Bellevue. Both rejected Teddy.

“It’s very disheartening as a parent to try repeatedly to get your child with disabilities accepted into a different school district, and to be told ‘no’ over and over and over again,” she said.

A 35-year-old from one public school district to another under a policy known as option enrollment. 

Today, more than 25,000 students attend schools outside their home district. But for hundreds of kids like Teddy, the program hasn’t lived up to its promise, despite a provision barring districts from considering students’ disabilities as part of their admission standards.

In 2023-24, Bellevue Public Schools and 39 other districts rejected only kids with disabilities while accepting option applications from other students. Several suburban Omaha districts, like Millard, Westside and Papillion La Vista, denied students with disabilities at disproportionate rates.

Across Nebraska, students with individualized education programs (IEPs) made up 38% of the option enrollment rejections despite accounting for 17% of K-12 school kids, according to a data analysis of a .

Disability disparities have also emerged in other states with open enrollment programs. In 2021, Wisconsin districts rejected students with disabilities for open enrollment the rate of other students. This year, technical high schools in Connecticut were accused of after denying enrollment to 42 kids, a state report found. 

Nebraska administrators and education lobbyists say an increasingly dire shortage of special education staff is to blame for the disparity. The law allows districts to reject applications if they lack the ability or space to accommodate more kids.

Nebraska schools reported last year, and that doesn’t include dozens of vacancies districts gave up on filling, said Tim Royers, president of the state teachers union.

Adding more option students to already stretched-thin special ed classrooms would decrease the quality of education while exacerbating faster than schools can replace them, Royers said.

“In an ideal world, we’re not turning anybody away through option enrollment because their child has an IEP,” he said. “We know what we want the system to look like, (but) we don’t have the people to accomplish that goal right now.”

Critics say schools have long ignored state law and manipulated transfer enrollment at the expense of kids with disabilities.

“We got here because of self-interest. [Schools] don’t want to deal with kids who may require a little more work,” said Justin Wayne, a Democrat and former state lawmaker from Omaha who worked on education issues. 

To Democratic state Sen. Danielle Conrad, the high rejection rate for students with disabilities can’t be explained away by staffing troubles: “That’s discrimination, plain and simple.”

She’s part of a bipartisan bloc of lawmakers that tried unsuccessfully in the just-concluded legislative session barring districts from disproportionately rejecting transfers from students with disabilities. 

The proposal failed to advance after heavy pushback from teachers and school administrators, who contended it would have hamstrung their ability to educate the special-needs students they already have. The bill could be considered again when the Legislature reconvenes in January.

It’s “shocking and disappointing” that schools “and their highly paid superintendents” opposed efforts to stem disability discrimination, said Conrad. 

Meanwhile, the toll of rejection continues to weigh heavily on parents like Gleason. It’s more than the feeling of injustice — it’s the weeks, months and years that go by watching their child trying to thrive in the wrong learning environment.

“We tried in a meeting to request more support with a one-on-one paraprofessional, but the school actively advocated against it, telling us no one would apply for the position and that they wouldn’t be able to fill it,” Gleason said. “It was a very stressful time, and we decided to try and enroll in other districts because we had heard other districts do very well at providing services.”

Dividing lines

When the Nebraska Legislature first weighed big questions about interdistrict transfers in 1989, nobody had the answers: A track record didn’t yet exist. 

Minnesota had become to establish an open enrollment program just a year prior. But days before assuming the Oval Office in January, George H.W. Bush gave to public school choice, setting off a wave of legislation in state capitols across the country.

Pitched as a way to boost parental engagement and competition among school districts, Nebraska’s proposal would eventually make it to require districts to take transfers under certain circumstances.The bill passed narrowly over objections from some lawmakers and school administrators who feared the greater freedom to transfer could undermine neighborhood schools. About 370 kids formed the inaugural class of option students.

The program has proven extremely popular: 1 in 13 public schools students opted out of their home district last year.

prohibited schools from creating rejection standards based on “handicapping conditions,” previous academic performance or athletic ability. But the state didn’t require districts to provide data on their rejections.

Spurred by persistent complaints from fed-up parents about because of their IEPs, lawmakers passed a bill in 2023 mandating that districts determine their special education capacity on a case-by-case basis rather than closing their whole program to option students, as had done. 

The bill also required public schools to report the number of option applications they rejected from students with and without disabilities.

The by the Nebraska Department of Education revealed a widespread practice among districts of denying students with IEPs at disproportionate rates. 

Bellevue Public Schools stood out from the pack: All 30 of the district’s denials during the 2023-24 school year were students with IEPs. The district later confirmed that of more than 250 option students it accepted that year, only 10 had active IEPs.

Michele Zephier’s son, Dylan, was among those denied a transfer to Bellevue in 2018 after poor experiences in Omaha and Millard schools.

Dylan, who has Down syndrome and autism, was being secluded up to eight times a day because of his behavior while in third grade in the Millard district, Zephier said. He was often absent because he dreaded coming to school. 

The district declined to comment on individual students but said in a statement that it “works as a team with families to place children in the least restrictive environment possible.”

After being rejected by Bellevue because of its special education capacity, Zephier was desperate for something different. She sold her house and moved to a small apartment inside the Bellevue district boundaries, guaranteeing enrollment.

In a statement, the Bellevue district cited staffing shortages as the reason for the rejections. At the start of the 2023-24 school year, the district was down four special ed teachers and 29 paraprofessionals.

“The decision to deny an application is never made lightly,” the statement said. “We fully recognize the impact these decisions have on families, and we continue actively working to recruit and retain qualified staff to support our students.”

The district denied 36 of the 46 students with IEPs who applied for transfers for the 2024-25 school year, though most of the rejected applications came in after a , said spokeswoman Amanda Oliver. 

During the two years Zephier lived in the Bellevue district, Dylan was often secluded in an adjoining room for behaviors like pushing teachers away and shoving items off his desk, she said. 

She decided to move 60 miles away to the state capital, Lincoln, in 2020 as a last-ditch effort to find something better. She broke her apartment lease, drained her savings and eventually found the right public school for her son there.

“All those bad behaviors disappeared. Now he’s included. He’s in the band. He performed in the state band competition. He’s had solos on the stage,” she said. “There are districts that are known for having a lot of strengths in special education — they’re just really good at it or they built programs that have benefited students who can option into that district.”

Locked out of the suburbs

Option enrollment has long resembled a one-way street out of the Omaha district and into . 

Last year, more than 5,700 kids opted out of Omaha to attend other districts, while just 875 went in the other direction. 

Option enrollment has been a boon for suburban districts like Millard and Westside, allowing them to fill seats and keep their down, said former Republican state Sen. Lou Ann Linehan.

But critics contend that the same districts taking in hundreds of option students won’t give kids with disabilities a fair shake. 

In 2023, Millard Public Schools enrolled the most new option students in the state, but 27 of its 34 denials were for students with IEPs. What the state report didn’t show, said spokeswoman Rebecca Kleeman, is that the district had accepted 60% of the kids with IEPs who applied that year and more than 90% the year prior. 

“We exist to educate children, and we want to accept as many as we can. We also want to be careful not to exceed capacity of any program so that we can serve our students effectively,” Kleeman said in an email.

Westside Community Schools received about 700 option applications, more than any other Nebraska district, and rejected about half. Roughly 25% of the denied students had IEPs. 

The district welcomes option students, “but our first responsibility is to the families who live in our district, so we must ensure we have adequate space, staff and services for all students,” said district spokeswoman Elizabeth Power in a statement.

In Papillion La Vista, students with disabilities made up 14% of accepted option applications but 56% of rejections in the 2023-24 school year. 

The disproportionate rates happened because the school board voted in fall 2022 to close its K-12 special education program to option students for the following year. It just didn’t have enough teachers and staff to take on more students, said Christopher Villarreal, a district spokesman. The district reversed course following the enactment of the 2023 law, but capacity issues remain, he said. 

“It’s program capacity. So if there’s a special ed reason for denial, that special ed reason is going to be because of capacity — but I accepted a bunch (of special ed students) too,” said Tammy Voisin, Papillion La Vista’s director of special services. “So you accept up to a certain point, and then you say, ‘Now I can’t accept any more.’ ”

But Conrad said the “capacity argument just doesn’t hold any water for me,” since districts would have to find a way to provide special ed services to families that move within their boundaries. 

“We can’t just throw up our hands and say ‘capacity’ if I move into the district, but that’s what we’re doing right now for kids and families with special needs who want to utilize option enrollment,” she said at .

Voisin said that when the special ed program is full and a student with disabilities moves into the district, administrators “figure it out” by shifting teachers to different buildings or hiring more staff. But because the school board sets firm staffing numbers each fall for the following year, she said, the district can’t suddenly hire more people if it receives too many option enrollment requests.

Republican state Sen. Dave Murman, who sponsored the bill to ban the disproportionate denial of kids with IEPs, said districts that receive more option students than they lose are typically better staffed in special ed than those like Omaha, where students are trying to transfer out.

Those “option positive” districts should be more easily able to adjust their staffing to take in additional students with disabilities than Omaha, Murman said. 

Omaha Public Schools’ teacher shortage grew so severe in 2023 that the district at three elementary schools a week before the school year started. The district gave about 140 families the option to move their kids to another school or forgo their IEP accommodations. 

Staffing levels have improved from that low point, and special ed programs at the three schools returned last year. But Nebraska’s biggest district still faces gaping personnel holes, including vacancies for 62 special ed teachers, 63 classroom support staffers and 20 speech pathologists. 

Omaha has “a deep commitment to student success” and actively recruits staff year round in a competitive marketplace to meet students’ needs, a statement from the district said. 

Wayne noted that suburban districts can contract with Omaha Public Schools and private businesses to provide specialized services to kids with IEPs. 

Lawmakers also say they’ve recently increased state funding for special ed and for per-pupil payments in districts that take lots of option kids, making it financially viable to accept transfer students with disabilities. 

“Every reason that I’ve heard in the Legislature of why a school district may or may not take a kid in the Omaha area, to me, they’re just flat-out lying,” Wayne said. 

Districts that “pick and choose” which option students to take are shrugging off state law because there’s no penalty, Linehan said. 

“If you get a speeding ticket, you get a fine. If you’re a school and you ignore the rules, so what?” she said.

Royers, the union president, acknowledged that some districts may have taken disability rejections too far — especially for students with slight hearing loss or other minor disabilities that don’t require special accommodations. Those districts should be held accountable, he said.

But in most cases, he said, staffing shortages are the real barrier, and some teachers are already in a situation where it’s “mathematically impossible for them to meet all of the instructional-minute requirements for all of the students on their caseload.”

Rural rejection

The uneven denial of students with disabilities in Omaha-area districts has been playing out on a small scale in small towns. 

In fall 2015, Gary Shada didn’t know that moving his family to a house a mile outside the Pierce Public Schools district in northeast Nebraska would upend his daughter’s education.

Shada, a teacher in the district for more than 30 years, had a son in kindergarten at the time. His daughter Kylee, who has Down syndrome, was enrolled in the district’s preschool. Because his new address fell in the neighboring Plainview district, he had to use option enrollment for his children to continue their education in Pierce for the 2016-17 year.

His son’s application was accepted. But Shada said Pierce Superintendent Kendall Steffensen told him it wouldn’t be possible for Kylee because the elementary school’s special education program was at capacity. 

Shada , but it upheld Pierce’s decision. 

Kylee, who just completed seventh grade, is still enrolled in Plainview Public Schools, while her brother is in Pierce. Last school year, Shada hoped Kylee could try option enrollment again and attend Pierce High School, making transportation easier and ensuring his two children were in the same building. But, he said, Steffensen told him it’s not going to happen and said, “Don’t ever bring it up again.”

Steffensen couldn’t be reached for comment after multiple attempts.

“I just got shot down at every turn. But I’m not saying that Pierce did anything different than any other district would do. That’s why I feel that something has got to change when it comes to option enrollment and kids with special needs,” Shada said. “You can’t just look them in the eye and say, ‘Oh, they have an IEP. We don’t want them.’ ”

Few parents have appealed denials, like Shada, and even fewer have succeeded in changing the outcome. 

Since 2008, the State Board of Education has ruled on 15 appeals of applications rejected for special education capacity shortages, including two that were later withdrawn. The elected panel overturned only two denials.

Stalled out in the Capitol

For Murman, conversations about special education invoke thoughts of Whitney. His adult daughter lives with Rett syndrome and received instruction catered to her needs as a kid.

But when another of his daughters sought to opt out of their home district in the program’s early days, the first question on the application was: “Does your student have an IEP?” 

Murman said he understood that the district needed the information, but it made him wonder how it was being used. 

Three decades later, Murman led the recently thwarted effort to close the disability disparity in option enrollment as the chair of the Legislature’s Education Committee.

His bill would have from most kids with disabilities at rates beyond the statewide percentage of students with IEPs — currently about 17%. 

The proposal, introduced following an , left a carveout for districts to deny applications from students with severe disabilities that require them to spend more than three-fifths of their school day outside the general ed classroom — a nod to special ed staffing difficulties. But it would have provided extra funding to schools that accept those kids. 

School administrators resisted the bill from the start and kept the pressure on their local lawmakers to oppose it, Murman said.

Hastings Public Schools Superintendent Jeff Schneider told Murman’s committee in February that the bill’s passage would force his district to consider taking “a backward step” by closing option enrollment to all students.

The district has capacity in general education, but “we are overloaded in special ed … so, this scares the heck out of us because we are already struggling,” Schneider said. 

Ultimately, the bill never came before the full Legislature. With time winding down in the legislative session and lawmakers reluctant to buck their local superintendents, Murman knew he didn’t have the votes.

The Republican said he plans to work out kinks in the bill with opponents and try again next year. 

Lawmakers also dashed plans to pay if they stay in state after graduation, and to give special ed teachers several paid days to do federally mandated paperwork failed to advance.

The Legislature’s unwillingness to embrace these quality-of-life improvements for special ed teachers is frustrating, Royers said.

Royers maintains that if the bill’s backers would give districts three years before it took effect, education groups could recruit enough former teachers back into the field to resolve the disparity in option rejections.

For Gleason, fighting for Teddy’s education is still a priority, but she doesn’t think she’ll apply to districts again next year, since the bill didn’t pass. She said moving to a different district, as Zephier did, might be the answer.

“Trying to find support outside of [Omaha Public Schools] is nearly impossible,” she said. “Because if you try to opt into another district, you probably aren’t going to get in — not if your child has an IEP.”

No child should be forced to attend a school where they are bullied or unsafe. By allowing students to use open enrollment as a mechanism to escape persistently dangerous traditional public schools, the department is empowering families with a basic freedom.

At EdChoice, we’ve long known that safety is a top priority for families. Our nationally representative , conducted in partnership with Braun Research, has tracked parents’ reasons for choosing certain schools for over a decade. In 2024, safety became the top priority for both private and charter school parents, surpassing academics, individual attention and values. 

And for good reason. According to a just-released survey, only believe their school handles violent behavior well, and just 37% say their school effectively addresses bullying. , with 44% saying their child’s school handles bullying well. But of all: only 33% believe their school does a good job of handling bullying, and just 37% think violent behavior is addressed adequately.

The consequences are real and deeply troubling. One in 10 teenagers said they missed school in the past year due to . About are “very concerned” about a violent intruder entering their school, and share that concern. Among , 28% said bullying was a key reason they left. And when asked what would help bring chronically absent students back to the classroom, 51% of teens pointed to reducing bullying.

It’s hard to focus on math or reading when you’re worried about being assaulted in the hallway or harassed on the playground. For too long, families have been told to simply wait for things to improve. This new guidance from the department sends a different message: families deserve safe public school options now.

Allowing parents to use open enrollment when schools are dangerous is a meaningful step forward. It gives families the power to act when their child’s school environment is not safe, without waiting for bureaucracy to catch up. It’s good policy and morally right. Among eight empirical studies that have examined how school choice affects school safety, every single one found a , test scores, parent satisfaction and integration.

But open enrollment must be more than a policy on paper. It must be implemented transparently, with clear communication, minimal red tape and no arbitrary restrictions from either sending or receiving districts. Families must know their rights, and the process must be accessible to all, not just those with time, resources, or connections.

Policymakers should also address overlooked barriers, like mental health and , to ensure open enrollment policies truly serve students as intended. One of the biggest challenges families face, especially low-income families, is simply getting their child to a school that meets their needs. States can expand access by offering transportation stipends or coordinating public-private transportation partnerships for students who choose to attend schools outside their assigned zones.

Even then, open enrollment is only one piece of the puzzle. Because some form of open enrollment already, to truly help those in persistently dangerous schools, states must go further by enacting private school choice programs, like education savings accounts, that give families real power to choose safer, more effective learning environments beyond the public system. While there’s much talk in Washington about expanding school choice, the real momentum for these policies is happening at the state level.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed the state’s first school choice program into law, an education savings account that will be available for any child whose family chooses. With the addition of Texas, there are now 76 private school choice programs across 35 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Eighteen of these are universal, offering programs to all students. 

Whether they are in their local public school or one across town, a private school, charter school or homeschool, students need environments where they feel secure, respected, and free to learn. The department’s announcement is an important step in that direction. Every child deserves access to a safe school, and every family must be empowered to choose the learning environment where their child is safest and most likely to succeed.

In March, the state House of Representatives that would allow students to transfer to public school districts outside their community of residence, a policy known as “open enrollment.” If it became law, districts would have the option to decline student transfers from other areas, but could not prevent their own students from leaving. Per-pupil funding from the state, totalling roughly $6,700, would follow each child to his or her new destination.

It’s a somewhat familiar idea. According to the nonprofit Education Commission of the States, some form of interdistrict transfer, whether through voluntary agreements between communities or via statewide mandate. In Missouri itself, the House has passed statewide legislation for the last five consecutive years, only to have it stall in the state Senate.

In troubled districts like St. Louis, too, it has become common for families to select among schools in nearby suburbs, mostly through effort. Advocacy groups like the have also attempted to draw attention to parents prosecuted for falsifying their addresses to send their kids to better-performing districts.

Yet open enrollment — and the occasionally fierce debates it triggers — has also been somewhat overshadowed in recent years as calls have grown for private offerings like education savings accounts and tax-credit scholarships. With Republicans at the state and national level supporting the channeling of public funds to non-public institutions, “school choice” has increasingly come to imply “private school choice.”

Republican Rep. Brad Pollitt, the bill’s sponsor, said his aim was to allow parents to exercise more autonomy without having to leave the traditional school system. With birth rates falling and of students to homeschooling, he continued, public schools needed “a seat at the table” during discussions of choice. 

“Whatever the percentage of people that want to see a different option — maybe a better fit for their family, depending on work or other factors — I just want them to have another choice in the public school system instead of going to ESAs, a charter school, or even a virtual school,” Pollitt told The 74.

But critics of the proposal say it will introduce still more instability into school finance and governance, ultimately leading to districts battling among themselves for families who operate as free agents. Todd Fuller, the communications director of the Missouri State Teachers Association, said he worried that a “downward spiral” of competition would benefit a few districts and gradually strip the rest of badly needed resources.

“It’s not going to happen all at once,” he said. “Over the course of time, there will be less services,” he said. “I’ve seen districts already that tell their students, ‘Sorry, we don’t have foreign languages,’ or, ‘Sorry, we don’t have a science class that you should take.’”

‘Families are leaving in droves’

Inter-district transfers are one of the oldest and most common forms of school choice across the United States. Indeed, Missouri already provides , allowing parents to take the necessary step of switching districts if their own does not include a high school.

More controversially, students attending schools that have lost accreditation — usually for persistently low academic performance — of leaving for a higher-achieving school elsewhere. That scenario was most vividly illustrated in the case of the Normandy school district, which by the state in 2013. 

The resulting exodus was far greater than anticipated, with about 1,000 students (roughly 25 percent of all enrolled) that fall. Neighboring districts spent years fighting to reject their transfers, arguing that they could not provide space or meet the learning needs of so many new pupils, before ultimately yielding and a .

Peter Franzen is the associate director of the , an organization that supports parent empowerment and school choice. Having worked for decades in and around communities severely impacted by poverty and poor services, he said he believed the Normandy experience illustrated the existing appetite for open enrollment among families who are otherwise told to wait for solutions that may never come. 

“If a quarter of your school drains out because nobody wants to be there, who the hell wants to put their taxes into that? I don’t care how proud you are of your school — if families are leaving in droves, what could you possibly say to that?”

Education leaders in the state have long had to work with troubled or under-resourced districts, most famously St. Louis and Kansas City, where of the overwhelmingly disadvantaged student population can read or do math at grade level. Both cities feature a wide array of choice options, including charter and magnet schools, and over the past few decades.

Students were also able to enroll in nearby suburbs under the terms of long-lasting desegregation orders. But St. Louis’s desegregation program has new students, leading some to worry that they will miss a chance to receive a better education outside the city. 

But with the passage of statewide open enrollment, smaller districts could suddenly be placed in the same position as some of the largest communities in the state. Missouri is home to a large number of rural districts, including many high-quality teachers. According to , nearly half of all those districts are operating on a four-day school week, which has been generally shown to student achievement.

The bill passed in the state House partly addresses the concerns of districts that fear instability in headcounts by capping the number of student departures at 3 percent of total enrollment annually. But John Benyon, superintendent of Cape Girardeau Public Schools in southeast Missouri, said that restriction could nevertheless compound into unsustainable losses over time.

“Even a gradual loss of 3 percent each year can have a compounding effect, particularly for smaller districts,” Benyon wrote in an email. “Over time, this could lead to school closures and consolidations, which would not only disrupt students but also deeply impact the identity of small, rural Missouri communities.”

Rural GOP resistance

The legislation is now scheduled for a hearing in the state Senate, which has persistently declined to pass earlier versions over the last half-decade. Pollitt said his bill, which has been supported almost exclusively by Republicans each time he has offered it, aimed for a middle ground in the ongoing school choice debate.

“In the Senate, it’s never been drastic enough,” he reflected. “Those who are for total school choice think it doesn’t go far enough, and those who are against any school choice think it goes too far. That’s why I think it’s a good bill.”

Just last year, the state GOP struck a bargain to the size of Missouri’s tax credit scholarship system, which facilitates student enrollment in private schools. They have yet to advance legislation that would allow for universal access to ESAs or other voucher-like programs, which have been rapidly adopted in a rash of Republican-led states since the pandemic.

Pollitt, who is currently campaigning for a seat in the state Senate, observed that resistance in the upper chamber is largely concentrated among rural Republicans concerned about the fate of their local public schools if students begin to leave in large numbers. That same dynamic has colored intra-partisan clashes in states like Texas, where resistant legislators have been met with primary challenges for opposing the spread of ESAs. 

In Missouri, he acknowledged, changes to enrollments would likely create “winners and losers.” Still, his proposal found new momentum after being endorsed by newly elected Republican Gov. Michael Kehoe in his . 

Benyon, meanwhile, has recently traveled to Jefferson City with members of his school board to lobby against the measure. Though he said students in his district enjoyed access to a range of coveted offerings, including extracurricular opportunities and advanced coursework, he added that already-struggling communities would likely lose students if open enrollment becomes a reality. Instead of opening new avenues for flight, he concluded, the state should work with those schools to make them more attractive places to learn.

“In cases where other districts are underperforming, shouldn’t we be asking why and working to fix those root issues?”

However, educators and lawmakers should consider options for advancing school choice far more broadly. One potential opportunity: strengthen and expand , which allows students to attend public schools outside their residential zones as long as space is available. 

The latest from EdChoice showed that 79% of Democrats, 75% of Republicans and 73% of independents with school-aged children support open enrollment. 

There are two types of public-school open enrollment: within-district, which lets students transfer to schools inside their assigned district, and cross-district, which lets students enroll outside district boundaries. The of a strong open enrollment law is that all districts must participate so long as schools have open seats available.

Like other school choice policies, open enrollment has gained momentum since the pandemic. Reason Foundation research finds that “ have either a robust cross- or within-district open enrollment policy, while do not, leaving with limited school options.” 

Since 2021, nine states have codified strong open enrollment laws, including , and . But before this recent surge, it wasn’t just red states: six were red or leaned red, three leaned blue and three were purple states. Blue-leaning and purple states, including Delaware and Colorado, have very successful open enrollment laws; others, like California and Washington, have elements of successful public school transfer programs.

In Delaware, whose program ranked seventh in , about used open enrollment during the 2020-21 school year to find an alternative that was the right fit for them. 

Kansas codified its strong open enrollment laws in 2022 with a Democratic governor. Preliminary reports show that more than used the state’s cross-district open enrollment program just launched in 2024. 

Colorado passed its open enrollment law back in 1990. During the 2023-24 school year, nearly 200,000 Colorado students, 28% of the traditional public school population, used open enrollment to find the best public school for them. This is especially notable because this past November, Colorado voters rejected a statewide to establish a right to private school choice. Colorado illustrates how strong open enrollment laws can enjoy success in states where other forms of school choice may struggle to gain traction.

With 2025 legislative sessions starting, lawmakers and school choice advocates should consider public school open enrollment proposals that expand options for families. With its widespread popularity among parents and its success across , purple and states, open enrollment is a winning political issue for the right and left that can benefit the tens of millions of students in public schools.

The report, published Wednesday by the nonprofit watchdog group , finds that Missouri has some of the strictest school residential assignment policies in the nation. District attendance boundaries mirror historic racist housing redlining maps and are limiting student access to high-performing schools, said Tim DeRoche, the organization’s founder.

“Whenever the government assigns children to public schools, then the government also takes on the role of excluding those children from other public schools — that’s where the split starts to get problematic,” DeRoche said. “In Missouri, there’s just very strict assignment-based policies in districts. It’s very hard to cross district lines in Missouri as opposed to other states.”

Available to All’s report estimated that 94% to 96% of Missouri public school students attend their assigned school, based on their home address. State law has , such as if a student is homeless, parents pay property taxes at another location or a school loses accreditation. 

The lack of ability for students to easily transfer schools inside or outside their district encourages wealthy families to buy houses next to high-quality schools, DeRoche said. 

“It creates this very strict system where kids, especially low-income kids and low-income kids of color, get locked into struggling or failing schools, and the families have very few options to find another home for them,” he said.

DeRoche said the boundaries on redlining maps that were drawn a century ago to determine who got access to government-insured home mortgages largely correspond to the state’s school attendance lines. 

“Parts of towns that have high concentrations of people of color or immigrants or working-class folks are excluded” from receiving that sort of housing assistance, DeRoche said. “We found three examples where the school zone in Missouri overlaps or mirrors the pattern on redlining maps from 80 to 90 years ago.”

One school attendance boundary cited by the report runs north to south through St. Louis. Children living east of the line are assigned to the St. Louis City School District, where roughly 20% of students score proficient or better on state reading and math tests. Children located west of the line are assigned to Clayton School District, where nearly 75% of students are proficient or better on the same exams. The boundary, according to the report, “mirrors the pattern of the racist redlining map created by the federal government in 1937.”

In the St. Joseph School District, Field Elementary School — located near an area described as a “choice part of the city” in redlining maps — has significantly higher math and reading proficiency rates than Lindbergh Elementary School, located 2 miles away. The Lindbergh neighborhood was described in redlining maps as “a poor area and one which lenders avoid,” according to the report.

A 2024 analysis by New America, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C., found this line is among the 100 most segregating district borders in the nation in terms of poverty rate disparity among school-aged children.

Because of the steep inequality across district boundaries, DeRoche said, it’s not uncommon for parents to lie about where they live to give their child an education at a higher-performing school. Schools in Missouri — and across the nation, he said — often investigate students’ residences to find families that aren’t living within district boundaries. 

These inspections are conducted by school officials, teachers or even private investigators hired by the district, according to the Available to All report.

A by St. Louis Public Radio and Midwest Newsroom found the Hazelwood School District, which enrolls roughly 16,000 students in suburban St. Louis, performed 2,051 residency investigations during the 2022-23 school year. In 2018-19, the district conducted just 148.

Parents can be charged with a misdemeanor for falsifying their children’s enrollment records, according to

State Rep. Brad Pollitt has been trying to expand school choice in Missouri with open enrollment bills for the last five years. He reintroduced his proposal again this year in hopes it will finally make it to the state Senate floor. 

, the Public School Open Enrollment Act, would allow any K-12 student to attend a school in a nonresident district, depending on factors including disciplinary and attendance records, the school’s student-to-teacher ratio, class sizes and building capacity. Only 3% of a district’s students would be allowed to leave each year.

According to , the bill doesn’t require school districts to accept students living outside the area, but districts that do would receive extra funding.

DeRoche said Available to All recommends that Missouri require districts to enroll children from outside their boundaries when schools have space available. 

“School finance policies should ensure that education dollars can flow across district lines, enabling Missouri families to access the public schools that they feel are the right fit for their children,” the report says.

It also recommends that schools reserve a specific percentage of seats for students who live outside the district.

“There’s an opportunity for reform,” DeRoche said. “We don’t take a stand on individual bills, but there is a chance [to create] best practices in protecting equal access to public schools.”

While strong programs are new in some states, others, like Colorado, have fostered robust open enrollment laws for decades. As a result, today, more than one-quarter of Colorado’s K-12 students in traditional districts participate in , attending the schools that they and their parents decided are the best fit.

Established policies like Colorado’s are hopefully a harbinger of what’s to come for students and families in other states.

Established 30 years ago, Colorado’s open enrollment law, known as the program, requires all districts to accept transfer students , so long as space is available. New Colorado Department of Education data shows that more than 199,000 students — 28% of enrollment in traditional public schools statewide — used open enrollment during the 2023-24 school year.

This participation is impressive, especially compared with other states with robust open enrollment laws and bigger populations. Florida and Arizona, for example, saw nearly and students, respectively, transfer to public schools of their choice through their open enrollment programs. 

More than 142,000 students, or 20% of all traditional public school students in Colorado, transferred to schools within their district last academic year, and about 57,000, or 8%, used cross-district open enrollment to switch to schools outside their zone. 

Of the cross-district transfer students, 81% attended brick-and-mortar schools and nearly 11,000 — 19% — enrolled in online classes. Fewer than 1% of Colorado’s online transfer students used open enrollment to enroll full time in a single district, meaning most used open enrollment to customize their educational experience a la carte, choosing specific classes from multiple districts. 

While most of Colorado’s cross-district transfers occurred in urban or suburban schools, 12% — more than 7,000 students — chose to enroll in rural districts. Approximately 23% of rural districts relied on cross-district transfers for 20% or more of their total enrollment. This is noteworthy because rural districts and policymakers have worried about the impacts open enrollment and school choice could have on their schools, even though data from show that many school districts use open enrollment to attract students.

Small and rural school districts in other states, including California, increasingly rely on open enrollment transfers to help remain fiscally solvent. Riverside Unified School District school administrator explained the importance of open enrollment programs, saying, “Does it make money? No. But does it keep our people employed? Yes. Does it keep our financial situation stable? Yes. Does it increase educational options? Yes.”

Students as well. on open enrollment finds a variety of reasons for transferring schools, including bullying, shortened commutes, and access to specialized courses, such as Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and career preparation. According to data provided by the Colorado Department of Education, many students in that state, like their peers in and , transfer to top districts, including those receiving high ratings from the Colorado Department of Education.

Still, as Colorado pointed out last fall, lawmakers can further improve the state’s open enrollment policy by making the system more transparent. State Rep. Lisa Frizell introduced a bill this spring to make the process more transparent and family-friendly by requiring school districts to post the number of seats they have available for each grade and mandating that the Department of Education publish the number of transfers received and rejected by each district. 

These reforms are essential to improving the public schools and strengthening open enrollment laws. Parents, policymakers and taxpayers must be able to access information and hold districts accountable, particularly if schools are groundlessly blocking transfers or charging fees and tuition to transfer students. At least , including Arizona and Wisconsin, have adopted some or all of these transparency provisions.

With eight states having adopted strong open enrollment laws since 2022, now have cross- or within-district open enrollment. During the 2024 legislative sessions, state policymakers have introduced approximately 40 proposals in 21 states to improve their open enrollment laws.

In these places, students’ zip codes are no longer the only factor determining their educational options and futures. Instead, more students and families can choose the public schools that are the right fit for them.

The aims to end what it calls “discriminatory public school district boundary lines” in all 50 states by 2030. 

Members say past efforts to address this issue are weak and ineffective. allowed students to transfer within their school district, while 19 and the District of Columbia permitted them to transfer elsewhere. But many programs are voluntary on the part of receiving schools. Some require a sign-off from a student’s home school district or charge tuition for families seeking to make a switch.

Many do not allow parents to appeal a decision.

“The existing open enrollment laws are deeply flawed and limited,” said Tim DeRoche, president of Available to All, a coalition member. “They are circumscribed in very deliberate ways in many, many states.”

Proponents of robust open enrollment laws tout of 1,000 people from across the nation that showed two-thirds favored allowing a child to attend any public school in the state. The notion was particularly appealing to Black respondents: 76% favored the idea. 

A Charles organization called ., which pushes for expanding learning opportunities, including school choice, is leading the effort. Coalition members discuss the issue with policymakers and publish examining state laws that criminally prosecute parents for using addresses other than their own to enroll their children in public school. 

They also explain how states can address the lasting impacts of redlining, a decades-old practice that branded some communities as financially risky — a label linked to current education disparities and zoning restrictions. 

Jorge Elorza, chief executive officer of Democrats for Education Reform, another coalition member, said children should be free to pursue their education in schools that meet their needs.

“It comes down to expanding the options that families have over the schools they have access to,” he said. 

To that end, for example, is working with lawmakers in South Carolina to advance . 

, the group’s chief operating officer, noted, too, that Idaho recently widening the opportunity for children to attend schools of their choosing. 

Currently, parents in that state must apply for a transfer, with priority given to those who wish to switch within their home district. School officials may deny such a request if the student had been expelled, has a history of significant disciplinary issues or was chronically absent, or if the new district does not have capacity. 

Challenges against zoning rules have arisen in other parts of the country as well, including in New Jersey, where the Latino Action Network and NAACP, among others, in 2018. They cited residency requirements that often keep Black and Latino students in subpar schools. A judge rendered a on the case last fall.

Opponents of open enrollment laws fear they could drain low-performing schools of their best students, but coalition members say that not all families whose children attend troubled schools seek to switch, even when given the chance. 

Students who feel loved and supported by their educators often stay, Jedynak said. But, she added, simply having strong open enrollment policies forces public schools to improve or specialize in order to attract students.. 

Public schools in Arizona, which have among the least restrictive open enrollment policies in this country, for students for years. 

, president of 50CAN, another coalition member, recalls his mother and grandmother trying to devise a way to get him into a better middle school outside their southwest Baltimore zone. 

His aunt, a teacher in the city schools, knew how to navigate a pathway to a better education, and Bradford ultimately tested into a magnet school. But not all children have relatives who understand the system. 

“This is a hidden but treacherous problem that many American families are navigating all the time,” he said. “It is widely known and understood, but rarely talked about.” 

Bradford said school choice is most often available for the lucky and the rich, including those families who can afford homes in wealthy neighborhoods with high-performing schools. The remainder are often left behind, with some opting to break the law for their children — a choice that can bring about dire consequences. 

can land parents, friends and family members in jail. Kelley Williams-Bolar, for example, in 2011 for sending her two young daughters to a school they were not zoned to attend outside Akron, Ohio. 

She said parents should not be penalized for trying to secure a better future for their children. 

“This is not malicious, trying to steal, trying to do something horrific,” she said, adding that many people in her community face the same dilemma. “I don’t know a parent yet who would say it’s OK for (their children) not to get all of the fundamentals they need. Everyone wants their child to have the best education.”

If that means upending rules that have governed admissions for generations, that’s fine, she said. 

“It’s time to go back in, re-evaluate and make change,” she said.

Disclosure: yes. every kid. is a grantee of the Stand Together network. Stand Together Trust provides financial support to The 74.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York, Stand Together Trust, Walton Family Foundation and Nellie Mae Education Foundation provide financial support to 50CAN and The 74. Campbell Brown sits on 50CAN’s board of directors. Brown co-founded The 74 and sits on its board of directors.

A proposal to allow Missouri’s public school districts to open their boundaries is back this legislative session as the first education bill to get a hearing in the state House.

The House Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education opened its first hearing of the year by considering Sedalia Republican Rep. Brad Pollitt’s open enrollment bill.

“This bill allows the 899,000 students in the state of Missouri in the public school system the opportunity to have choice within the very system that their parents pay taxes to,” Pollitt told committee members.

He that there was a plan in place to pass his bill through the Senate, latching it to state Rep. Ed Lewis’s bill on teacher recruitment and retention.

But in a fit of filibusters in the session’s closing days, the bills never made it to the full Senate for debate.

Pollitt wrote what he calls a “compromise” into the bill, capping the number of transfers annually at 1% of the student population in districts with a high number of free-and-reduced-lunch students. He thought this would help it pass the Senate, but he told the committee on Wednesday that policy leaders in the Republican caucus recommended removing the provision.

Otto Fajen, lobbyist for the Missouri branch of the teachers union National Education Association, said removing the compromise language caused him to oppose the bill. Otherwise, the association would have a more neutral stance.

“Because the committee is now poised to remove any protection against resegregation… you need to be thoughtful about that,” Fajen said. “You need to have some kind of break if you start to see things going in the wrong direction.”

Some lawmakers last year voiced concerns that the bill would resegregate schools if minority students stayed in their home districts while others left. Rep. Paula Brown, a Democrat from Hazelwood, repeated this concern Wednesday.

“Do you worry that we could face another desegregation plan from the feds at all with any of this?” she asked.

“I can’t look into a crystal ball and say that only non-minority students would leave the district,” Pollitt responded.

The bill has a 3% limit on the proportion of students that can leave a school district annually.

Some are worried the limit isn’t enough protection for school districts.

Mike Lodewegen, lobbyist for the Missouri Council of School Administrators, said the students and teachers that are left in a district after some leave “have to deal with the ramifications.”

The district will want to make cuts when the state funding leaves, he said, but the students leaving will likely be spread across grade levels.

“Now you’re looking at cutting programs and options available to students,” Lodewegen said.

When students enroll in a neighboring district, according to the bill, state aid — but not local aid — will follow them. It also calls for a $80 million fund to reimburse transportation costs for students that qualify as free and reduced lunch or enrolled in special education.

Pollitt said the $80 million was based on the number of students he anticipates will participate in enrollment, looking at surrounding states’ open-enrollment programs.

The number of special education students participating in this program may be stifled by a provision that says school districts are not required to add staff or programs if they opt into open enrollment.

Rep. Kathy Steinhoff, a Columbia Democrat, asked if that would be akin to discrimination based on disability.

Pollitt said he wrote this provision based on a case out of Wisconsin where a court ruled school districts didn’t have to add staff for its open-enrollment program.

He asked superintendents during his travels around the state about this provision, inquiring whether it should be mandatory to accept students in special education.

“Absolutely not,” he said he was told. “Because we know in this state that our special ed teachers have their case votes that are already full.“

The bill in a 85-69 vote.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

policies that weaken residential assignment can significantly expand students’ options by letting them attend public schools outside their assigned attendance zones. Parents and students can use open enrollment to find schools with open seats that offer the right academic fit, an escape from bullying, better commutes or a variety of other benefits.

Unsurprisingly, open enrollment is popular with parents. According to , 70% of parents with children in public schools are in favor of it. That support spans both sides of the political aisle, with 67% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans expressing support.

Unfortunately, school districts often oppose robust open enrollment proposals. The reasons range from fear of being “” by nonresident, and presumably less affluent, students to concern that an exodus will , force school closures and spur districts to compete with one another.

Fears of this sort, however, are overblown, as last year that 80% of parents say they are completely or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their children’s K-12 education. While open enrollment would let dissatisfied students transfer to new public schools, the vast majority don’t want to.

In fact, there are reasons for school districts to support open enrollment. It can provide an opportunity to attract new students, especially in the face of declining student populations caused by demographic changes or competition. For instance, , a former school district administrator, used Texas’s open enrollment policy after his district lost students to charter and magnet schools. By implementing strategies such as launching specialized schools, his district gained 145 transfer students.

In Ohio, a found the state’s open enrollment program promoted competition and improvement in rural school districts. More than two decades later, research by suggested that high rates of rural Ohio districts are participating in the open enrollment program because they recognize it can help “attract more students and the accompanying state funding” at a time of declining student rosters.

In California, a found some districts that initially lost students to others through open enrollment then went on to improve, reduce the number of student transfers and even attract new transfer students. Five years later, the office reported that participating in the voluntary program were small, rural and using open enrollment to “generate a notable share of their revenue.” Without attracting more students and parents via open enrollment, some of these very small districts would not be fiscally viable.

A found that a high percentage of students enrolled in some rural school districts had transferred from districts a long distance away because they were willing to make longer commutes for the schools of their choice. Some sought-after rural post among the highest rates of inbound student transfers in the state, sustaining their enrollment levels.

Most recently, a found school district administrators in Arizona, North Carolina, Indiana and Florida believe open enrollment incentivizes them “to create new or enhance existing programs in order to increase and retain enrollment.”

These examples illustrate that open enrollment can benefit public school districts, helping to increase enrollment even if their local student population is declining. The additional funds accompanying transfer students help these districts, often small or rural, stay afloat, further demonstrating that school choice is not a death knell for district public schools. In fact, districts worrying about population and migration trends reducing their enrollment may have the most to gain from open enrollment, using it to retain existing students and attract new ones.

Ultimately, districts should embrace open enrollment as an important, straightforward school choice reform with wide-reaching benefits for the large number of students currently enrolled in traditional public schools.

A Missouri Senate committee heard testimony Tuesday on a bill that would allow a school district to  accept transfer students from outside its boundaries.

The bill narrowly passed the Missouri House last month on a 85-69 vote.

“Providing access to instructional programs and classes that may not be available in every resident district. [Open enrollment] offers parents the opportunity to select curriculum options to better align with their personal beliefs,” state Rep. Brad Pollitt, R-Sedalia, the bill’s sponsor, told the committee Tuesday.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

In an effort to win over skeptics in the House, the number of transfers is capped in the legislation at 3%. The House also voted to remove language that would have protected districts’ diversity plans. The legislation relies on a new $80 million supplemental fund codified in the bill to reimburse transportation costs and aid special school districts.

School districts who opt into the program would receive the state and federal funds for each student they accept, but local funds would remain with the student’s home district.

“It’s up to your board and your administration on whether they participate,” Pollitt said. “So if they participate, they know the local dollars do not follow that student. Only the state and federal dollars follow that student.”

He said 44 states have policies allowing students to select the school they attend. Some testifying on Tuesday said Missouri is unlike these states.

“Many of the states that have this are more reliant on state funding,” said Otto Fajen, chief lobbyist for Missouri’s branch of the National Education Association labor union.

Jean Evans, the Missouri state lead for American Federation for Children, was optimistic that open enrollment would help the state solve its teacher shortage.

“In states where they have school choice and open enrollment,” she said, “teacher salaries are higher.”

Pollitt, as chair of the House elementary and secondary education committee, has been vocal about his intentions to reform the state’s funding formula for school districts.

“How would (open enrollment) drive teacher pay higher?” asked Sen. Doug Beck, D-Affton.

“Because we are competing for better teachers,” Evans said.

“Where does the money come from?” Beck said.

“There’s plenty of money for teachers,” Evans said.

Kenny Southwick, executive director of Cooperating School Districts of Greater Kansas City, said school districts are struggling to find teachers because of a lack of resources.

“I would hope that if we have $80 million to spend, that we’d put that toward teacher salaries,” he said.

Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, said he disagreed with Southwick’s claim that districts had too small of a resource base.

“I would love to see school districts have to really go through and display where more money is going,” Brattin said. “What I think we need to start with is really going through making sure that the money is going towards the student and going toward the teacher in the class.”

Kyle Kruse, superintendent of the St. Clair R-XIII School District, said he considers his school district a “have not” in a state with unequal funds.

“Since we have the lowest tax rate and tax value… we have the lowest teacher salaries,” he said. “Every year it is a race to try to find teachers, train them and bring them in.”

Then, the teachers quit to work at neighboring districts paying $8,000 to $10,000 more, he said.

He anticipates losing 100 students and $400k if the open-enrollment bill passes.

“Those kids won’t be in one grade level where we could lay off a few teachers. It would be spread across the entirety of our pre-K through 12th district,” he said.

Sen. Lauren Arthur, D-Kansas City, complimented the bill for being the best open enrollment or “school choice” bill filed thus far. But she still had concerns.

“There is sort of an inherent unfairness issue where there will be some taxpayers who have agreed to impose a higher levy and have invested in their schools. And then they’ll be responsible for educating students from districts whose communities are not supporting their schools,” she said. “So you’ll see a disparity between tax rates, and I don’t know how to solve that.”

Pollitt said that issue is solved by districts getting to choose to opt in.

School districts are also not required to add staff or programs for students who transfer into the district. Some,  like Arthur, are concerned students who require special education services will not be able to utilize open enrollment.

Nonresident districts who take students who receive special education services get an additional 25% funding for each student needing services. This money comes from the $80 million supplemental fund.

To make it to the governor’s desk, the bill must pass the Senate. Similar legislation has cleared the House and reached the Senate in recent years but never passed.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

The poll, released late last year by education advocacy group Yes. Every Kid. and conducted in October by WPA Intelligence, surveyed 504 registered voters across the state. Nearly every voter polled (97%) agreed that all students should have access to the best public schools, regardless of race, gender or income.

More than two-thirds (67%) of voters and an overwhelming majority (72%) of parents said students should be able to attend the public school of their choice, regardless of attendance boundaries. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 4.4%.

The elimination of attendance zones, commonly referred to as open enrollment, has become a priority for some school choice proponents. In recent years governors in several states, including Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, have moved towards eliminating certain enrollment rules and restrictions.

While more than two dozen states specifically allow open enrollment, Virginia is among a handful of states that leaves the decision to school districts, according to the Education Commission of the States.

Craig Hulse, executive director of Yes. Every Kid., said Virginia still retains arbitrary attendance boundaries that haven’t been modified in decades and have long been discriminatory to students. The location of a child’s house often reflects the quality of education they will receive in their school district, disregarding those in underserved communities.

“Because of real estate in the United States, and Virginia specifically, boundaries sort of create haves and have-nots,” Hulse said. “Simply because you can’t afford a bigger, nicer house and a nicer neighborhood with a nicer school, you’re not allowed to go to that school.”

Since its inception in 2019, Yes. Every Kid., which works as part of the wider Stand Together Trust network, has worked to expand open enrollment policies across the country.

Nearly 84% of voters in the new poll agreed that low-income Virginia students should have access to the same public schools as students in high-income households.

The Senate’s Joint Economic Committee reported in 2019 that the average U.S. zip code associated with the highest performing public elementary school has four times the median home price than the average neighborhood associated with the lowest performing elementary schools.

Earlier this month, Virginia Del. Jason Ballard wrote a column in The Roanoke Times announcing that he plans to introduce legislation to eliminate attendance boundaries.

Ballard said the state needs to become a more student-centered education system. “There is no legitimate reason to deny a Virginia student who lives outside of a school’s zoning boundaries from enrolling there if the school has available capacity,” he wrote.

“The current system has proven to be a barrier to quality education and upward mobility, particularly for students in lower-income families.”

The inequalities can be a contributing factor to deepening segregation between schools, according to a 2020 study from Virginia Commonwealth University and Penn State University. This can especially occur in elementary schools, which have smaller and more compact attendance boundaries.

Lindsey Burke, director for the Center for Education Policy with the Heritage Foundation, said the pandemic has been a “punctuation mark” on issues caused by tying housing to education.

“If you were a family with a child in a school district that decided to shut down completely or do long-term emergency remote instruction, and it wasn’t serving you well, you had very little recourse if you weren’t able to move,” Burke said.

Though the pandemic has triggered more states to move in the direction of open enrollment, some states dismantled their boundaries years ago, she said.

Students in Colorado and Wisconsin have been able to cross district lines for more than two decades, according to the Reason Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy research organization.

All schools in Florida are required to offer open enrollment within districts and between districts, according to the foundation. Nearly 273,500 students utilized these options during the 2018-2019 school year.

While advocates say there aren’t many valid reasons for opposing open enrollment, there can be some disadvantages such as transportation. Some districts don’t have enough drivers or buses to transport students who want to go to schools outside of their attendance boundaries.

Students in Virginia’s Richmond Public Schools can apply to three out-of-zone schools, but they won’t receive district transportation, and acceptance can vary depending on building capacity or staffing numbers.

Burke said besides creating more access and equality, open enrollment can help improve low-performing schools.

“You don’t see this mass wave of public schools shutting down,” Burke said. “What you see is more of an impetus for underperforming districts to start responding better to the needs of families.”

Hulse said students who are able to choose the school they want to attend tend to perform better.

Another key data point from the December poll that Hulse says points to public support for breaking down boundaries: Two-thirds of voters disagreed that any child should be forced to stay in a school they don’t want to be in.

“They see how discriminatory it is. If public schools should truly be public, it’s similar to a public hospital — we would never say, ‘You don’t have the right zip code to go to that public hospital,’” Hulse said. “‘You don’t get access to that simply because you can’t afford its neighborhood.’ That sounds so wildly crazy.”

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to The 74.