Judge Craig Carter, a Wright County judge serving in Cole County for Missouri's gender-affirming care trial, listens to a nurse practitioner testify on the fourth day of the trial (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A ruling on Missouri’s restrictions on gender-affirming care is likely to come by the end of the year, with the trial complete and attorneys’ reports due within 30 days.

After a 13-day trial ended last week, Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter waived closing statements and asked instead for plaintiffs and defendants to submit statements of facts and findings. Both sides presented thick stacks of evidence, with seven approximately five-inch binders sitting on Carter’s bench throughout proceedings.

Without a jury, Carter — who was assigned to preside over the Cole County case — will rule on the constitutionality of the law.

Carter’s questions at the start of the trial sounded like someone becoming familiar with the subject, asking what a nonbinary gender identity means and clarifying definitions.

But in the trial’s final days, his inquiries were more frequent and challenging for witnesses, digging into the arguments and searching for the point in which gender-affirming medication for minors switches from unlawful to lawful.

The trial comes after transgender minors, their families and health care providers challenged the constitutionality of a 2023 law restricting physicians from prescribing gender-affirming medical care to minors. It also bars Missouri Medicaid from covering gender-affirming treatment for adults and restricts prisoners from getting the care in state prisons.

Carter asked many of the questions to the state’s expert witness, Dr. Farr Curlin, a professor at Duke who specializes in medical ethics.

“So tell me your thoughts on the intersection,” Carter asked during Curlin’s testimony last Wednesday. “The state has an interest in preventing people from making life-altering mistakes, and plaintiffs have the right to seek (desired medical care).”

Curlin said the problem lies in children’s inability to consent. Typically, parents consent for their child, whereas a minor’s agreement is labeled assent.

“The norm should be the same norm that is practiced throughout pediatric ethics and it is: Is this intervention in the medical best interest of the child?” Curlin said.

A large piece of the case is whether there is medical consensus on the efficacy of medical transition.

Large medical organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics, a group founded in 1930 with 67,000 member physicians, support gender-affirming care for minors. Other organizations outside the medical mainstream — like the 700-member American College of Pediatricians which was formed in 2002 — are outspoken against the treatment.

Plaintiffs’ experts reviewed research showing positive effects of medical transition, and people who have benefited from gender-affirming care in Missouri as minors testified. The attorney general’s office, which was defending the law, tried to diminish the testimony of these experts by claiming that because most provide gender-affirming care —either by writing letters of support as a mental health provider or prescribing medication — they financially benefit from ensuring it remains legal. 

Plaintiffs waved off these concerns. 

“Only to the state of Missouri, and without any sense of irony, is actually having experience and expertise a conflict,” Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney with Lambda Legal, told reporters.

The state’s expert witnesses included physicians who are outspoken about their disapproval of gender-affirming care, though many had never treated a minor for gender dysphoria. During the testimony of Alabama-based plastic surgeon Dr. Patrick Lappert, attorneys showed images of gender-affirming surgeries and detailed the process and risks of infection.

In 2022, a federal court in North Carolina ruled that state health plans excluding gender-affirming care violated the Equal Protection Clause. In that case, the judge tossed out parts of the testimony of  Lappert and Dr. Stephen Levine, who also testified last week as an expert for the state of Missouri.

Tom Bastian, spokesman for the ACLU of Missouri, told The Independent in emailed answers the case’s attorneys oversaw that the state’s argument is not sufficient to justify the law. Specifically, he pointed to what he deemed a lack of expertise among the state’s expert witnesses.

“None of the state’s purported expert witnesses practice in this field, except for one, and the one who does agrees that medical interventions for gender dysphoria can be appropriate for some patients,” Bastian wrote. “Plaintiffs’ doctors, their experts and every major medical organization in the United States all agree that, in certain cases, gender-affirming medical care can be medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria in adolescents and adults.”

Another expert called by the Missouri attorney general’s office last week was John Michael Bailey. He received skepticism from Carter after it was revealed that he believes convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky is innocent. Bailey has been criticized for a retracted research article on gender dysphoria in adolescents and was the subject of an investigation by Northwestern University after he demonstrated a sex toy in an extracurricular lecture.

The Independent sent questions to the attorney general’s office, including asking about criticism of its expert witnesses, but did not receive a response.

Four people who had once identified as transgender but stopped treatment, known as “detransitioners,” also testified last about their regrets. Only one of the four received medical care in Missouri, and he was an adult when he began his transition.

“The adults that were in the room that should have been protecting them failed to do so,” Attorney General Andrew Bailey said in a podcast late last month before the trial began.

The state also introduced academic articles describing the evidence behind gender-affirming care for minors as “too limited,” both in cross-examination and through their witnesses’ testimony.

Carter asked if the law could be peeled back if research showed treatments’ success. The state’s restrictions on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors is set to expire in August of 2027 — though lawmakers have publicly discussed removing the sunset clause.

“Are you saying the kids don’t have a choice until we get further evidence showing the efficacy of these treatments?” Carter asked Curlin, the Duke medical professor. “If the studies show that this treatment is efficacious, then where do we wind up?”

“It’s not just, is it efficacious?” Curlin said. “Is it efficacious, and is it reliable enough and substantial enough to warrant the risks that these treatments bring?”

“What if the drug companies come out tomorrow and say, ‘You can take this drug, and it is absolutely reversible,” Carter asked.

Curlin said the “treatments are absolutely counter to the well-working of this patient’s health.” The medications and surgeries are not ethical in a body that is functioning well, he said.

The state repeatedly presented talk therapy as an option to treat gender dysphoria, which is distress arising from one’s body not matching gender identity.

Plaintiffs said therapy alone will not treat many cases of gender dysphoria, making medication medically necessary.

On the first day of the trial, a young man testifying under the name John Doe told the court that therapy was not enough for him. His first therapist said he was “going through a phase,” and his dysphoria only worsened.

A second, affirming therapist helped him as he began to dress more like himself at the age of 7, he said. His fear only worsened as puberty approached, and he attributes his thriving social life and success in college to his access to medication.

“It felt like once I started to receive (testosterone) shots, my overall was uphill from there,” he said. “The confidence I gained from having my body reflect who I am and what I was feeling was impactful throughout my entire life.”

Doe’s mother also testified later in the trial.

Carter noted there was “heartfelt testimony on both sides” from parents, asking about the issue of parental rights when the state withholds a type of care from their child. He discussed the Right to Try Act, which allows patients to access experimental medications for life-threatening conditions.

He also looked at the release of the COVID-19 vaccine, which had an accelerated clinical trial phase in order to give the public access sooner. The vaccine could potentially serve as a precedent of giving access to a medication without longitudinal testing.

Carter’s ruling is unlikely to be the last, with similar cases in other states appealing all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. He noted the likelihood of an appeal, saying he would accept exhibits to add to the case’s file for future courts to look at, though they would not determine his ruling.

ACLU of Missouri attorney Gillian Wilcox takes notes while a witness testifies in Missouri's gender-affirming care trial in Cole County Circuit Court (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri’s defense of a state law barring minors from beginning puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will depend on whether the judge in the case puts stock in expert witnesses touting retracted studies and conspiracy theories about Jerry Sandusky.

Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, who is presiding over a lawsuit challenging Missouri’s gender-affirming care restrictions, will have to weigh the credibility of expert witnesses alongside his judgment.

Questions of credibility came up Tuesday, when the Missouri Attorney General’s Office called as a witness John Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern who testified about his now-retracted study entitled “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” which concludes that adolescents identify as transgender as a result of social contagion.

But it was his social media post about the accusers of Jerry Sandusky that appeared to concern Carter.

Sandusky, a former college football coach, was convicted of molesting young boys over a period of at least 15 years. Bailey repeatedly posted on social media that he believes Sandusky is innocent.

“You believe the people testifying against Jerry Sandusky are lying?” Carter asked.

“I can see that if you are not familiar with the evidence that I am familiar with, you would be shocked,” Bailey told him.

“Mmhmm,” Carter replied.

Bailey said he had listened to a podcast and lauded the work of conservative commentator John Ziegler.

“Do you know (Ziegler)? Have you talked to anybody that was an eyewitness in that case?” Carter asked.

“I have read testimony, but I have not talked to anyone,” Bailey said.

Although the underlying case was not about Sandusky, the exchange may have chiseled away at Bailey’s credibility and showed a greater pattern of basing conclusions on secondary sources.

Bailey’s research on transgender youth has been retracted, which he chalked up to pressure from activists.

The academic journal that retracted his article cited an issue with informed consent protocol, meaning participants didn’t know their responses would be in an article. On cross-examination, the circumstances of his research became clearer.

To investigate his hypothesis of whether “rapid onset gender dysphoria” caused a rise in referrals to gender clinics, Bailey surveyed parents and guardians who interacted with the website ParentsofROGDKids.com, a website for parents who believe their child has rapid onset gender dysphoria.

He said the study’s co-author Suzanna Diaz isn’t a researcher, so she didn’t create the survey with typical informed-consent procedures. He didn’t explain that Diaz is a pseudonym.

He knew Diaz was associated with ParentsofROGDKids.com but didn’t know her real name and if she ran the website.

Diaz had created the questionnaire to “weed out troublemakers.”

When Bailey looked into detransitioners and desisters, which are people who have stopped or reversed gender-affirming care, he looked to the website Reddit and looked at groups titled “detrans” and “desist.”

Plaintiffs’ attorney Nora Huppert asked if he verified that participants had previously been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Bailey admitted that he had not.

The other defense expert on the stand Tuesday was Dr. Daniel Weiss, an endocrinologist from Utah.

For 10 years in Ohio, Weiss accepted transgender adults as patients that needed cross-sex hormones, but later decided the intervention was harmful to prescribe.

“I’m opposed to it medically,” Weiss said of adults using cross-sex hormones to transition. “I think there’s no scientific evidence to support it. But if someone wants to do it, and they’re adequately informed, they can do it.”

His testimony included a look at adverse event reporting of puberty blockers, which he does not prescribe, and the discussion of risks to gender-affirming care.

When asked to compare the risks of puberty blockers to aspirin, he couldn’t make a direct comparison.

“It’s hard to compare,” he said. “With any intervention, you want to balance risk and benefit and look at all the treatment options.”

Gillian Wilcox, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, asked if he has published a peer-reviewed article on gender dysphoria. He hadn’t.

“My article, if I were to write one, would be rejected by most medical journals because there is no good treatment,” Weiss said. “I call it child-harming treatment. There is no good intervention.”

He has testified in favor of state bans on gender-affirming care for minors. He told Wilcox that the Center for Christian Virtue, an advocacy group with anti-LGBTQ views, asked him to testify and he was paid to prepare his testimony.

He does not have clinical experience with minors.

In the state’s pretrial brief, Solicitor General Joshua Divine wrote that defendants will only need to prove “medical and scientific uncertainty” to show that state lawmakers are allowed to enact restrictions on gender-affirming care.

Although the state has entered the trial confident in the task ahead, credibility may limit what the judge will consider from its experts.

Other witnesses Tuesday included parents, one of which lives in Chicago, who disagreed with their children about their transition.

A former case worker of the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital testified Monday in the trial challenging Missouri's restrictions on gender-affirming care (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

The former caseworker whose account of her time working at a pediatric gender clinic in St. Louis jumpstarted the legislative push to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors testified in defense of Missouri’s restriction on Monday.

Jamie Reed, who for four and a half years worked as a case manager at the Washington University Transgender Center, was the first witness called by the state in the two-week trial over the constitutionality of the law. Reed’s public statements and sworn affidavit about her experience at the clinic were the genesis for Missouri lawmakers prioritizing the ban and spurred broad investigations by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office into practitioners statewide.

Reed testified as a fact witness, meaning she couldn’t speak as an expert but could provide insight into her experiences working at the Transgender Center. Many of Monday’s questions gravitated toward the records she kept — and later shared — that contained information on the center’s patients.

Under the 2023 law, health care providers can’t prescribe new gender-affirming care medications to minors or refer them for surgery, and the state’s Medicaid program is barred from paying for gender-affirming medical care for any age. Transgender Missourians, their families and health care providers filed a lawsuit in July 2023, calling the law unconstitutional because it discriminated against transgender people.

Therapists, social workers face scrutiny in Missouri AG investigation of transgender care

Last week, plaintiffs called witnesses that testified that their medical record numbers and treatment information were listed in a document that Reed shared with Attorney General Andrew Bailey and at least one reporter.

When asked Thursday about his daughter’s information being shared, J.K. (who testified using his initials as a pseudonym) said he never consented to the information being spread.

“It’s confusing and mystifying,” he said. “I don’t know why this person would share our information. I have no idea what this person is up to.”

He didn’t interact with Reed, he said, apart from getting an email after an appointment with follow-up information from her. But somehow, his daughter’s information was in Reed’s table.

Elliott, a college student who went to the Transgender Center as a teenager and testified using only their first name, said Friday that Reed was never in appointments with them. Elliott is “terrified” that the attorney general has information related to their medical care.

“I don’t know what they’ll do with that information,” Elliott said. “I don’t think it’s any of (the state’s) business that I’m trans.”

Elliott also thought Reed’s affidavit, which was released to the public, described them in a paragraph that was so specific friends and family could identify them.

“I was extremely upset (when I read the affidavit),” Elliott said. “I didn’t think it was an accurate representation of the care I received at Wash U. There was a line I thought could represent me, and if so, I am angry that I was used without my permission.”

Reed testified on Monday that this part of her affidavit was describing multiple patients. Other paragraphs talking about “a patient” were also a compilation of more than one person, she said.

The affidavit was based on medical records, patient visits and “firsthand knowledge” she testified. 

Reed didn’t dispute that Elliott’s information was shared in a 23-page document that listed patients’ medical record numbers instead of names. She didn’t consider this private health information protected by federal law because someone would need a key with names alongside medical record numbers to identify patients.

She sent this data to Bailey after a subpoena, she testified, but she also sent it to a New York Times reporter.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Gillian Wilcox asked about the 300 pages sent to the reporter. Reed said she sent “redacted documents that contained no (private health information).”

Reed, for part of her time at the Transgender Center, tracked patients she was concerned about on a “red-flag list.” She called it that because red flags at the beach mean to “proceed with caution,” she testified.

There were 27 patients on the list, identified by name instead of medical record number. Reed says she monitored them with a nurse at the center who shared concerns with Reed that too many children were receiving cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers.

Reed sent this list to Bailey in early February 2023 at the time of her affidavit, she said.

Other records she sent to Bailey include emails compiled from her Washington University email account, a list of therapists the center often referred patients to and copies of referral letters from therapists.

Reed told The Independent previously that she redacted names in the referral letters. This was not asked in court Monday.

Wilcox asked about a letter Reed sent Bailey in April 2024, long after she ended her employment with the Transgender Center.

The letter shared information from the center’s schedule that Reed believed showed the center was accepting new patients, despite public statements that it would not.

Reed currently works as executive director of the LGBT Courage Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates against gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

She recently traveled to the American Academy of Pediatrics convention in Florida to help volunteers “educate” pediatricians on gender-affirming care. A press release on the group’s participation described it as a “peaceful protest,” but Reed did not characterize the demonstration as a protest.

She wouldn’t answer whether she supported gender-affirming care for adults or not, though she had indicated support in prior testimony. She cited “changes in (her) personal life.”

At the beginning of questioning, she testified that her spouse was “detransitioning,” or stopping testosterone treatments. Sunday evening, her spouse’s perspective was published in The Free Press, the same website that launched Reed as a whistleblower in February 2023.

Judge Craig Carter, a Wright County judge serving in Cole County for Missouri's gender-affirming care trial, listens to a nurse practitioner testify Thursday afternoon (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

After three days of battling over scientific papers and expert testimony, the trial of a lawsuit challenging Missouri’s restrictions on gender-affirming treatments on Thursday turned to the impact the law has on patients and providers.

Nicole Carr, a nurse practitioner at Southampton Community Healthcare in St. Louis, said anxiety, fear and depression first increased in transgender patients when Attorney General Andrew Bailey published an emergency rule that established barriers to care in April 2023.

“No one thinks about how these laws affect the actual people they are supposed to protect and they are supposed to serve,” she said.

Patients were crying in the clinic in fear, she testified.

“I’m trying to give them hope that they don’t have to fear being in Missouri, that they don’t have to fear coming to me as a provider, that they can move past this,” Carr said. “It’s sad because I’m referring a lot of people to therapy that, before these rules, were fine.”

She worries about youth in foster care, which she worked with frequently in a previous position. Transgender teenagers in foster care often must wait until they turn 18 to go to the doctor alone for assessment to obtain hormone-replacement therapy.

But if they are on Medicaid, as most are soon after foster care, Missouri won’t pay for the treatment.

“(The law) has impacted the quality of care I can give my patients when I know the solution to their problem is out there and I can’t do anything about it,” she said.

Carr and Southampton healthcare are among 11 plaintiffs hoping to block enforcement of a 2023 law banning gender-affirming medical treatments for minors. Other plaintiffs include parents of transgender children, transgender adolescents, other medical care providers and organizations supporting gender-affirming care.

Their attorneys began putting witnesses on the stand Monday in the Cole County Circuit Court trial scheduled to continue through next week. The lawsuit asks Judge Craig Carter, assigned to the case from Wright County, to declare the law unconstitutional, alleging violations of equal protection, due process and other rights guaranteed by the Missouri Constitution.

Although the law does not ban counseling or the continuation of treatments begun before it passed, several providers ceased all gender-affirming treatments for minors soon after it took effect on Aug. 28, 2023. First University of Missouri Health, then Washington University  in St. Louis, ended their programs, citing the threat of future litigation allowed in the law.

Neither provider is a party to the lawsuit.

Over the first three days of the trial, assistant attorney generals defending the law have repeatedly sought to discredit plaintiffs’ expert witnesses. The painstaking cross examinations have slowed the pace of the trial to two experts per day and led to a late recess on Wednesday.

Carter, however, has declined to limit the cross-examination, despite arguments from plaintiffs’ attorneys that it means the trial will exceed the time allotted to complete it.

During cross-examination, members of the defense team have read scientific articles, news articles and editorials on gender-affirming care. Almost invariably, that leads to objections that the exhibits are new.

Carter has allowed reading as a way to challenge the credibility of witnesses by  showing deficiencies in their testimony, such as bias or poor memory.

“They seem to be reading a lot of newspaper articles and a lot of opinion pieces,” Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney for plaintiffs, told reporters. “If they wanted to introduce the opinion of some random person in the United Kingdom, they could have called them.”

During one question to Dr. Armand Matheny Antommaria from Solicitor General Joshua Divine, plaintiffs’ attorney Nora Huppert objected, arguing that it was as if Divine was testifying himself.

It came as Antommaria, a pediatric hospitalist and bioethicist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, answered questions slowly, often with a “yes sir” or “no sir,” correcting Divine’s questions.

“If you go to the key findings, the statement you’ve pulled out is not part of the key findings,” he said, after a question in which Divine asked about a singular sentence of a scientific article. The context is important, Antommaria told him, saying the overall report was the opposite of Divine’s characterization.

Divine also asked  if Antommaria’s religious beliefs or divinity degree should disqualify him as an expert.

“Given the nature of that particular degree, that does not disqualify myself,” he said.

Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, an adolescent medicine physician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and medical director of the hospital’s center for transgender youth health and development, testified about her research linking distress about breast development to depression and anxiety. She also discussed benefits of gender-affirming care she has seen in her clinical experience.

Hal Frampton, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, brought one of the 11 three-ring binders prepared for the Olson-Kennedy testimony to the podium. He flipped through the approximately three-inch binder, presenting studies and articles to question Olson-Kennedy’s research and concluding with videos from talks she gave years ago.

In one talk, she said people “get worked up” about certain surgical procedures that are part of gender affirming care.

Frampton asked if she doesn’t like people that get worked up. Olson-Kennedy said she was emphasizing the difference between gender-affirming surgeries.

“The seriousness of getting a sterilizing surgery is more severe than someone who needs a chest surgery,” she said.

He also asked about an interview she gave in which she spoke about being involved in social justice efforts.

“People being able to get access to medically necessary care is an advocacy issue,” she responded.

The defense is scheduled to begin arguments Monday, with a scheduled final day of Oct. 4.

The Cole County Courthouse is hosting a trial challenging the state's restrictions on gender-affirming care, bringing in a judge from Wright County to oversee the bench trial (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A case that will determine whether Missouri can continue restricting adolescents’ access to gender-affirming care began Monday in Cole County Circuit Court.

The plaintiffs — which include transgender minors, gender-affirming care providers and loved ones — will argue that medical treatments for gender dysphoria are “safe and effective,” attorney Omar Gonzalez Pagan said in opening arguments.

The state will defend the 2023 law restricting gender-affirming care by looking into the risks of the treatment and highlighting those who have regretted medical transitions.

“These kids need compassionate, evidence-based medicine. But what they’ve been doing for the past 15 years isn’t evidence-based,” Solicitor General Joshua Divine said in his opening statement.

Defendants include Gov. Mike Parson, who signed the bill into law, and Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who is responsible for enforcing the law.

Both parties plan to call a host of expert and fact witnesses, and attorneys have requested a week for each side to present evidence.

On the first day of the trial, which will be heard by Circuit Judge Craig Carter without a jury, attorneys argued over which experts were most qualified to speak on the efficacy and risks of gender-affirming care.

“(Plaintiffs’ experts) are the type of people that are qualified to testify as to this type of care,” Gonzalez Pagan said. “The state’s experts, with one exception, do not have this sort of experience.”

Divine said that plaintiffs’ experts benefit financially from gender-affirming care, so they have their “financial reputations” at stake. He defended his witnesses’ qualifications, calling one a “victim of cancel culture” when a journal article was retracted.

The first expert called to testify was Dr. Aron Janssen, vice chair of clinical affairs at the Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. A majority of the patients in his psychiatry practice are transgender or gender-nonconforming children and adolescents, he said, and he has published approximately 24 articles in academic journals.

Jason Orr, an attorney for the plaintiffs, asked him about the state’s claims.

One claim is that gender dysphoria is a self-diagnosed condition because the symptoms are self-reported. Janssen said physicians base a diagnosis on questions to patients and loved ones, like other psychiatric conditions he treats.

“If that was a standard to base diagnosis, we wouldn’t have depression, anxiety, migraines,” he said.

The state will bring “detransitioners,” or people who began transitioning to a gender other than their sex as assigned at birth and later stopped. One received gender-affirming care in Missouri as an adult, but none received the care as a minor in Missouri, attorneys discussed in a virtual hearing last Friday.

Orr asked Janssen if there’s any scientific literature about those who stop their transition.

“The majority of patients who detransition do so because of external pressures but not because of internal pressures or regret,” Janssen said. “For some, transition is a wonderful experience… For others, it means you are kicked out of your family, lose your job.”

Patrick Sullivan, with the attorney general’s office, used several documents to challenge Janssen during cross-examination. Some were not on the list of items the defense plans to submit as evidence, but Carter allowed the exhibits for questions only.

Some of the documents were studies, including the over 400-page Cass Review published earlier this year. The report was a systematic review commissioned in England that concluded that there was weak evidence to support cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers for transgender youth.

Sullivan presented Janssen a document called an “evidence pyramid,” with systematic reviews at the top as the best form of scientific literature.

Janssen said the Cass Review had a key flaw: the authors are not experienced in gender-affirming care and wouldn’t know the best factors to look at.

“When we look at what is involved in creating a good systematic review, having experience in the field is important,” he said. “When none of the authors work in the area, we have to take what they’re saying with a grain of salt.”

Sullivan interrupted him as Janssen explained the review’s flaws.

“He’s answering your question,” Carter said.

Sullivan’s questioning lasted around two hours, with multiple objections from plaintiffs as new exhibits came into the courtroom. The exhibits were largely studies out of Europe and articles from The New York Times and The Free Press.

Sullivan used an opinion article to question plaintiffs’ second expert, a clinical child psychologist.

The other witness to take the stand during the trial’s premiere day was a transgender man who transitioned at a young age in Missouri.

Arguments are scheduled to conclude Oct. 4.

A case that seeks to block enforcement of a state law restricting transgender minors' access to gender affirming care is scheduled for two weeks of debate in Cole County Circuit Court (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A lawsuit filed by transgender children and their parents challenging a one year-old Missouri law restricting minors from accessing cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers heads to trial in Cole County Circuit Court beginning Monday. 

Plaintiffs are asking Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, who typically serves in Wright County, to block the law’s enforcement.

Pretrial briefs filed by plaintiff’s attorneys and the Missouri Attorney General’s office, which is defending the state, have very little in common in the factual background of the case.

The parties have different definitions of gender-affirming care, with Solicitor General Joshua Divine writing that “gender transition interventions are at best experimental and at worst deeply harmful.” 

Gillian Wilcox, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, labeled the treatment “medically necessary, evidence-based and potentially lifesaving.”

“Gender-affirming medical care does not harm transgender youth,” she wrote. “To the contrary, it allows them to thrive.”

Both sides agree that transgender Missourians electing to start gender-affirming care have a condition called “gender dysphoria,” which is widely defined as distress arising from an incongruence between one’s gender identity and sex as assigned at birth.

But Divine argues this is purely a “psychiatric, not medical condition” and calls for talk therapy as an alternative to cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers.

“The worst thing that could befall plaintiffs from not receiving an injunction is that individuals seeking treatment for gender dysphoria will receive counseling instead of chemical and surgical interventions. That is no harm at all,” he wrote.

Plaintiffs point to therapy as an unsatisfactory alternative, meaning the law has taken away all avenues for this type of care. Wilcox argues that gender dysphoria was once categorized by the World Health Organization in a chapter on mental and behavioral disorders, under the name “gender identity disorder,” but has since been moved to a section on sexual health.

The sides both mark this 2013 change from “gender identity disorder” to “gender dysphoria,” but Divine writes this in a shallower history that he says begins in 2007 when “clinicians in the United States started to experiment with surgical and chemical interventions.” 

Wilcox says gender-affirming medical care emerged in the 1920s, with the first clinics in the United States treating transgender patients in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Arguments in the case are scheduled to last approximately two weeks, though both sides have filed motions seeking to exclude the testimony of doctors and other expert witnesses that the opposing party has brought.

Plaintiffs — including families that have changed their child’s care plan because of the law, health care providers and advocacy groups — will argue that the law is unconstitutional. Additionally, they will try to prove that it is subject to higher scrutiny because it discriminates based on sex and “transgender status.”

Defendants — including Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Gov. Mike Parson, among others — argue the state had a compelling governmental interest in enacting and enforcing the law.

The litigation could also determine whether the state can lawfully exclude gender-affirming care coverage from the state’s Medicaid program and covered services in state prisons.

State Rep. Raychel Proudie, a Democrat from Ferguson, questions officials from the state education department about emails that show early knowledge of widespread problems with the child care subsidy program (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Missouri House Budget Committee grilled state education officials  for over two hours Wednesday morning over the backlog of payments in the child care subsidy program.

House Budget Chair Cody Smith, a Republican from Carthage, pressed subsidy administrators about how the backlog may affect the state budget.

Officials were not able during the meeting to say how much money they owed providers for subsidized child care for the previous fiscal year, which ended June 30. The department had $84.3 million left in appropriations for fiscal year 2024 it can no longer spend.

This money must come out of appropriations for the current fiscal year, which may lead to a supplemental request, Smith noted with concern. Kari Monsees, commissioner of financial and administrative services for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said any additional appropriations could be pulled from remaining federal funding for the program that the legislature has not yet authorized the department to use.

And now, with discretionary funds expiring at the end of the month, DESE is writing checks to child-care providers as a one-time grant to use up the funds and try to keep struggling preschools open. The grants will vary from $5,000 to $55,000 based on the size of the facility.

“We wanted the stipend to be substantial. We thought it needed to be substantial, given the nature of the situation we are in,” Monsees told the committee.

It was the second day in a row that department leaders faced tough questions from lawmakers. On Tuesday, a parade of child-care providers testified to the House Education Committee about the massive backlog and how it is impacting their ability to keep their doors open. 

DESE took over the administration of the child care subsidy program from the Department of Social Services in December and hired a new service provider to cover the technology.

Since then, providers have been missing payments for many months, and families are waiting for long periods to get into the system. Some day care centers have closed their doors, and many have taken out loans to survive.

“I have people who are at the brink of going out of business. I have individuals who told families, ‘Unless you can come up with the full amount even though you’ve been approved for the subsidy, you cannot have your child here at our center,’” State Rep. Darin Chappell, a Rogersville Republican, said. “These people are trying to be cared for. 

“They are working poor, working middle class. We are not talking about people with our greatest amount of money. They wouldn’t have qualified if they were. These are the people in our communities that are the most at risk,” he continued

He wished the department would have paid, at the minimum, part of their obligation to providers by the end of June. Then, they wouldn’t have as much owed now.

Rep. Raychel Proudie, a Democrat from Ferguson, held printed copies of emails between DESE officials and contractors. Concerns about the system were known months before addressing it publicly.

“The assistant commissioner let them know that there was an issue over and over and over and over again before we ran out of the trial period,” Proudie said. “It was well known that this was a disaster, that she felt that the contractors weren’t taking it seriously.”

Pam Thomas, assistant commissioner for Missouri’s Office of Childhood, said she knew it was a “system wide” problem by the end of January.

“There were some hot fixes put in place immediately,” she said. “At that point in time, there were over 2,000 provider accounts and over 22,000 children. We had duplicates in the system because of missing data, and the volume by the end of January was very large.”

The department has a goal to fix the backlog by the end of October, but lawmakers expressed skepticism.

Rep. Kathy Steinhoff, a Democrat from Columbia, asked for weekly updates, preferably on a public platform.

Monsees said the department would “address that.”

This article has been updated at 2:43 p.m. to correct the status of fiscal year 2024 appropriations and officials’ knowledge of the amount owed to borrowers.

State Rep. Brad Pollitt, a Sedalia Republican, leads the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee hearing Tuesday afternoon (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Julita Harris has worked in child care for 47 years and has refused to shut down her business, Peter Rabbit Learning and Development Center in St. Joseph, despite mounting financial concerns.

The preschool has become a family affair, with her son Edwin helping with administrative tasks. Lately, that’s meant watching for payments from the state’s child subsidy grant program, which is a federal grant administered by the state to help low-income families afford child care.

But even he can’t understand the software, which doesn’t recognize all the subsidized children correctly. 

And the money from the state has gotten sparse since this past winter.

While she waits for the money she’s owed, her family is  nearly $70,000 in debt. The utilities to their home are shut off — anything to keep the lights on at the day care.

“We borrowed a lot of money, tied our (trucking business) up, used our social security and using other funding we had set aside that’s not there now,” Julita Harris said. “I don’t regret that, but it’s wrong.”

Payment backlog leaves Missouri child care providers desperate, on the brink of closing

She attributes the financial hardship to a change in the child care subsidy program, a federal grant administered by the state. The Department of Social Services administered the subsidy until December, when the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education took over and contracted with a new software provider to manage the program.

Since then, payments have been sparse, with providers around the state closing their doors and others taking out loans to stay in business. The Missouri House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, back in Jefferson City for veto session this week, called for an informational hearing about the problem.

Officials with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Childhood told committee members Tuesday that the backlog of payments to providers should be resolved by mid-October. The backlog of subsidy applications will be completed by the end of this month.

But the meeting’s attendees, which were largely child care providers, weren’t so sure. 

“The current plan talked about today is just not working,” said Lyndsey Elliott, director of Missouri S&T’s child development center. “I’ve been waiting for more than 60 days for payment resolution requests to even make it to a human.”

The center was missing more than $50,000 in subsidy payments from the state between the months of January and July, she said. Other providers had as much as $148,000 owed to them, they told the committee.

Kari Monsees, DESE’s commissioner of financial and administrative services, said there were “startup challenges” beginning the new system. The new system developed by World Wide Technology in St. Louis must interact with a preexisting attendance-tracking software, KinderConnect.

The interaction between the two software systems has caused duplication errors and created manual labor, Monsees said. The program by World Wide Technology hasn’t been meeting contractual obligations, he said, but it is past the 90-day warranty period.

The errors have created a backlog where providers are waiting months to receive payment, and parents’ applications are taking over a month to get approved.

Pam Thomas, assistant commissioner for Missouri’s Office of Childhood, said some records are taking “months” to be accepted and entered into the system when it should be instantaneous.

The department has hired 22 staff members to oversee eligibility, 10 to process payment and 14 hourly technicians to fix system issues at a combined cost of $4.8 million, Monsees said.

State Rep. Marlene Terry, a Democrat from St. Louis, said the state needs to “find a way to get these people their money.”

Rep. Crystal Quade, House Minority Leader and Democratic candidate for governor, asked why checks can’t be sent today.

“That is the kind of question that all of us were asking,” Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger said. “Let’s just get the money out the door. Let’s do it. But I have been learning on this job that those kinds of things are not that easy.”

Quade said the state legislature has already appropriated funds, so repeat providers should receive their checks without having to revalidate currently.

Monsees said he believes that fixing the issues with the system is a “more productive” use of staff time.

State Rep. Ed Lewis, a Republican from Moberly, suggested temporarily implementing an enrollment-based system instead of using attendance and paying the providers at the beginning of the month. These are goals of the department, as well as federal suggestions. He also said the department could pay based on average attendance to expedite payment.

Child care providers said an enrollment-based system would alleviate some of the pressure.

Rachel Wilfley, a program director at Kindercare, said parents fill out attendance using tablets. Some have technology problems, and attendance registers lower than kids’ actual turnout.

Others complained that the department had removed incentives for providers to take on a large amount of subsidy-funded children.

Diane Coleman, who owns Nanny’s Early Learning Center in Columbia, said she previously received a 30% bonus for having an enrollment with over 50% subsidy-funded kids and an additional 20% bonus for an accreditation program. Now, she said, she must choose one or the other.

This change alone is costing her $148,000. “We relied on that money,” she said.

Lacey Allen, owner of Learning and Fun Preschool in Kansas City, said losing the bonus has cost her $107,000.

“I have not received a correct payment since DESE took over,” she said.

Discussion of the problems plaguing the subsidy program isn’t over. The House Budget Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday morning to look into the issue as well.

Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger speaks during a State Board of Education meeting (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is asking for over $174 million in supplemental funding for this school year after receiving $1 billion less in appropriations compared to the previous year.

When the State Board of Education reviewed the budget bill approved by lawmakers in May, Board Chair Charlie Shields predicted that “the mother of all supplemental budgets” would come, possibly in a special session.

In its meeting Tuesday, the board approved a supplemental budget with a high request from the state in general revenue and a budget for next year with increasing costs associated with an education bill that was recently signed into law.

“We can’t assume that this is all going to be able to be funded. There’s going to be some really hard decisions and prioritization that has to happen throughout the process,” Kari Monsees, DESE’s commissioner of financial and administrative services, told the State Board of Education Tuesday. “That might be the understatement of the year,” he added.

The supplemental request includes over $100 million from the state’s general revenue fund. Last year, the department asked for under $2 million in state funding.

Nearly half of the general-revenue request — $48 million — is from changes to the formula that funds school districts and charter schools. The board did not discuss what changes drove the supplemental, but multiple additions to the formula will boost funding in its fiscal year 2026 request.

Other drivers of the expense is an increase in the early childhood special education caseload, which the department requests $20.8 million to manage.

“The last three or four years, we’ve been fairly flat in (early childhood special education enrollment) because of the covid impact,” Monsees said. “We had fewer students entering those programs for a few years, and so we didn’t need much in the way of additional funding. Well, that kind of came home to roost last year, and the numbers are up.”

The department is also requesting $15 million for a grant program it provides to schools with under 350 students. The education package passed by the legislature this year increased the size of the program, so the supplemental request is to meet that demand, Monsees said.

He noted that budget instructions for fiscal year 2026 direct the department to specify mandatory new decision items. For that, the department requests an increase of $810 million from this year’s appropriation of $8.73 billion, of which $719 million would come from the state’s general fund.

A sizable portion of the request is powered by expenses in the education package passed by lawmakers this year, which had a $230 million fiscal note for next year.

Requests from state agencies are due to the Missouri Office of Administration by Oct. 1.

(Getty Images).

A Cole County Circuit Court judge rejected an attempt to invalidate an initiative petition on sports betting Friday, allowing voters to decide whether to enshrine sports wagering in Missouri’s Constitution on the November ballot.

“Lawsuits seeking to remove an initiative petition from the ballot after it has been certified as sufficient by the secretary (of state) are highly disfavored,” Judge Daniel Green wrote in his ruling, quoting from another case that he must rule with “restraint, trepidation and a healthy suspicion of the partisan that would use the judiciary to prevent the initiative process from taking its course.”

Green reviewed lists of petition signatures plaintiffs submitted to allege that the amendment did not meet the minimum threshold in Missouri’s 1st congressional district. The evidence included 95 signatures that plaintiffs called “disqualified voters.”

Green, in his ruling, said the evidence did not show that the voters were ineligible when they signed the petition. Without these 95 signatures thrown out, the petition meets minimum qualifications.

Beyond that, plaintiffs’ argument failed to convince Green that the Missouri Secretary of State incorrectly certified the signatures.

In an argument led by Marc Ellinger — a seasoned Jefferson City attorney with experience representing Missouri gaming companies — plaintiffs took issue with the method the secretary used when calculating the number of votes needed in each district.

But, Green wrote, this calculation has been constant throughout all initiatives in 2022 and 2024 and was used by previous secretaries of state.  The number was determined by multiplying the number of votes cast for governor in 2020 by 8%.

Ellinger said the number should be based on congressional district maps drawn after the 2020 election, but he “presented no evidence from which the court could determine what plaintiff’s target number should be,” Green wrote.

Should the threshold stand, Ellinger argued that there were a plethora of signatures that were improperly certified. For this, his expert witness was Kevin Oglesby, who manages National Political Consultants Inc and was hired to look at the signatures.

Oglesby received information from the secretary of state’s office to assess signatures, and his testimony was a large part of Thursday’s trial as he explained instances he deemed errors.

Local election authorities, which processed the petition for the secretary of state, had more information when reviewing signatures.

Green noted that plaintiffs “did not present evidence to qualify (Oglesby) as a handwriting expert.”

“Court did not find the testimony of the plaintiff’s witness to be credible or particularly helpful,” Green said in his judgment.

His ruling also dismissed a counter-claim by intervenors Winning for Missouri Education, the initiative’s campaign committee. The claim alleged that the committee, which has raised over $6.5 million to support the petition, is harmed by plaintiffs’ accusations

Green said there was no evidence presented on the matter, rendering it “moot.”

Winning for Missouri Education spokesman Jack Cardetti celebrated the victory Friday, focusing on the increased tax dollars that could go to public education if the initiative is approved.

“Today’s ruling, while expected, is nevertheless a big victory for Missourians, who overwhelmingly want to join the 38 other states that allow sports betting, so that we can provide tens of millions in permanent, dedicated funding each year to our public school,” he said. “For too many years, Missourians have watched as fans cross state lines to place sport bets, which deprives our Missouri public schools of much needed funding.”

Ellinger did not respond to a timely request for comment.

A case in the Cole County Circuit Court may decide whether sports betting will be on the November ballot (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A Cole County Circuit Court judge must soon decide whether Missouri voters will be able to  enshrine sports betting in the state’s constitution.

A lawsuit brought by two political strategists questions the validity of the signature verification process used by the Secretary of State’s Office. The proposal was certified for the November ballot after being deemed to have collected enough signatures in all but two congressional districts.

But over the course of a nearly seven-hour hearing on Thursday, both sides picked through individual voter records in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District after a petition management firm hired by the plaintiffs said it had found around 750 signatures that should have been deemed invalid — enough to drag the petition below the threshold needed to be placed on the ballot.

Attorneys representing the secretary of state and the sports betting campaign, Winning for Missouri Education, prodded at the petition management firm’s techniques.

Kevin Oglesby, a manager for National Political Consultants Inc — whose company has been investigated for misrepresenting initiative petitions they were hired to canvas for in Michigan in 2020 and 2022 — said he was granted access to petition signatures and voter registration cards through the secretary of state’s office.

With these documents, he testified that he checked through thousands of signatures and compiled a list of those he believes local election officials incorrectly counted as valid.

Marc Ellinger, a veteran Jefferson City attorney representing the plaintiffs, led Oglesby through stacks of signatures by pointing out names and asking what was wrong with the record.

Some, Oglesby said, had signatures that did not match the signature on the voter registration card. Others had different names than noted on the card. One example was someone who had been convicted of a felony and was therefore ineligible to vote.

Ellinger — who touts a focus on gaming law in his biography, including representing the Missouri Gaming Commission — handed out 12 binder-clipped stacks of names Oglesby said were “illegal.”

Assistant Attorney General Eric Kinnaw, who represented the secretary of state’s office, asked Oglesby if he knew whether those who had been deemed ineligible because of death or felony convictions could have been a qualified voter on the date they signed.

He didn’t know.

Chuck Hatfield, representing the sports betting campaign, led Oglesby back through some of the names. Some of them had not been counted in the secretary of state’s certification, he said.

Those with mismatched names were often women, he noted, pointing to a regulation that allows for those who have changed their names to be counted.

Scott Clark, deputy chief of staff for the secretary of state, testified  that there is a process local election authorities are trained on for those with mismatched names.

Petition processors have two software systems available to validate signatures, he said, one of which shows the voter’s history. This allows them to see previous names as well as their full history of signatures sent to the county clerk.

Oglesby had one reference signature per voter to cross-check with the petition. Local authorities can check as many as the county has logged, Clark said.

Tim Morgan, a forensic document examiner, testified that the best practice when verifying a questionable signature is to have “five, 10 to 20” recent signatures.

Ellinger said that would make the secretary of state’s process unscientific with only a historic record.

Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green, who is presiding over the case, asked if attorneys expected the court to review the documents to determine “whether the signatures match each other or not.”

Ellinger said he should if he’s “not willing to accept the witness’s testimony (as fact).”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Green said.

Attorneys for Winning for Missouri Education submitted a packet of 652 signatures and voter registration cards as evidence. These, they argued, were additional signatures that should be verified.

Hatfield said in his opening statement that some names were excluded from the Secretary of State’s count. The certification of the initiative petition signatures notes that “districts which significantly exceeded the requirements for sufficiency may have additional unchecked signatures.”

Ellinger submitted 350 records in rebuttal, saying over half of those signatures brought by Hatfield were invalid.

The parties must file their proposed judgments Friday afternoon. Green could issue his verdict in the case anytime after. 

A teenager speaks during a Senate hearing during the 2023 legislative session, donning a vest with a transgender flag (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

It has been a year since a state law required Missouri schools to have athletes compete according to their sex as assigned at birth, and few student manuals and school-board policies reflect the change.

Enforcement, which was murky last year, remains unprescribed with many districts stating that they will follow the law without describing how.

The law, which bars transgender athletes from competing according to their gender identity, penalizes noncompliant schools by revoking their state funding. It calls for state education officials to create any rules necessary for enforcement.

But the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education “is not involved in school athletics and activities,” its spokeswoman Mallory McGowin told The Independent. 

The Missouri High School Activities Association (MSHSAA), which is not a state entity, oversees eligibility for extracurricular events.

The association has eligibility standards that schools statewide require their athletes to adhere to in order to compete in MSHSAA-sanctioned events. One such requirement is a semiannual physical, in which doctors clear athletes to compete.

The paperwork provided by MSHSAA for the sports physical asks the student’s sex as assigned at birth and gender identity for the medical history provided to the doctor. The form submitted to schools only includes sex as assigned at birth.

But MSHSAA is not the enforcer of the law, said Andrew Kauffman, the association’s spokesman. Individual schools are.

When asked if MSHSAA has provided guidance to schools, he said it “has advised its (member) schools to follow the law.”

According to the Movement Advancement Project, which maps policies affecting LGBTQ people in the U.S., 25 states ban transgender athletes from participating according to their gender identity.

When a Missouri Senate committee was hearing the bill in 2023, a swath of advocates warned lawmakers that the legislation would harm transgender youth.

“Bills, such as (this one), communicate not just to the LGBTQ community but to all people that our very existence can and should be rejected and devalued,” said Shira Berkowitz, senior director of public policy and advocacy of PROMO, Missouri’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group.

School had brief answers to questions about their policies, with most unwilling to grant requests for an interview.

“We follow the state statute with regard to what gender is listed on a birth certificate and MSHSAA guidelines in terms of student participation in sports based on gender. We have worked effectively with families and student athletes to comply with the state law and we will continue to do so,” Rockwood School District’s spokesperson said.

In a review by The Independent of Missouri’s 10 largest school districts’ student manuals, Rockwood was one of two to cite state law in policies around athletic eligibility.

“The district complies with all relevant state law regarding participation in athletic competitions,” the policy says, citing the section that restricts participation based on sex at birth.

Wentzville School District based its policy on the law, copying phrases out of state statute and noting a loss of funding if the district does not comply.

The other districts lacked mention of the statute, or gender identity, in their athletics eligibility policies.

The policy in North Kansas City High School says: “Participation… can be granted to those who meet the eligibility standards of the school and the state of Missouri.”

MSHSAA is widely pointed to in eligibility policies.

Fort Zumwalt School District, in O’Fallon, determines eligibility “in accordance with the MSHSAA regulations and school district policies and regulations.”

Prior to the state law, there were only five transgender athletes eligible to compete in MSHSAA events.

State Rep. Jeff Farnan, a Republican from Stanberry, speaks in the Missouri House during the 2024 legislative session. A well-funded group sought to oust him from his seat with attack ads during the primary election (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

The mailers started showing up in Rep. Jeff Farnan’s district months before the Aug. 6 primary, labeling the Republican from Stanberry a tool of teacher’s unions with an agenda of “open borders” and “higher taxes.”

By the time voters went to the polls, the Missouri chapter of the American Federation for Children had spent $90,000 trying to unseat Farnan, who was first elected to the Missouri House in 2022. The reason for the group’s ire: He’d publicly opposed a bill that would expand the state’s tax-credit scholarship program, MOScholars, which moves state funds to private schools.

“They just kind of hinted around the fact that I didn’t believe in school choice,” he said of the mailers. “That is what some of the ads alluded to.”

In the end, the spending had little effect on the primary, and Farnan prevailed with 77% of the vote.

Other GOP incumbents who had opposed the MOScholars bill weren’t so lucky. AFC also prioritized bringing down Reps. Kyle Marquart and Gary Bonacker, who lost their primaries.

In all, American Federation for Children and other groups that support public funds for private education spent a combined $560,000 in legislative primaries this year, bolstering candidates that affirm charter schools and state-funded private-school scholarships and sending out negative ads against opponents statewide.

Quality Schools Coalition, a Kansas City-based nonprofit that advocates for charter schools and other educational options, invested in Republican primaries with no incumbents and two Democratic races with candidates currently in the state legislature. In all, the group spent over $100,000 in campaign ads during the primary.

That compares to $23,400 in ads from the Missouri chapter of the National Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union. Missouri NEA also spent nearly $76,000 in contributions to campaigns.

Mark Jones, communications director for Missouri NEA, called the ads from opposing groups an attempt to “demonize” teachers.

“It is certainly not a surprise that those who want to privatize education first want to attack educators because educators are the most trusted people most parents know in their community,” he said.

The organization puts together an annual resolution with policy positions. There isn’t a mention of “open borders,” but Missouri NEA does advocate for education access regardless of immigration status.

A board elected by Missouri NEA members directs its campaign efforts, he said. Candidates are chosen through a screening process, including voting history — such as the MOScholars bill.

“What you will see during the course of the entire election is that educators are going to hold folks who do not support public education accountable, and we’re going to continue to do that,” Jones said.

Jean Evans, the Missouri lead for the American Federation for Children, said her organization stopped its spending in opposition to Farnan a couple weeks before Election Day after polling made it clear he was going to win easily.

The American Federation for Children’s Missouri political action committee spent about $460,000 during the primary. Evans said there will be continued investment as the general election approaches.

“When you find a good candidate, and there’s a clear contrast from the incumbent, which was what we saw in those races… that’s really what it was about, and letting the voters know,” Evans said.

Bonacker, a House Springs Republican who lost his race after facing AFC’s attack ads, felt like voters lost sight of who he is seeing ads with “open borders” and “higher taxes” in bold.

“I was warned (about the ads). I thought I could weather it,” Bonacker said. “I can’t believe people who know me could fall prey to the constant barrage of misinformation that convinces them otherwise.”

He voted against the MOScholars bill, feeling like the legislation would only hurt his local school district, in which he serves on the board of education. He also didn’t think the state could fund the bill, which will cost nearly $470 million when fully implemented.

On Aug. 6, he lost to newcomer Cecelie Williams, who garnered 59.2% of the vote. Williams ran with messaging that she supported “school choice” in a brief list of issues displayed in her social media posts.

She told The Independent that, while campaigning door to door, about a quarter of people knew about the issue.

“School choice did play a good portion in my election, especially with my opponent being against school choice,” she said. “Once the word got out that he didn’t support school choice, I think that had an influence on it.”

Bonacker also voted against bills in the 2023 legislative session that, now law, place restrictions on transgender athletes and bar transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming care.

He said the votes weren’t a sign of supporting transgender youth but instead rooted in his views of limited government.

“The government doesn’t need to be in that business, in family medical decisions, doesn’t matter what the subject matter is,” he said.

Williams said his voting history seemed like he was “voting like a liberal.” Bonacker’s voting record shows him voting in line with fellow Republicans more than double the amount he shares with Democratic representatives.

Both AFC and Quality Schools Coalition, which generally spent on different races, pumped money into the Democratic primary in Senate District 13 in St. Louis County. 

State Rep. Chantelle Nickson-Clark, who voted for the bill expanding MoScholars, challenged incumbent Sen. Angela Mosley, who voted against the bill. In total, the groups spent almost $32,000 supporting Nickson-Clark and almost $27,000 opposing Mosley.

Missouri NEA spent nearly $17,000 opposing Nickson-Clark.

Mosley won the primary, with 56.7% of the vote.

Quality Schools Coalition spent about $28,000 supporting state Rep. Marlene Terry, a Democrat from St. Louis, who said she changed her mind and voted in favor of the MOScholars expansion and explained her decision-making process in an op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In July, Missouri NEA spent about $7,000 on mailers opposing Terry. She won her primary with 64.4% of the vote.

Quality Schools Coalition President and CEO Dean Johnson, who was unavailable for an interview, said in a statement that he would like to see additional “education reform.”

“Quality Schools Coalition was proud to support candidates in the August elections who we believe share these values,” he said. “Depending on outcomes in the general election, it appears that the Missouri House will have a larger number of education reformers than ever before, while support for education reform in the Missouri Senate will remain largely unchanged.”

Transgender Missourians will need proof of surgical transition or a court order before their driver's license can match their gender identity (photo illustration by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder)

It became much harder this month for Missourians to change the gender marker on their driver’s licenses following a quiet move by the state Department of Revenue.

The department, which issues state driver’s licenses, switched from requiring the signature of a physician, therapist or social worker to approve a change in gender designation to mandating documentation of gender reassignment surgery or a court order.

The shift happened earlier this month, though it was not announced publicly by the department. The Wayback Machine, which archives web pages, shows the gender designation change request form requiring physician signoff, known as Form 5532, was available Aug. 6. The next day, the web page with the form was offline.

A spokesperson for the Department of Revenue told The Independent in a statement that “Form 5532 is no longer needed.”

“Customers are required to provide either medical documentation that they have undergone gender reassignment surgery or a court order declaring gender designation to obtain a driver license or non-driver ID card denoting gender other than their biological gender assigned at birth.”

PROMO, Missouri’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, reached out to the department after hearing that people could no longer make changes to their identification using Form 5532 and heard that “an incident” spurred the move, said executive director Katy Erker-Lynch.

According to the Movement Advancement Project, which maps states’ policies affecting LGBTQ residents, Missouri is one of 10 states with this policy. Just three states do not allow residents to change their gender markers.

The policy change occurred soon after controversy erupted earlier this month over a transgender woman who used the women’s locker rooms at a private gym in Ellisville.

State Rep. Justin Sparks, a Republican from Wildwood, told The Independent that his office “would have never even known about (Form 5532) unless the Lifetime Fitness incident had occurred.”

Sparks was among a group of elected officials who convened a press conference outside the gym Aug. 2, and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced an investigation into the incident the same day.

During a radio appearance Aug. 1, Sparks said the transgender woman “displayed a state ID describing (herself) as female.”

“We are going to get to the bottom of what happened in the Department of Revenue and that form they issued several years ago,” he said. “It was inappropriate and in my opinion, it is not legal.”

Later that evening, in a live broadcast via Facebook, he told followers that he had been in contact with the department.

“I have assurances from the Department of Revenue that they are going to change their policies and their form,” he said, promising to follow up with the department.

Sparks told The Independent that he had questions about the creation of the form, which was made in 2016 with the help of LGBTQ advocates.

“I don’t even know if the people that have used that form, if that’s even valid,” he said.

He is looking into whether or not the department is allowed to change a policy without the legislature’s direction, which would determine whether the change in 2016 and this month’s switch are authorized.

“State law does not allow them to change that (policy). That’s something that we’re looking into right now, meaning can the Department of Revenue arbitrarily change policy without legislative oversight or legislation? And to the best of my knowledge, they cannot,” he said.

The change of gender markers on state identification is not explicitly mentioned in state law. The section of Missouri state law that describes driver’s license application forms allows the department to “promulgate rules and regulations necessary to administer and enforce this section,” though they must follow normal rulemaking procedure.

Sparks felt like his initial interaction with the department was unhelpful. When he involved Bailey and state senators, he says the Department of Revenue promised to change the form.

He believes the change might have been out of appeasement, to stop them from “digging.”

Erker-Lynch had a similar impression.

“It seems the mere mention and threat of a potential investigation into the policies and practices of the Department of Revenue caused Director (Wayne) Wallingford to end a policy that worked to help people,” Erker-Lynch said. “This decision reflects a state and state departments run by fear and intimidation — not a state run to serve its residents.”

PROMO is gathering stories of those who are struggling to change their gender marker on their state identification, calling the campaign “The ID for Me.”

This story was updated at 2:28 p.m. to include reaction from Rep. Justin Sparks.

Both nominees in the Missouri governor's race spoke to reporters separately following the governor's ham breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia Thursday morning, giving hints at what a debate may look like between the two (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

SEDALIA — Republican gubernatorial nominee Mike Kehoe and Democrat Crystal Quade agreed Thursday to a debate next month hosted by the Missouri Press Association.

Kehoe did not participate in several Republican debates in the run up to the Aug. 6 primary. News stations have offered to moderate a Kehoe-Quade debate, but a date has not yet been set  — though Kehoe said both parties were “interested.”

Both gubernatorial candidates spoke briefly to reporters following the annual governor’s ham breakfast at the Missouri State Fair Thursday morning, an event packed with elected officials and candidates for office up and down the ballot. 

They promised a debate on the issues, rather than name-calling and performance.

“I am excited to have a conversation about policy differences and trying to get away from the flamethrowers and ridiculousness that we saw in the primary,” Quade said.

Kehoe said Quade’s viewpoints are “100% different” than his, but he expects the race to  remain cordial.

“We are old fashioned in that we can disagree and still have a relationship with each other,” he said.

Quade also emphasized their differences Thursday, saying that although other candidates in the Republican primary appeared “extreme,” she believes Kehoe would ultimately govern similarly.

“While folks may say that one (Republican candidate) is more moderate than the other, the reality is Lt. Gov. Kehoe would sign the same pieces of legislation that the extremists in Jefferson City would send him regardless,” she said.

Quade spoke about their differences in workers’ rights and labor law, noting that Kehoe advocated for Missouri’s right-to-work law in 2017, prohibiting labor union membership from being a condition of employment.

There is a ballot initiative that seeks to raise the minimum wage and establish a mandatory minimum for paid sick leave, potentially bringing more hourly workers to the polls in November.

When asked about the ballot initiatives, Kehoe said he preferred for businesses to set wages. But overall, his priority was rejecting a second ballot initiative seeking to amend the state constitution to legalize abortion. 

“We need to make sure that amendment goes down,” he said. “Protecting innocent life is one of our highest, if not the highest, priority.”

When the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office released the news that legalizing abortion would be on the November ballot, Quade issued a statement that condemned Kehoe’s anti-abortion stance and labeled him an “extremist.”

“Within 15 minutes of the fall of Roe, Missouri Republicans, led by extremists like Mike Kehoe, cheered as the rights of women all across Missouri were stripped away,” she said in a statement.

Missourians will vote for their next governor Nov. 5.

Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger speaks during a State Board of Education meeting Tuesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri students are showing progress on standardized tests administered by the state, with results in some categories approaching — and even exceeding — pre-pandemic levels.

But in other areas — most notably English language arts — students continue to struggle.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education revealed preliminary scores in the Missouri Assessment Program, or MAP, to the State Board of Education in its board meeting Tuesday.

Pamela Westbrooks-Hodge, a board member from Pasadena Hills, said she was “a little deflated that we didn’t see more growth and progress.”

DESE is implementing programs to address low levels of literacy, an issue throughout the United States, with interventions based on the science of reading and increased teacher training.

Westbrooks-Hodge said the intervention has worked like triage care; it “stopped the bleed” and scores are static.

“We made lots of great investments in the last two years, and I think we’re going to see the fruit of that as our score starts to increase,” she said. “All of these interventions are working. They’re stabilizing our educational system, and now we can start layering growth on top of that.”

English language arts scores remain below pre-pandemic levels, according to data presented Tuesday, with 56% of students scoring in the “basic” or “below basic” range. This percentage has held steady since 2022.

Lisa Sireno, assistant commissioner of quality schools, said it takes “continuous, sustained focused implementation with fidelity at the local level, up to five years, before we start to see results on large-scale measures.”

She noted that teacher shortages could be impacting the scores, as a battle of the 2023-24 school year.

When looking at scores across all subjects and grades, there is an observable improvement since 2021’s tests. That year, 24% of scores were in the “below basic” range. That’s fallen to 22% this year, still higher than the 19% below basic in the  last pre-pandemic tests in 2019. The number of scores in proficient and advanced ranges are one-percent less than 2019’s achievement.

Math scores are exceeding pre-pandemic levels, with a one-percent boost in the advanced category compared to 2019 when looking at grades 3-8. Sireno noted that middle-school math has exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

Sireno expects additional analysis, especially as educators look at local-level data.

State Treasurer Vivek Malek, who is seeking a full term in office after being appointed by Gov. Mike Parson, speaks Thursday evening at the Boone County Republican Lincoln Days dinner in Columbia (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

State Treasurer Vivek Malek defeated multiple challengers Tuesday to hold on to his party’s nomination to keep his job this fall. 

The Associated Press called the race for Malek at 9 p.m. He will face Democrat Mark Osmack and Libertarian John A. Hartwig Jr. in November.  

“I want to thank my family and everyone who gave their time and energy to this campaign,” Malek said in a statement posted on social media. “I am humbled to receive the Republican nomination for State Treasurer. It has been such an honor to serve this state since 2023.”

Malek’s campaign ads touted his support for former President Donald Trump, belief in a fortified Southern border and his advocacy for divesting from foreign adversaries.

Malek’s background is as an immigration attorney, having immigrated to the United States from India in 2001. He told The Independent he is outspoken about unauthorized immigration because of the “additional burden on the healthcare and education systems.”

He believes granting citizenship to people who originally entered the United States without authorization incentivizes others to do the same.

But these views on immigration are not likely to impact his duties as treasurer, he said, unless there were a way to parse out spending only for lawful residents.

Malek was appointed treasurer in 2022 and took office Jan. 2023, and the office’s programs have grown under his watch. With one year in office, Malek set the record for the amount returned in unclaimed property with $51.8 million returned to people, up from $50.2 million.

He inherited a months-old scholarship program MOScholars, which funds private education and reserves tax credits for donors. MOScholars had $9 million in tax credits reserved in 2022 and $16.6 million in 2023, year two into the program.

In 2023, demand for scholarships overwhelmed funds as the office tried to reckon a funding cycle based on the calendar year and the need for those dollars following the school year.

A full term, Malek said, would build on the growth he’s seen in just under two years in office, though he sees the potential for a couple initiatives. He hopes the treasurer’s office can work with the legislature to create a mandatory personal finance course for high schoolers in upcoming legislative sessions. 

He would also like to create investment opportunities for small municipalities.

Joe Amrine, who spent 16 years on death row in Missouri for a killing he did not commit, speaks at a news conference Thursday calling for Attorney General Andrew Bailey to drop his opposition to an innocence hearing for Marcellus Williams, set for Sept. 24. Amrine was joined by, from left, Ray Krone of Arizona, Herman LIndsey of Florida and Eric Anderson of Michigan, who have all been freed from death row after their innocence was proven (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

A group of men exonerated after years on death row gathered at the Missouri Capitol Thursday to call on Attorney General Andrew Bailey to stop blocking efforts to vacate the conviction of Marcellus Williams.

Williams was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle during a robbery of her suburban St. Louis home. He is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24.

But since his 2001 conviction, new testing was able to determine DNA on the murder weapon matched someone else.

Four members of a group called Witness to Innocence, each of whom were sentenced only to later have their innocence revealed, shared their stories Thursday in Jefferson City and advocated for Williams’ release.

“We’re asking the Attorney General of Missouri to stop acting like innocence doesn’t matter,” said Herman Lindsey, executive director of Witness to Innocence and exoneree from Florida’s death row. “We are asking you to represent the people of Missouri by looking for the truth over politics.”

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who is running for U.S. House, filed a motion earlier this year to vacate Williams’ conviction, and a St. Louis County Circuit Court judge will hold an evidentiary hearing Aug. 21.

Just 30 minutes after the exonerees began their press conference, Bailey joined Gov. Mike Parson one floor above in the Capitol for their own press conference on unauthorized cannabinoids.

Asked about Williams’ case, Bailey said: “The criminal justice system has to have a component of finality.”

“The juries of the state of Missouri under the Sixth Amendment have a right to participate in that process,” he said, “and we should respect and defer to the finality of the jury’s determination.”

Bailey said he doesn’t want to forget the evidence used in the original conviction.

The original case relied on testimony of  a witness who served as a jailhouse informant in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Williams’ isn’t the first case that has stirred questions of innocence after new evidence arrived post-conviction.

Among Witness to Innocence’s speakers was Joseph Amrine, who was exonerated in Missouri in 2003 after informants admitted to lying during trial. The Missouri Attorney General’s office, which at the time was then led by Democrat Attorney General Jay Nixon, acknowledged Amrie’s innocence but still pushed for execution.

Amrine’s case made it all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court, where Judge Laura Denvir Stith questioned then-Assistant Attorney General Frank Jung: “Are you suggesting … even if we find that Mr. Amrine is actually innocent, he should be executed?” 

“That’s correct, your honor,” Jung said.

For the last 30 years, the Missouri Attorney General’s office has opposed every innocence case.

“The Missouri Attorney General’s office is emphasizing winning and personal gain over truth and justice…. To them, executing a person is just the cost of doing business,” Lindsey said.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Missouri has exonerated four people from death row and has killed 99 since 1976, with four executions in 2023.

Sen. Mike Moon, R-Ash Grove, speaks on the Senate floor about his bill on gender-affirming care on Feb. 27, 2023 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A circuit court judge ruled Monday that state Sen. Mike Moon is immune from questioning in a legal challenge of Missouri’s restrictions on gender-affirming care that he sponsored in 2023.

Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, who is stepping into Cole County for the case, agreed with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office that Moon should not be questioned under oath in the case. However, he ruled against the attorney general by rejecting a request to push the trial until after the U.S. Supreme Court hears a similar case.

Attorneys with the ACLU sought to ask Moon, a Republican from Ash Grove, about his communications with lobbyists and advocacy groups in the creation of Missouri’s law. The ACLU is joined by law firms Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and Lambda Legal seeking to stop the implementation of the law, which became effective nearly one year ago.

ACLU attorney Kristin Mulvey wrote in the plaintiff’s argument that Moon’s communications to advocacy groups, obtained by the ACLU via open records requests, show discriminatory intent in the law’s drafting process.

“Plaintiffs… should be able to examine communications the act’s sponsor had with third parties about the law as they are relevant to the reasons it was passed in Missouri and are likely to demonstrate that the real interests and motivations behind the passage of the act are not what the state claims them to be,” she argued.

The law, coined the SAFE Act, has placed restrictions on gender-affirming care for children, adults on Medicaid and incarcerated Missourians. The text “was apparently supplied by the interest group Family Policy Alliance,” Mulvey wrote.

Family Policy Alliance, based in Colorado Springs, uses religious doctrine to oppose gender-affirming care, gay marriage and abortion.

The attorney general’s office, in a motion filed by Assistant Attorney General Matthew Tkachuk, argued that Moon cannot be questioned because of “legislative privilege.”

He cites the Speech and Debate Clause in the U.S. Constitution, which says “for any speech or debate in either House, (senators and representatives) shall not be questioned in any other place.”

Mulvey argued the clause applies to Moon’s speech on the Senate floor but does not protect his communication with third parties. She emphasized voters amended  Missouri’s Constitution in 2018 clarifying that legislative records are open.

But Tkachuck said legislative intent is protected and, regardless, irrelevant to the law’s constitutionality.

Tkachuck said during Monday’s hearing that the subpoena of Moon was “unconstitutional, unprecedented and unhelpful.”

“The motivations of an individual legislator are not relevant to the constitutionality of a statute, which either meets constitutional muster on its merits or does not,” he wrote in the state’s argument.

Separately, the parties argued about the trial’s timeline. It is scheduled for a bench trial, meaning the judge rules on constitutionality, in late September.

Peter Donahue, assistant attorney general for special litigation, told Carter the witness list had been reduced to 35 people: 20 for plaintiffs and 15 for the state with “substantial discovery on both sides.”

Lawsuit seeks to block Missouri ban on transgender care for minors

The discovery process has been burdensome for both parties, with each asking Carter to force the disclosure of documents they deemed wrongfully withheld.

Donahue said he foresees litigation with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a third party the attorney general’s office is seeking information from for the case, to get documents.

Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said “nothing here in the discovery schedule compels the motion for a continuance.”

The attorney general’s office sought to delay until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on Tennessee’s gender-affirming-care ban. Gonzalez-Pagan said it would likely be a year — a long time for the patients who have been denied medical care under the law.

“It just flies in the face of everything this case is about to say that in a delay of a year, no harm is caused,” he said.

There are matters that the Supreme Court case will not touch on, like Missouri’s restrictions for Medicaid patients and incarcerated individuals, Gonzalez-Pagan told Carter.

Other courts are hearing challenges to their state bans, and just one has delayed trial, though it was at the request of the plaintiff, he said.

Gonzalez-Pagan cautioned that the plaintiffs may age-out of the statute if delays continue.

“The plaintiffs in this case deserve their day in court,” he said. “By asking for a continuance, the state is in essence denying it.”

Missouri’s attorney general is embroiled in a handful of lawsuits after he launched an investigation of gender-affirming care. He has asked for records from those who provided hormone-replacement therapy prior to the law’s enforcement and called for the State Division of Professional Registration to prod therapists who have referred minors for gender-affirming care.

Moon could not be immediately reached for comment.

Advocates with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests speak in front of the Missouri Supreme Court Building Wednesday afternoon before delivering a letter to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Survivors of abuse are asking Missouri’s attorney general to proceed with the trial of the co-owner of Circle of Hope Girls Ranch, a now-shuttered boarding school for troubled girls in Cedar County.

Stephanie Householder, who ran the school with her husband Boyd Householder, faces 21 charges of child abuse and neglect alleged by former Circle of Hope students. Her husband had nearly 80 charges, including allegations of sexual abuse. 

But he died of a “cardiac incident,” according to his attorney’s statement published by KCUR.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey offered Householder a plea deal in 2023 if she would testify against her husband. She rejected the offer.

David Clohessy, Missouri volunteer director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told reporters on Wednesday that he “suspects and fears the attorney general will offer her another plea deal.”

The attorney general’s office told The Independent it has “no pending offers of a plea deal.”

“For me, (a plea deal) is a huge slap in the face,” said Maggie Drew, who lived at Circle of Hope from 2007 to 2013. “That woman never showed mercy to any of us, and I don’t think it should be shown to her now.”

Drew said she broke bones while at Circle of Hope and was told to “walk it off” by Householder.

“I never thought I’d make it,” Drew said.

Survivors delivered a letter to Bailey Wednesday asking him not to extend additional deals. Householder is scheduled for a jury trial in October.

“While the trial will be emotionally very hard for many of us in the short term, in the long run, we are convinced that it will be a powerful deterrent to others who might commit or conceal crimes against children,” Householder’s daughter Amanda wrote in a letter on behalf of a group of survivors.

Clohessy said a trial is important for survivors to “speak their truth” and inform the public beyond what has already been reported.

Adria Keim, who worked at Circle of Hope at the age of 19, said the environment was “manipulative.” Within a month of working at the boarding school, she was left overnight with almost 20 teenage girls to manage, she alleged.

She said the school’s Christian affiliation did not align with the leaders’ actions.

“I know that God absolutely hates what was done at Circle of Hope in his name,” Keim said.

Clohessy wants Bailey to investigate other Christian boarding schools for troubled teens after such schools in Missouri have been forcibly shut down.

He asked Bailey in April to begin proactive investigations, saying the schools lack oversight.

Clohessy wasn’t sure what other state attorneys general have done about reports of abuse at boarding schools and camps, for the problem extends beyond Missouri. But he expects that some states are taking a better look.

“It would be hard to do worse than to do absolutely nothing,” he said.

Before delivering the letter to Bailey, the group packed letters to send to county sheriffs asking for local investigations as well.

“Our goal,” Clohessy said, “is to beg sheriffs and prosecutors to be proactive and investigate the facilities in their counties.”

In a statement, the attorney general’s office explained Bailey only steps into criminal cases when appointed by the governor or local authorities.

“As a former prosecutor, Attorney General Bailey takes crime very seriously,” a spokesperson said. “We have seen a 133% increase in requests from local law enforcement and prosecutors to prosecute cases since Bailey took office.”

This story has been updated to include comment from the office of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

Attorney Lori Rook, State Treasurer Vivek Malek, state Rep. Cody Smith and state Sen. Andrew Koenig are facing off in the Republican primary for the Missouri Treasurer's office (Annelise Hanshaw and Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

Missouri State Treasurer Vivek Malek is facing a trio of Republicans running full-fledged campaigns to unseat him in the GOP primary next month, as the first-time candidate vies to earn a full term in the office he was appointed to in 2022.

Malek faces off with state Sen. Andrew Koenig, state Rep. Cody Smith and attorney Lori Rook, with all four doing their best to flex their conservative credentials in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to a statewide office since 2018. 

The winner of the primary will face Democrat Mark Osmack and Libertarian John A. Hartwig Jr. in November.

But while they all agree on many issues, how they would run the office if elected reveals key differences.

Vivek Malek

Malek touts growth in multiple programs in his under two years in office. Throughout this short tenure, he has reiterated the importance of promoting all of the office’s offerings.

In his first year, the treasurer’s office beat the previous year’s record for the amount returned in unclaimed property, with $51.8 million returned to people, up from $50.2 million.

Malek also set a record for the amount doled out to Missourians through MOBUCK$, a low-interest loan program advertised for small businesses and farmers using linked-deposit loans. After loaning $539 million in a year, with a cap at $800 million, the legislature passed a law at Malek’s request to raise the cap to $1.2 billion.

An application window for the MOBUCK$ program this January closed within hours as spots filled up with qualified loans. Malek said he is trying to ensure the program is open to smaller business owners by lowering the maximum loan amount available under MOBUCK$. Previously, the program offered $10 million loans. In August, the amount will be capped at $2 million.

He also touts growth in savings programs MO ABLE, an investment account for people with disabilities, and MOST, which invests savings for education purposes. 

MO ABLE accounts grew by 13.7% in 2023, and the portfolio’s assets grew by 25%. MO ABLE is a growing program, first authorized by the state legislature in 2015. MOST’s assets grew by 13% in 2023, slightly below the national average of 15%, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve.

Malek took office months after the MOScholars program was established. MOScholars provides a mechanism for taxpayers to direct general revenue funds into K-12 scholarships largely used for private school tuition, and it is managed by the treasurer.

The program had $9 million in tax credits reserved in 2022 and $16.6 million in 2023, its second year of fundraising.

In 2023, the program struggled with a funding cycle out of pace with the school year and demand for scholarships overwhelming funds.

Malek believes he is the best fundraiser for the program, citing his own success raising money for his campaign.

“If (other candidates) think they are going to be such great fundraisers, why haven’t they been able to do that for their campaign?” he told The Independent. “I don’t have to prove myself on that point.”

While Malek boasts about his fundraising prowess, much of his war chest has come from money he loaned himself or from his former employer.

Malek has received over $1.6 million to his campaign, $800,000 of which is a loan from himself, and has $1.3 million on hand as of the April quarterly report. The pro-Malek PAC American Promise has received nearly $1.5 million in contributions, with $1.23 million on hand. Pacifica Consulting Services, which was registered to Malek before becoming treasurer, has donated $1.8 million to the PAC.

His campaign messaging has included promises to “stand up to the woke agenda” and prevent the state’s investments from being used for environmental, social and governance aspects. These concepts, often abbreviated as ESG, measure a company’s environmental and social impact and have received pushback from right-wing groups.

“The investment of money has to have the sole purpose of getting the best rate of return on investments,” Malek said.

A company with ESG policies wouldn’t immediately be ruled out if it is a solid investment, he said, saying there is a “ranking system” if he believes it would be a poor investment. But he worries that environmental, social and governance metrics have “tentacles” to “reach into the system.”

Malek has ideas for new initiatives, like working with the legislature to create a mandatory personal finance course for high schoolers. He would also like to create investment opportunities for small municipalities.

Before being appointed treasurer, Melek was an attorney, with his St. Louis law firm focusing on immigration, naturalization and asylum. In his latest campaign TV ad, shot at the Mexican border, Malek proclaims a strict stance on immigration and vows to support policies to fortify the southern border and continue divesting from foreign adversaries.

In December, he influenced the Missouri State Employees Retirement Fund to remove investments from companies based in China.

“It does not make any sense to strengthen our adversaries,” he told The Independent. “Anything that we are investing not only strengthens them but also puts our investments at risk.”

He was born in India and moved to Missouri to study business at Southeast Missouri State University. He holds an undergraduate law degree from Maharshi Dayanand University and, in addition to his master’s degree in business, has a master of law from the University of Illinois.

Cody Smith

Smith, a state representative from Carthage, has been chairman of the influential House budget committee for six years, giving him massive influence over how Missouri spends taxpayer money.

“That has taught me a lot about the state’s finances, a lot about the management of the state treasury and a lot about appropriation law,” he told The Independent.

Running for state treasurer, Smith said, gives him the opportunity to “continue my work in public service and continue to implement common-sense fiscal policy that saves taxpayers money and increases transparency around the use of their taxpayers dollars.” 

His transparency initiatives include enhancing the treasurer’s office’s website to make it “as user-friendly and detailed as possible.”

Smith also sees the potential for increased transparency in the low-income housing tax credits administered by the Missouri Housing Development Commission. The treasurer is one of 10 members of the commission.

“I think (the tax credits) would be more successful if more was known about how they work and how businesses and individuals are leveraging those programs across the state to build more affordable housing,” he said.

Smith is most interested in MOScholars, he said, and sees opportunity to increase awareness statewide of the program.

“There aren’t many folks that know about it,” he said, “and so I want to have those conversations and look for ways to cut through the noise.” 

His knowledge of MOScholars, through his work in the legislature authorizing the program, and understanding of education finance will help him promote the program, he said.

Number two on his list of priorities should he be elected treasurer would be “fighting corruption and woke ideology.” 

Smith defines “woke” as “the trend that we see in society to put politics ahead of taxpayers’ interests and do things like virtue-signal on a particular issue rather than focus on the fundamentals of good governance.”

As applied to the treasurer’s office, this would look like avoiding ESG in investments.

“I’m interested in investing with primarily financial institutions within Missouri that aren’t caught up in the modern political atmosphere where investments can be made for political purposes rather than for fiduciary responsibility,” he said.

In 2023, Smith proposed cutting state aid to libraries after the Missouri Library Association joined a lawsuit challenging a state law that placed regulations on how children can checkout books in an effort to avoid obscene content.

“​​The library conversation was one about the use of taxpayers dollars and if they were using taxpayer subsidies to fund the lawsuit that they were engaged in,” he said, adding that he learned taxpayers were not funding the library association’s involvement in the litigation.

He doesn’t anticipate a similar scenario happening to require intervention as treasurer, but he said he would prevent taxpayer funds from going toward organizations in active litigation against the state, should the occasion arise.

Smith’s campaign has raised about $723,000 in the past year, $176,000 of which was donated after he filed his campaign for treasurer. Ozark Leadership Gateway, the PAC supporting him, has raised $140,000 in the same time. Together, the two committees had $505,000 on hand as of their April filings.

Smith has a background in banking and currently operates a business providing ultraviolet decontamination to health care facilities. He is on the Missouri Children’s Trust Fund Board, a state-sponsored nonprofit dedicated to the prevention of child abuse.

Andrew Koenig

Koenig, a state senator from Manchester, has been a top advocate for the MOScholars, sponsoring the proposal for years before finally winning passage in 2021.

If elected, MOScholars would be a “big focus,” he told The Independent.

During the 2024 legislative session, Koenig sponsored a bill that was signed into law expanding MOScholars statewide, giving larger scholarship amounts to students needing specialized services, raising the cap on family income to be eligible for the program and allowing more tax credits to be claimed for MOScholars donors.

He sees potential for additional changes, like removing the requirement for background checks for parents in MOScholars and adding a state grant to match donations to the program. Koenig also would like to make the program more transparent, he said, after he struggled during the legislative session to get data on MOScholars.

“I want to raise as much money as possible so as many kids can get their scholarships and really get that program up and moving in a faster way and create some transparency in the program,” he said.

Koenig envisions going to schools to help fundraise for MOScholars to get the word out about the program, he said.

His campaign messaging says he supports removing barriers to adoption, as he is an adoptive father himself. In the treasurer’s office, he could add a component to MOScholars geared toward foster children, he said.

Like his opponents, he is opposed to ESG investing — though it has been less of a focal point of his campaign.

Koenig would push to ensure pension boards were not using these standards in their investments, he said.

“Even though I am further to the right than most of the legislature, I’ve been proven to work with people and actually accomplish big, conservative things,” he said. “I’ve repeatedly proven myself to be highly effective.”

Koenig is an independent insurance adjuster and has served in the state legislature since 2009. He has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Lindenwood University.

His campaign has raised $196,000 in the past year and the pro-Koenig PAC Freedom’s Promise has amassed $983,000, though both committees’ fundraising in this campaign cycle is under $100,000. Between the two, Koenig had $181,000 on hand, as of April.

Lori Rook

Rook is a managing partner and attorney at Ozarks Elder Law in Springfield who has never run for public office before. 

Rook’s campaign leans on a promise to bring accountability and make state spending easily trackable via a new website. The state currently has the Missouri Accountability Portal, which tracks government office’s spending and employees’ salaries, but Rook wants a redesign that “calls out hidden spending.”

Pulling from her experience in elder law, Rook promises to lead a program to help protect Missouri’s elderly from scams.

She also wants to educate youth with a program for students on credit-card debt and predatory lending, according to her website.

Rook labels herself a “self-funded outsider” with $500,000 of her nearly $540,000 raised coming as a loan from herself. As of April, she has only spent $31,000 of those funds.

She has a bachelor’s degree in criminology from Missouri State University and a law degree from Oklahoma City University School of Law.

A federal rule seeks to add protections to a section of the Affordable Care Act that prevent health care providers who discriminate on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation from receiving federal funding, including through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (photo illustration by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is leading a coalition of seven states challenging a rule by the Biden administration that would preempt state restrictions on gender-affirming care. 

Filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on Wednesday, the states are seeking to block the regulation and prevent the federal government from enforcing similar mandates.

The rule seeks to add protections to a section of the Affordable Care Act that prevent health care providers who discriminate on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation from receiving federal funding, including through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The rule was set to go into effect July 5, with some provisions beginning later. But another coalition of attorneys general succeeded in their petition to block its implementation just two days prior. The judge in that case cited the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn “Chevron Deference,” a precedent that gave regulatory authority to federal agencies when statute is unclear.

Bailey, along with attorneys general from Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Idaho and Arkansas, argues that the rule conflicts with their states’ restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors. Each has varying restrictions on payments for gender-affirming treatment, with Missouri blocking payment for all treatments for medical transition through Medicaid and CHIP.

“… states will be unable to enforce these duly enacted laws and longstanding policies without coming into conflict with the rule,” the attorneys general wrote in the lawsuit.

The American College of Pediatricians joins the attorneys general as a plaintiff. The ACPeds is a group of 400 physicians and other health care professionals in 47 states with a history of anti-LGBTQ advocacy.

“ACPeds members categorically do not provide medical interventions or referrals for, and do not facilitate or speak in ways that affirm the legitimacy of, the practice of ‘gender transition,’” the attorneys general wrote.

The lawsuit alleges that the organization’s pediatricians would suffer “significant financial harm to lose eligibility to participate in federal healthcare programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP.”

One pediatrician in Utah is quoted in the lawsuit saying he would not “self-censor his opinions on transition efforts if the rule goes into effect.”

Predicting his noncompliance with the rule, the Utah pediatrician “faces the prospect of no longer caring for his patients, being fired from his employment and being unable to practice medicine in most settings,” the attorneys general wrote.

The rule violates physicians’ freedom of assembly, the lawsuit states, “by coercing them to participate in facilities, programs, groups and other healthcare-related endeavors that are contrary to their views and that express messages with which they disagree.”

The lawsuit also says it “coerces ACPeds members’ speech.”

“By forcing ACPeds members to tell patients directly, on their walls, and on their websites that they do not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, the rule forces ACPeds members to speak falsely, and it forces ACPeds members to fatally undermine their communication of their own medical ethical standards,” it says.

Beyond questions of constitutionality, the attorneys general allege that the rule goes beyond congressional authorization.

The rule interprets gender identity as protected by both including gender dysphoria as a disability and interpreting sex discrimination to include gender identity. The attorneys general disagree with this application.

Key to the case will be the judge’s interpretation of the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court Case Bostock v. Clayton County, in which a majority of justices ruled that gender identity was protected under Title VII, which is on employment discrimination.

The rule leans on some courts’ interpretation that transfers the Bostock decision to Title IX and the Affordable Care Act, according to its publication in the Federal Register. But the attorneys general cite decisions from judges in red states that do not allow Bostock to apply outside of Title VII.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which is the defendant in the litigation, did not respond to a request for comment.

Civil Courts Building in St. Louis (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent)

A St. Louis judge on Friday determined Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has no right to access unredacted private health information of transgender children treated at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Joseph Whyte ruled that Washington University does not have to provide the unredacted medical records sought by the attorney general’s office as part of his investigation into the clinic’s practices. 

Whyte found that the health information sought in Bailey’s demands is protected, and the data is not relevant to an investigation under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, which is the state’s consumer protection law. 

A third layer of protection for the information, the judge ruled, is the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, which prohibits the disclosure of personal health information without authorization.

Therapists, social workers face scrutiny in Missouri AG investigation of transgender care

The attorney general’s demands  “are not specific and limited in scope to the extent reasonably practicable in light of the purpose for which the information is sought, and respondent has not shown that de-identified information could not be reasonably used for the purpose for which it is sought,” Whyte wrote.

Bailey began looking into gender-affirming care at the Washington University Transgender Center in March 2023 after the center’s former case manager Jamie Reed provided an affidavit alleging rushed treatment.

The attorney general’s office sent civil investigative demands, which are similar to subpoenas, for health records to Washington University and other providers of gender-affirming care to minors, and four facilities filed suit against his requests for information.

Washington University, according to Friday’s ruling, responded to Bailey’s demand and gave him redacted records.

One of Bailey’s demands was for the university to, “identify all clients to whom you have provided your services. For each client, describe your services, the dates you provided your services, the amounts clients, their insurance or other third-party payors paid for these services and any contracts related to these services.”

The attorney general’s office also wanted “access to all electronic health records of clients,” according to the judgment.

Bailey said the redacted records were insufficient and asked the court to force Washington University to produce the documents in full. His reasoning for needing the information, though, was outside the bounds of the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, Whyte determined.

Whyte recalled the attorney general arguing that he was looking into fraudulent billing of insurance and alleged that redactions removed communications about “red flag tracking” and patients who had discontinued treatment. That wasn’t a sufficient argument, Whyte ruled.

The judge wrote that the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act does not require “blind obedience to the attorney general’s civil investigative demands,” noting one section of the law that specifically exempts privileged material.

Bailey plans to appeal the order.

“There is no fight more important than the fight to make Missouri the safest state in the nation for children,” he said in a statement to The Independent. “My team remains undeterred in our quest to protect children. No stone will be left unturned in these investigations.”

Whyte is also presiding over a similar case involving demands for records from the St. Louis-based branch of Planned Parenthood, though in that case no records have been turned over to the attorney general at all.

Two other cases over Bailey’s access to medical records are playing out across the state in Jackson County, where Circuit Court Judge Joel Fahnestock ordered Kansas City’s Planned Parenthood organization and Children’s Mercy Hospital to produce requested documents

Planned Parenthood appealed in February, and the judge’s order is placed on hold until after appeal. Children’s Mercy did not appeal.

This article has been updated following comment from the attorney general’s office.

(Getty Images)

The largest donors to a tax credit program supporting private school tuition scholarships in Missouri are a Fortune 500 health care corporation, a cable company and the founding family of the Kansas City Chiefs.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. has given the most since 2023 to the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program, dubbed MOScholars, with a $2 million donation last year and $3.5 million pledged this year.

Lamar Hunt Jr. and his wife Rita Hunt, part of the family that owns the Kansas City Chiefs, reserved $800,000 in tax credits last year and $500,000 this year. Hunt Jr. is also the founder of the Kansas City Mavericks hockey team and a philanthropist tied to Catholic ministries.

MOScholars allows taxpayers to give to one of six educational assistance organizations to fund scholarships for private, parochial and homeschooled students. Donors use an application on the State Treasurer’s Office to register the amount they intend to donate with the state, reserving a tax credit in that amount up to half of their tax burden. 

Treasurer Vivek Malek told The Independent this year’s donations are off to a promising start, topping figures from this time last year.

So far, taxpayers have reserved $5 million of the tax credits available this year. Typically, donations are strongest at year-end. MOScholars donors can receive their donation amount back in a tax credit, up to half their tax burden, with the reservations. So donations come nearer to tax time.

Last year, donations looked sparser at this time, and the number of students recorded as a returning MOScholars student was low. This number grew, though, as donations came through at the end of last year with a total of $16.6 million by the end of 2023.

Among those who have given to MoScholars since lawmakers created the program in 2022 are political mega donors, national corporations and hundreds of individuals, according to the Missouri Accountability Portal.

Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield, major political donors in Missouri and advocates for private and charter schools, gave $1 million between two educational assistance organizations last year.

David Steward, founder and chairman of IT provider World Wide Technology, gave $500,000 to a St. Louis-based educational assistance organization.

Charter Communications, which serves customers as Spectrum, gave $334,000 to each educational assistance organization for a total of just over $2 million.

Hobby Lobby Stores gave $300,000.

Herzog Enterprises, a railway construction company once run by political donor Stanley Herzog, gave $250,000 to its nonprofit arm, the Herzog Tomorrow Foundation. Brad Lager, who once served in Missouri’s legislature and now leads Herzog Enterprises, reserved $200,000 in tax credits.

Also included in the list of donors in 2023 is former Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft and his wife Janet. Ashcroft served as governor from 1985 to 1993 before becoming a U.S. Senator and later U.S. attorney general.

Treasurer’s office staff told The Independent that fundraising has been focused on both individuals and corporations. More than half of the office’s expenditures in 2023 were spent on advertising its various programs.

State Rep. Phil Christofanelli, a Republican from St. Peters and sponsor of the bill that created MOScholars, said there has been outreach to corporations through accountant associations.

“We definitely want to work with the larger corporate entities so that they become aware of the program. Corporations are sometimes a little slower to adopt than individual donors and taxpayers,” he said.

There were 1,301 total approved applications for tax credits last year. There have been 161 applications approved in 2024.

This article has been updated to include the source of the donor information.

University of Missouri President Mun Y. Choi gave his State of the University Address in March 2022 (photo courtesy of the University of Missouri).

The last time faculty of the University of Missouri-Columbia weighed in on their campus leader, they said he “fostered a general culture of helplessness and submission” and that morale had been “irreparably damaged.”

Only 26% of those surveyed in 2022 supported retaining Mun Choi as chancellor of the university, a position he took over in addition to his role as president of the entire University of Missouri System.

This year’s survey shows Choi is getting much higher marks, with 64% of faculty now saying they want to keep him in his position.

Choi chalks up his improved scores to his visits across departments and conversations with university leaders. 

“​​I took to heart the faculty concerns that were shared in (the 2022) survey about listening to faculty voices and ensuring that faculty input helps form my decisions,” Chois said in an interview with The Independent. “I took the message about the perception of a lack of shared governance to heart and also to be more effective in communicating my priorities and also seeking input from the faculty during the many visits that I’ve made to colleges since that survey.”

University of Missouri faculty survey scorches Mun Choi for poor morale on Columbia campus

Choi has been the president of the University of Missouri system since 2017 and became chancellor of the flagship campus in 2020. The faculty survey is focused on his work with Mizzou.

Low morale continued between the 2022 and 2024 surveys, with arts and humanities faculty more likely to feel a lack of support in the latest review, authors wrote.

“The results indicate concrete improvements since 2022 and suggest logical starting points for further enhancing the relationship between the Chancellor’s office and the faculty,” the MU Faculty Council on University Policy wrote in its report.

Faculty’s average scores improved across all survey categories. The survey prompted participants to rank Choi 1 to 5 in the categories, and most answers were a “5,” or outstanding,  in all but four of 19 areas.

The lowest scores were for Choi’s ability to “display leadership policies rooted in shared decision-making principles,” “solicit faculty input” and “demonstrate commitment to shared governance.” These three categories were the biggest problems reported in 2022, though they have now improved by one point on the five-point scale.

“There is still more work to do, so it is my responsibility to continue to seek input from the faculty in decision making and to communicate very clearly about the rationale behind my decisions,” Choi said.

His overall performance has improved, according to faculty, from a 2.26 to a 3.45 on a five-point scale.

The 2022 report included harsh critiques like, “He is stunningly opposed to true shared governance and any efforts are lip service at best.” The rating most frequently given to Choi in 14 of 18 categories was a “1,” including in overall performance.

Respondents had more negative comments than positive in 2022. This year, the opposite is true.

Carolyn Orbann, vice-chair of the faculty council and leader of the review process, told The Independent the increase could be impacted by a few factors. The survey response rate increased from nearly 25% of faculty answering to 32.8%. 

COVID-19 also had a larger impact on responses in 2022.

Chancellor performance surveys were on pause prior to Choi’s appointment, so Orbann doesn’t know if the jump in positive responses is typical. But she said there is “more unity in comments about what he’s excelling in.” Choi’s top-performing area is as an “advocate for the MU campus,” with faculty praising his positive relationship with legislators and the community.

Choi said efforts to be “more visible” and engaged likely helped. He visited each of the departments last year to “share (his) vision” and solicit feedback, which he plans to continue. His role is significant, he said, because of Mizzou’s potential to impact people nationwide.

“This is such an important institution for not only the state of Missouri, but the country as a whole, because of the important work that we do,” he said.

Choi pointed to work the research reactor does in the development of radiopharmaceuticals used in cancer treatments nationwide, developments in crop research out of the agriculture program and an advancement in civil discourse through the humanities.

Choi said he’d like to retain his current office for “at least another four years.”

“We are on a really good path to achieving the objectives of becoming that stronger research university and continuing with the vision MizzouForward to improve our research,” he said. “As well as ensuring that our students get a high quality education at an affordable rate and for us to continue to make investments to create economic development in this region.”

The Cole County Courthouse in Jefferson City (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

Attorneys representing transgender minors and health care providers squabbled with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office Wednesday over thousands of documents both sides say are being wrongfully withheld.

At its core, the case seeks to determine whether the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors is lawful. The lawsuit was filed by the families of three transgender minors, Southampton Healthcare, two of Southampton’s providers and two national advocacy organizations, saying the ban could have “extremely serious, negative health consequences” for transgender youth.

The attorney general filed a counterclaim alleging Southampton Healthcare, which provides gender-affirming care, did not fully disclose risks when treating transgender youth.

A trial is scheduled for late September, and attorneys are in the process of deposing witnesses. The deadline to send responsive documents to the other party passed, but both plaintiffs and defendants were unhappy with how much the other side has willingly turned over. 

Therapists, social workers face scrutiny in Missouri AG investigation of transgender care

Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, who is stepping into Cole County Circuit Court for this case, said it would take time to rule on each exception the parties found to requests for discovery.

Jim Lawrence, an attorney for the plaintiffs, argued that the state has withheld documents citing exceptions not backed by state law.

Lawrence told the judge the parties would “be here until next week” if he were to explain every document he is requesting. He displayed a powerpoint with a chart of the objections from the attorney general’s office and the corresponding evidentiary requests.

Peter Donahue, assistant attorney general for special litigation, said the state went through a “burdensome” process of reviewing 100,000 documents that matched search terms in investigatory requests and spent $25,000 taking the time to narrow the lot to what is relevant and not deemed protected — which ended up being 2.6% of those files.

“If the state reviewed 100,000 (documents) and only 2,600 are relevant… That is an impossible fact to digest,” Lawrence said. “That doesn’t pass the smell test.”

Included in the state’s objections were documents protected by “gubernatorial privilege,” Lawrence said. This impacted almost half of the requests for production issued to the office of Gov. Mike Parson.

Gubernatorial privilege, Lawrence argued, doesn’t exist. He said there isn’t legal precedent in Missouri for it.

The idea of an executive privilege was discussed during the attorney general’s investigation of former Gov. Eric Greitens, with many dismissing the excuse as illegitimate.

“They are asking you to be the first court in the state of Missouri to declare gubernatorial privilege,” Lawrence told the judge.

Donahue said he hadn’t seen the privilege successfully invoked in Missouri, but it was “widely recognized across the nation.”

“We are just talking about communications between the governor and his close circle,” Donahue said. “This is not a unique concept in the gubernatorial process.”

Carter asked what types of documents have been withheld from discovery under gubernatorial privilege. Lawrence listed off a handful of examples, including “policies and procedures related to enforcement of the act.”

“Even if (gubernatorial privilege) does exist, it wouldn’t apply to all that,” he said.

Donahue said the objection was an “add-on privilege” for some of the documents, where another exception would have already protected the information from disclosure.

Lawrence tossed an arm up at the admission, then folding his arms and furrowing his brow.

“His argument really goes to why we are here today,” he said. “If you are asserting a privilege and withholding information based upon a privilege, you have to put that.”

It is written in the privilege log, Donahue said. A privilege log is a file that describes the documents withheld and the privileges asserted to protect them.

Lawrence also took issue with claims of attorney-client privilege that protected Jamie Reed, a witness in the case and whistleblower following her work at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Reed’s affidavit alleging quick “medicalization” of transgender minors launched the attorney general’s investigation of gender-affirming care and was a main talking point when lawmakers discussed a ban for minors.

The attorney general isn’t Reed’s lawyer, Lawrence said, so his office shouldn’t argue attorney-client privilege for documents related to her.

Plaintiffs subpoenaed Reed separately and received a letter she sent to the attorney general. That letter should have also been sent by the attorney general’s office responsive to the investigative requests, but plaintiffs didn’t get it, Lawrence said.

Other exceptions include external communications allegedly withheld as work product and many documents sealed under investigative privilege.

Lawrence said they did not receive the responses the public gave to a tip line the attorney general opened to report complaints about gender-affirming care, but that information was compiled for outside sources. Indeed, St. Louis Public Radio requested the responses in a Sunshine Request and received the compilation a year later.

Donahue also argued Southampton was withholding documents. He said he received informational pamphlets from Southampton but wanted medical records of four or five patients that received gender-affirming care as minors.

Planned Parenthood vows to fight Missouri AG push for transgender youth medical records

The judge questioned why he needed these particular documents.

“These documents are relevant to our counterclaim that plaintiffs have been inaccurate about the types of harm that can come from these treatments,” Donahue said. 

He argued gender-affirming care providers weren’t always truthful — a claim patients have disputed when their care is questioned.

“It essentially amounts to snake-oil salesmanship, if true,” he said.

He wanted to get access to records showing what doctors have discussed with patients and letters of support from mental-health professionals, which he said sometimes have “irregularities.”

Complaints from the attorney general’s office about these letters have led to the investigations of 57 health professionals, putting their licenses at risk. As of early May, 16 cases were open in the probe by the Department of Professional Registration.

Jason Orr, another attorney representing plaintiffs, said the state may ask Southampton’s physicians questions but can’t ask for patients’ private records.

“Southampton does not have the ability to waive their doctor-patient privilege, and in fact, they are required to exercise it on their behalf,” he said.

There are currently four cases open between healthcare providers and the attorney general where providers are fighting requests to hand over medical records.

Southampton’s patients are not the plaintiffs in the case at hand, Orr said.

Plaintiffs PFLAG and GLMA, two advocacy organizations, have not been complying with requests for documents, Donahue argued.

He said he hasn’t received anything from the two organizations, despite the deadline already passing.

Orr said the request led to 20,000 documents that attorneys are “working in good faith” to narrow down and deliver. He hoped for it to be ready by the end of the week, complaining that the request was sent one month before the deadline.

“This was an issue that was created in part by defendants’ timing,” he said.

At the start of the hearing Wednesday, Solicitor General Josh Divine mentioned a federal case that may change their proceedings.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a case on Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

There are additional claims in the case before Carter, Orr said.

Carter said to keep him updated if the case will be affected.

“We’re going to keep marching on until we hear something different,” he said.

Half of U.S. states have a restriction on gender-affirming care for minors, with litigation blocking some states’ bans.

Rep. Brenda Shields. R-St. Joseph, is leading a special committee that seeks to set a performance-based formula for higher education funding (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

A Missouri House committee began a new phase Tuesday of a years-long process to create a formula to fund the state’s higher education institutions.

Led by state Rep. Brenda Shields, a Republican from St. Joseph, the Special Interim Committee on Higher Education Performance Funding is hoping to pick a performance-based formula that would determine funding while allotting for institutions’ unique missions.

Shields sponsored legislation in January pushing for the switch in higher-education funding, which passed a committee but was never debated by the full House. 

The pressure to establish a formula stems from a 2022 appropriations bill that gave the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development $450,000 to commission “a study which provides recommendations to the governor and General Assembly on public higher education performance funding models.” The department has been working with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems since and has created reports on higher-education funding and efficiency.

“It is a long haul to make this happen if we do the testing correctly,” Shields told the committee Tuesday afternoon.

She predicted the first year of implementation would be 2027, and she aims to have a model by January that the committee can “run simulations with.”

Committee members commented that it was a challenge to create a formula for higher education — especially when term limits place a ceiling on legislators’ experience.

“I’m concerned about the technicality of what we are talking about here that is beyond my experience and perhaps ability to understand,” said state Rep. John Black, a Marshfield Republican.

Black noted that he, as well as Shields and committee member state Rep. Kevin Windham, have two years remaining in the House.

“The legislature will never understand some of these parameters at a level necessary to implement a good program. We are going to have to give over some authority to the department,” he said.

He said they will have to “convince” fellow House members to give power to the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development.

Windham, a Democrat from Hillsdale, said they will need the Senate’s authorization.

Shields suggested expanding the group to a joint committee, incorporating senators.

Leroy Wade, deputy commissioner of the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, described a process of cooperation between the committee, the department and higher-education institutions, with the department serving as a liaison and source of manpower for the calculations involved.

Many of the state’s colleges sent a representative to talk to the committee Tuesday, answering what they wanted out of the funding model.

Mun Choi, president of University of Missouri System and chancellor of its flagship campus in Columbia, said his ideal formula would reward “strong outcomes such as high graduation rates and high future earnings.”

He said it should also account for pricier degree programs, comparing the cost of educating an engineering student versus a history major.

“The formula should also reflect the unique missions of all of the public universities in the state,” he said. “In fiscal year 2023 the University of Missouri System spent $600 million in expenditures to support research that led to discovery but also had impact to the region and the state.”

Elizabeth Kennedy, chair of the Council on Public Higher Education in Missouri and president of Missouri Western State University, said lawmakers should consider historic underfunding.

The Council on Public Higher Education in Missouri has 10 member schools, including the state’s two historically Black universities, Harris-Stowe State University and Lincoln University. A federal report recently showed Missouri, among other states, has been underfunding its historically Black land-grant university.

Windham said funding imbalances are a challenge as the committee discusses performance funding.

“I find it hard to talk about performance funding when I think about how institutions have been underfunded, some worse than others in the state,” he said. “The institutions that have seen significant investments in the past from the state will likely do better than most.”

Kennedy said the committee has the opportunity to study this.

Kimberly Beatty, chancellor of Metropolitan Community College, said the funding model must account for the differences between four-year institutions and community colleges. She said the current way colleges are funded has left state aid out of valuable programs.

“We do the apprenticeship programs. We have (certified nurse assistant) programs, manufacturing, welding, and all of those are apprenticeship programs,” she said. “None of those apprenticeship programs or their enrollees are considered in the current funding model.”

She said non-credit programs, which provide workforce training, provide workforce development for Missouri but are not funded at the state level.

“We’d like to see the value of workforce programs included in the funding model, whether those are credit programs or non-credit programs,” she said.

Beatty said around 20% of students are currently not counted towards full-time enrollment, as funded currently.

Full-time enrollment is one metric among many that may be incorporated into the formula. Currently, performance funding is not in effect in the budget process.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona speaks with families at the Mattie Rhodes Center in Kansas City, Missouri, in September (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Federal judges in Kansas and Missouri on Monday blocked the full implementation of a student-loan forgiveness program proposed by the Biden administration that was set to launch July 1.

The SAVE Plan, an acronym for Saving on a Valuable Education, has been partially rolled out. The provisions already in effect may remain, United States District Court for the District of Kansas Judge Daniel Crabtree ruled Monday. But elements set for July 1, like reducing payments to 5% of borrowers’ income instead of 10%, are on hold while litigation challenging the program moves forward.

A separate ruling out of the Eastern District of Missouri will block only loan forgiveness. The SAVE Plan offered forgiveness for those who borrowed less than $12,000 and have been paying for more than 10 years, with an additional year for each $1,000 additional borrowed.

Both judges wrote that the SAVE Plan, which uses the Higher Education Act to authorize approximately $475 billion in loan forgiveness, is beyond the law’s legislative intent.

“The court is not free to replace the language of the statute with unenacted legislative intent. Congress has made it clear under what circumstances loan forgiveness is permitted, and the (income-contingent repayment) plan is not one of those circumstances,” United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri John Ross wrote.

The rulings are the result of lawsuits filed by two coalitions of attorneys general: one led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and the other by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, representing a combined 18 states.

Crabtree dismissed eight of the 11 states represented in Kobach’s lawsuit earlier this month, finding that Alaska is the only state that can claim harm in Monday’s ruling over “$100,000 in lost (federal family education) loan interest over two years.”

Ross determined that Missouri, through quasi-governmental loan servicer MOHELA, has standing. MOHELA, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, gave Bailey standing in a U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned an earlier version of loan forgiveness last year.

Ross wrote that the allegations of harm to MOHELA are “substantially similar to, if not identical to,” those argued in last year’s Supreme Court case.

MOHELA has routinely distanced itself from Bailey’s litigation against loan forgiveness.

Bailey, in a press release, lauded the Missouri ruling as a win for Missourians without large amounts of student-loan debt.

“Only Congress has the power of the purse, not the president,” he wrote in a statement. “Today’s ruling was a huge win for the rule of law, and for every American who Joe Biden was about to force to pay off someone else’s debt.”

Kobach also emphasized the judge’s ruling of a lack of Congressional authorization in the SAVE Plan.

“Kansas’s victory today is a victory for the entire country,” he said. “As the court correctly held, whether to forgive billions of dollars of student debt is a major question that only Congress can answer. Biden’s administration is attempting to usurp Congress’s authority. This is not only unconstitutional, it’s unfair. ”

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said the Department of Justice “will continue to vigorously defend the SAVE Plan.”

“We designed SAVE to cut undergraduate loan payments in half, avoid interest growth for borrowers making zero-dollar or low payments, and allow at-risk borrowers to reach forgiveness faster,” he wrote in a statement. “Under SAVE, nearly 8 million Americans — one out of five borrowers — have breathing room from bills that, too often, compete with basic needs.” 

Cardona said Republican elected officials are trying to block the plan “even though the department has relied on the authority under the Higher Education Act three times over the last 30 years to implement income-driven repayment plans.”

He promised a continued push from the federal government for student-loan forgiveness. The SAVE Plan is the department’s second iteration of forgiveness, of which three have been announced. Bailey and Kobach wrote a letter to Cardona in May with “significant concerns” about the latest plan, which has yet to be implemented.

Margie Vandeven, who is leaving her position as the Commissioner of Education, spends one of her final days in her office Commissioner Karla Eslinger will serve solo at the helm of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Commissioner of Education Margie Vandeven will leave her position with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education at the end of the month, ending her 19 years of work in the department.

She announced her departure in October, saying it was the “right time to move on personally and professionally.”

An educator since 1990, Vandeven was appointed commissioner in 2015. She was ousted briefly between December 2017 and November 2018 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens stacked the board to force her out. After Greitens was forced to resign a few months later in order to avoid impeachment, the board voted to reinstate Vandeven

“Margie went through something that I never thought I’d see in my political life — with the Greitens administration,” State Board of Education president Charlie Shields, of St. Joseph, said during the state board’s June 11 meeting. “The idea that you had a governor that tried to influence the State Board of Education, tried to influence the selection of a commissioner, that wanted change for no other reason than political expediency.”

He said Vandeven “never, ever cracked during that,” applauding her for “grace under pressure.”

Next, Vandeven will work as an education chief with the Missouri Department of Conservation and help with education research at Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank at Stanford University.

She has been working alongside incoming commissioner Karla Eslinger, who will be serving solo beginning July 1. Eslinger, who recently resigned from the state senate, has served as a teacher, assistant commissioner and an advisor to federal education officials.

In her last days in her office, Vandeven spoke to The Independent about the issues that will persist long after her tenure.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: A big problem for a lot of districts, both in Missouri and nationwide, is attendance. What’s Missouri doing to work on this?

A: The thing with attendance is that the issues are very different depending upon where you are. Local context matters on attendance. It is a national issue right now, and we certainly saw an increase post-pandemic.

We are really focusing on getting a highly trained teacher in every classroom, which helps attendance rates because we know that that relationship between the student and the teacher is key. If they have a different substitute teacher in front of them every single day… it can be intimidating.

We are looking at learning just a little bit differently and talking about more competency based learning, project based learning, keeping our students very engaged and putting our career counselors in place to say, “You need to know this and understand this because it will help you go on this particular pathway that you’re choosing.”

We are meeting with parents and helping them understand that school is a little bit different today than it might have been when they were in school. People depend on you being there. We do a lot of group projects. We do a lot of collaborative teaming… It is making sure parents are aware of the disruption that occurs when students are out and helping educate on what is considered an illness that is severe enough that students should stay home and when is it appropriate to send them back to school. 

There are a lot of different efforts that are taking place. I had a meeting today with the Department of Mental Health to really talk about how we better address some of these mental health issues that our students are feeling.

Q: I always hear that Missouri students can’t read at grade level. Can you tell me about this problem?

A: I think what they’re referring to are the National Assessment for Educational Progress scores, and those have been relatively stagnant across the nation for the past decades. So that’s what they’re referring to when they talk about reading scores.

The main shift that we’re seeing is that the science of reading has been just so studied and better understood now. We know better how to teach reading.

We’ve been working with our educator-preparation programs. We’ve been working with our teachers who are in the classroom today, and we’ve been looking at high-quality instructional materials. We have been looking at measuring students earlier.

If we say we need students to be proficient in reading by grade three, because if you look again at the data, it will tell you that students who are proficient in reading by grade three then read to learn. So, waiting until grade three to get a statewide temperature check on that doesn’t make as much sense.

We have kindergarten through third-grade reading assessments, but we’re really focusing on getting that statewide metric for grade two so that they’re assessed early and then interventions are provided early.

Early intervention is key. So working with that, I think we’re gonna see the big, big shifts in the future.

Q: Has the state done an inventory of which districts have science-based reading curriculum?

A: We have not done a complete inventory as a state but that is because curriculum is a local decision. However, our school districts are all, to my knowledge, really working on the science of reading.

It would be hard to do the state assessments and plans in today’s environment with a curriculum that does not support the science of reading.

Q: As Gov. Mike Parson leaves office, what should people know about working with him, especially with the budget process?

A: I feel very fortunate to have worked with Gov. Parson. He has made it clear from the start that his emphasis was on workforce development and infrastructure, and education falls right into that.

He believes that investing in our children is investing in the future of the state of Missouri. And so working with the budget process, the State Board of Education approves (the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) budget. Then, we take it to the governor’s budget, we see what they’re going to put in, and then it goes through the legislative process. It’s a pretty lengthy process. But I do think you can really get a sense of where people’s priorities are when you look at where they’re putting their funding. We’ve seen significant increases in funding for education, and for our students, which genuinely is an investment in the state’s future.

Q: What are your hopes for the next governor?

A: I hope that we can stay united and committed to educating our kids. We can get a lot more done when we’re focusing on the same things together.

I always say this, “Great teachers matter.” And you need great teachers in public schools; you need them in private schools; you need them in charter schools, and you need them in virtual schools. Great teachers matter. 

Early learning matters, no matter your ZIP code. Making sure families have access to that opportunity matters. So, I really hope that the next governor can find some of those areas that are genuinely common ground and focus more on bringing people together and moving towards those goals.

Q: Have you seen a trend of politicization of K-12 education?

A: I’ve absolutely seen an increase in the politicization of education throughout my tenure, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when that occurred. But we certainly have seen it. And that’s not just in Missouri, that is across the nation.

People do realize how important education is for our students and how important it is for this country, so that has garnered quite a bit of attention from both sides of the aisle. I still believe that we can get much more accomplished when we focus on the big issues.

We need politicians, and we need them to be involved in education. But we don’t want it to be a politicized football, where you’re just battling back and forth. We need to be focusing on what it is that we want to accomplish as a state and move those initiatives forward.

Q: Do you have any tips for focusing on the big issues?

A: Both sides of the aisle should be at the table together. I always say that’s one of the greatest things about our State Board of Education. It was written in the constitution that there can’t be more than four (of eight) of any party. Then they develop these personal relationships with one another.

If you’ve only talked to like minded people, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to fully understand solutions to issues. When you do that, you find out there are more commonalities than differences. I just truly believe that.

Q: Missouri is the only state that I know of with the schools for the disabled model. Do you think this will continue to be the state’s model for high intervention?

A: We’re doing a study right now. We are the only state that does it this way. We’re studying to make sure that it is the best way to serve the students and their families, and that’ll be coming out shortly.

It really requires change over time. This has been in place for over 50 years. So I think it is time to really look at the model. And if it’s working in some places, that’s great. If it can be improved in others, let’s take a look at that. But what we want to really do is make sure that we’re serving the students and their families well.

Q: Some lawmakers have proposed different methods of accreditation and accountability. What arguments would you make in favor of the current model, the Missouri School Improvement Plan 6 (MSIP6)?

A:  There is a place for statewide state standards. You have to have something in place.

When we develop our state standards, we get input from people from all across the state to say: this is what every third grader should know, this is what every fifth grader should know. We really do it for backwards design to say this is what every graduate should know, and be able to do in the state of Missouri. And then you go back, what do they need to know here all the way down to kindergarten, right? It shouldn’t matter where you live in our state, the expectation should be that they’ve acquired these particular skills, and how you go about doing that should be at the local level.

MSIP gives that great flexibility where it says, “These are your standards.” And it gives local districts flexibility on how to get there.

The general public and taxpayers do want to know how students are performing against those standards, so I do think there is certainly a place for a third-party provider to come in and provide that information. The state board has been given that authority and has used it consistently from the first MSIP to MSIP6 to focus on ways to provide improvement.

If they choose to go to a different accrediting model, I would not go for multiple models because you can’t compare apples to apples, then. And there’s got to be a base understanding of where we are in these measures.

Q: In MSIP6, the distribution of districts among scores seems to be more of a bell curve with fewer high achievers compared to MSIP5.

A: What happened in MSIP5 is there were a number of changes in assessments, a number of things that were passing legislation that said you can’t penalize districts. S we had a lot of districts at the very top of the chart.

MSIP6 provides a reset. So often you will see a bell curve at the start of any kind of a reset. That’s sometimes what happens. It is just a much more even distribution of where districts really fall within measurement against those standards.

Q: Do you think the scores needed for accreditation might change because of this different distribution?

A: It could change some. They have multiple years to make sure that they’re showing some improvement. The first year that you run these systems, you’re typically going to see a number of districts that say, “Okay, what do we need to move forward,” and then they are able to do that.

One of the big things with MSIP 6 is that we have a growth model that’s in place. Now, that gives equal credit for both individual student growth and their status. That has been a significant shift.

Q: What do you think Commissioner Eslinger will bring to the table?

A: She has so much wisdom, and she’s got a strong drive about doing the right things for kids. With her background of being an educator, of having experience in the state capitol, she is a people person. She is committed to doing the right things for our students.

I really couldn’t be happier with the choice. I think she’s gonna do a great job.

Q: Is there anything else we should know?

A: It has been an honor working here. I really, really have found this to be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Advocates with PROMO and Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri rally outside of the St. Louis Civil Courts building Monday afternoon (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

ST. LOUIS — A circuit court judge heard arguments Monday over whether the Missouri attorney general’s efforts to access medical records of transgender youth violate privacy protections.

Monday’s hearing was convened at the request of Bailey in the hopes that the court would amend a previous order that requires patients to waive HIPAA rights before their medical records could be shared. If they don’t waive HIPAA, their documents would be exempt from the attorney general’s request for medical records.

HIPAA, which stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protects patients from their providers disclosing their personally identifiable health information.

St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Joseph Whyte did not immediately rule following the hearing. Richard Muniz, interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said if the decision is unfavorable, his organization will appeal.

Therapists, social workers face scrutiny in Missouri AG investigation of transgender care

“Our commitment to our patients is that we will fight this as long as we need to,” Muniz told The Independent. “Today, we’ve already signaled that we are going to appeal because we think that we shouldn’t have to turn over documents, especially patient records, but we shouldn’t have to partake in this investigation at all.”

Bailey launched his investigation in March 2023 looking into gender-affirming care of minors after the affidavit of Jamie Reed, who worked at Washington University’s adolescent Transgender Center. In April, another circuit court judge ruled that Bailey may continue his investigation — adding that patients must waive HIPAA rights before their private health information could be shared.

Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, Washington University and Planned Parenthood Great Plains are also arguing against the attorney general’s civil investigative demands.

The April decision, beyond giving patients the ability to protect their medical records, granted Bailey power to investigate Planned Parenthood under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, a state law that allows the attorney general’s office to investigate deceptive marketing practices.

Matthew Eddy, an attorney representing Planned Parenthood said during his arguments Monday that the attorney general’s authority under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act has yet to be fully litigated.

Health care providers are fearful of what the attorney general might do with more information. Prior reporting by The Independent revealed Bailey’s use of the Division of Professional Registration, which is investigating therapists as a result of a complaint from his office.

After the attorney general’s office received a list of minor patients that received care at the Washington University Transgender Center and other documents, therapists and social workers that had written letters of support for patients to go to the Transgender Center had their licenses at risk. As of early May, 16 of 57 cases were still open.

Hearing

Deputy Solicitor General Sam Freeland, representing the attorney general, argued Monday that a federal regulation allows medical records to be released when ordered by the court. He told the judge this exception was “not discussed by the plaintiff.”

“HIPAA has not barred the disclosure of the documents in question,” Freeland argued.

He said Planned Parenthood had the burden of proof to show that HIPAA covers the documents.

Eddy this was “simply not correct.”

“Planned Parenthood has proven the general rule that HIPAA protects disclosure,” he said. “The burden is on the respondent to show that the exception applies.”

Eddy further attacked the premise of Bailey’s investigation, which Freeland argued was not on the table Monday.

He said the attorney general’s civil investigative demands, which Eddy said were titled as an investigation into the Washington University Transgender Center, “had no allegations as to Planned Parenthood’s conduct.”

“He can’t point to a single complaint from a patient, a patient’s parent,” Eddy said.

Eddy said the attorney general “had 54 incredibly broad requests for information.”

“Included in the requests are information that would be deeply sensitive to transgender minors,” he told the judge.

Muniz told reporters one of the requests was for “any document that mentions TikTok,” calling the investigation a “sprawling phishing expedition.”

In press releases, Bailey has expressed a belief that all gender-affirming medical providers are connected.

“I launched this investigation to obtain the truth about how this clandestine network of clinics subjected children to puberty blockers and irreversible surgery, often without parental consent,” he said in a statement following the hearing Monday. “We are moving forward undeterred with our investigation into Planned Parenthood. I will not stop until all bad actors are held accountable.”

Muniz said Planned Parenthood does not have a formal relationship with Washington University, which was the focus of Reed’s affidavit and the beginning of Bailey’s investigation.

Supporters of Planned Parenthood rallied before the hearing, calling the investigation a political attack.

“(Bailey) only wants (the records) so he can politicize gender affirming care and to put a target on transgender and gender-non-conforming patients,” Margot Riphagen, Planned Parenthood St. Louis’s vice president of external affairs, said during the rally.

Katy Erker-Lynch, executive director of LGBTQ advocacy organization PROMO, called the attorney general’s actions “scary.”

“He has pushed credentialing committees of social workers, professional counselors and family and marital therapists to investigate every single provider on the eastern side of the state that has offered a letter of support for a trans or gender expansive kid to receive care,” she said, referencing a Division of Professional Registration investigation that stemmed from the AG’s complaint.

Around 40 people attended the rally, filling the courtroom until a small group were standing in the back. Most wore t-shirts with phrases like “protect trans kids” or “I fight with Planned Parenthood” and filed into the seats behind Planned Parenthood’s lawyers before sitting on the opposing side.

“Thank you,” a few people told Eddy as they walked out of the St. Louis courtroom.

Sen. Doug Beck speaks during a Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee hearing in January (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Independence School District recently completed its first school year on a four-day-a-week schedule — a change that made headlines and stirred state officials.

Now, with the passage of a new state law, the district will have to ask voters to keep the four-day week by July 1, 2026. 

Is that enough time to test the concept of the abbreviated week? Dale Herl, the district’s superintendent, told The Independent that he is already seeing benefits just a year into the schedule.

“At one point, we were fully staffed with bus drivers in the school district,” he said. “We were also fully staffed with nurses, and neither one of those has happened during my 15 years within the school district (prior to the four-day week).”

Jon Turner, an associate professor at Missouri State University who researches the four-day school week, is studying the Independence School District. He backed up Herl’s claims about a full roster of bus drivers, adding that a wave of teacher applications was a result of the new schedule.

Independence’s four-day school week draws Missouri auditor probe

“It’s very clear that the four-day school week was a strong reason that Independence application rates were so much higher,” Turner said. “There is something so attractive about the four-day week within personal-life balance between certified educators that there’s no doubt that they’ve reaped the reward.”

Herl said the district’s hiring looks “very different.” More veteran teachers are applying to come to Independence, pulling in educators from affluent communities in the Kansas City area.

Turner, who serves on the board of the Missouri Association of Rural Education, was keenly interested if Independence was attracting teachers from rural communities. He only saw one applicant from a rural area.

Independence is the largest Missouri school district to adopt the four-day week. The shortened week has been part of rural Missouri schools since 2011, and around a third of the state’s schools have adopted the schedule — comprising 11% of Missouri’s K-12 students.

Herl chose the four-day week to help recruit teachers into the district’s open positions. Rural schools may have done so a decade earlier, but Herl said he sees the need growing now.

“I don’t think anyone anymore is immune to the teacher shortage,” he said. “You look at very large school districts across the United States, and they have hundreds and hundreds of teacher openings. We are in a crisis in the United States, but especially in Missouri regarding the teacher shortage.”

During the 2022-2023 school year, almost a quarter of new teachers were not properly certified or were substitute teachers, according to a State Board of Education report. The same report showed that nearly a quarter of student teachers serve as the teacher of record, or primary educator, in the classroom.

State Sen. Sen. Doug Beck, a Democrat from Affton and former local school board member, sponsored the legislation on four-day school weeks that became part of the large education package signed into law earlier this year. He, too, said the core issue was teacher recruitment and retention, pointing out shallow pay for educators and a culture war surrounding teachers.

A four-day week isn’t the solution, he told The Independent.

“Nobody has given me a report that says a four-day school week increases kids’ education or our test scores or anything like that,” he said. “They’ve all said it’s either been a little bit less or almost not noticeable, but that isn’t what we should be striving for in education.”

The State Board of Education in February reviewed a report that concluded that the four-day schedule had “no statistically significant effect on either academic achievement or building growth.” 

Academic achievement looks at one year of scores whereas building growth compares students scores over time.

Beck wanted to make his legislation effective statewide, meaning rural schools would have to take a vote for a four-day week. Instead, Beck’s proposal focused on schools in counties with a charter form of government or in cities with over 30,000 residents, knowing the inclusion of rural schools would draw the ire of some lawmakers and sabotage its chances of passage. 

“The great part about this bill is that if it is a great thing for Independence, when they go for a vote, the people should vote for it,” he said. “It is democracy in action.”

Herl said he received positive feedback from a survey sent to parents about the four-day week. He believes voters would approve the four-day week if it was limited to district parents, but he worries that older voters without any kids attending school may come out against the new schedule.

Turner’s research bares that fear out.  

“Looking at key stakeholders in the community and how they perceive the four-day week, the only group that we found that opposed the four day week were people that no longer have kids at school,” Turner said.

Herl has not thought about what he would do to retain teachers if he had to revert to a five-day week.

The bill that contained the four-day-school-week provisions also included a raise to the formula that funds public schools and other teacher-recruitment initiatives.

“All of the things contained within (the law) is based upon appropriations,” Herl said. “So just because it is in the bill does not mean it’s going to happen. The money has to be appropriated, and the state legislature has a very long history of not fully funding education. So my fear is if things get tight financially in Missouri, then education is just going to be the first thing to get cut.”

He said the incentive written for five-day weeks would give his teachers an extra $500 a year.

“The financial incentive is so small that it’s not going to keep a particular teacher in the profession,” he said.

As he prepares for a future vote, there are a few tweaks planned for the four-day program in Independence, Herl said. But overall, he is enthusiastic about the first year on the schedule.

An appellate court unanimously ruled Tuesday that a transgender man who formerly attended the Blue Springs School District was discriminated against when he was barred from using the boys' locker room (photo illustration by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder).

After a decade-long legal battle, a transgender man and former student of the Blue Springs School District should receive over $4 million in damages for discrimination that occurred when he was an adolescent, the Missouri’s Western District Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

Judge Anthony Gabbert wrote the court’s unanimous decision, ruling that the school district discriminated against the student, identified by his initials R.M.A., on the basis of sex when it barred him from using the boys’ locker room.

A key part of the appellate court’s decision was the factor that spurred the school district’s discrimination.

Attorneys for the Blue Spring School District did not contest that R.M.A. was treated differently, according to Gabbert’s ruling, but said it was because of his “female genitalia.”

“School district employees suggested that R.M.A. had been excluded from the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms because of [the] school district’s belief that he had female genitalia,” Gabbert wrote. “[The] school district did not actually determine the nature of R.M.A.’s genitalia, however, and does not speculate, inspect or otherwise inquire as to the genitalia of other male students.”

The admission of different treatment based on assumed genitalia, Gabbert wrote, was itself discrimination on the basis of sex.

Part of the judicial proceedings included testimony from R.M.A.’s doctor, who said R.M.A. was a male for as long as she has been treating him (which began at age nine).

During his time as a student, R.M.A. received an updated birth certificate with his male gender identity.

School district employees and school board members told R.M.A.’s mother that locker-room access is determined by birth certificate. After she gave the corrected birth certificate to school district officials, R.M.A. was still denied access to boys’ restrooms and locker rooms.

The school board discussed R.M.A’s birth certificate in a closed-door meeting, according to court documents, but never gave his mother a clear answer about the policy.

“The evidence at trial… was that (Blue Springs) School District had an unwritten policy of using birth certificates to determine sex,” Gabbert wrote. “Yet, [the] school district refused to tell R.M.A.’s mother that it would honor a corrected birth certificate stating he is male because (it) wanted to keep its options open in the event R.M.A. was able to obtain a corrected birth certificate.”

R.M.A’s birth certificate was amended in December 2014, around a year after he began asking to use the locker room that aligned with his gender identity and two months after he filed a complaint with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights.

R.M.A. filed the lawsuit in October 2015, starting a complicated legal process. The initial trial court dismissed his claim in 2016, saying the Missouri Human Rights Act does not protect claims on the basis of gender identity. The Missouri Supreme Court, in 2019, reversed this decision and opened the doors for another trial.

A December 2021 jury trial awarded R.M.A. over $4.7 million in damages and legal fees, but attorneys for the Blue Springs School District asked for a “judgment notwithstanding the verdict,” a ruling that allows a judge to usurp a jury’s decision. 

The school district argued that R.M.A. only proved that he was discriminated against “because of his female genitalia” and not on the basis of sex.

The trial court judge sided with the school district, which would have spurred another trial. But Tuesday’s decision reverses that judge’s call, returning the case back to the jury’s verdict.

There are other similar cases currently winding through Missouri’s courts, including a lawsuit against the Platte County School District brought by the ACLU of Missouri.

The Blue Springs School District could not be reached for comment by time of publication.

The Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse in St. Louis, home of the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Missouri (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

A United States District Court judge in St. Louis heard arguments Monday morning on whether the federal government can continue with a student-debt-forgiveness plan due to begin next month.

The lawsuit, filed last month by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, seeks to block an income-driven repayment plan for borrowers proposed by President Joe Biden’s administration. 

Missouri Solicitor General Josh Divine argued in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri Monday morning that the repayment plan, dubbed the SAVE Plan, was never authorized by Congress.

Divine is representing Missouri along with Republican attorneys general from Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma.

“The defendants have asserted authority to redistribute $500 billion from teachers, farmers, nurses and truckers to those who haven’t paid off their student loans yet,” he said at the conclusion of his argument. “Congress simply did not give the president or the secretary (of education) authority to make a massive, monumental policy.”

Judge John Ross said it would take him “a couple of weeks” to craft an order. If Bailey gets his way, the court will block the federal government from approving additional borrowers for the SAVE Plan. Those who have already applied would not be affected, which U.S. Department of Justice Attorney Steven Petri said Monday was “news to (him).”

Bailey’s office blocked implementation of the Biden administration’s first attempt at loan forgiveness in a lawsuit settled by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2023. He has threatened to file suit against the latest plan for loan forgiveness announced by the federal government in April.

The SAVE plan, an acronym for “Saving on a Valuable Education,” sets monthly payments based on income, with some borrowers having monthly payments waived. Those who borrowed less than $12,000 and have been paying for more than 10 years may have their debt canceled, with an additional year for each $1,000 additional borrowed.

The first forgiveness plan used the HEROES Act, which provides relief in time of emergency, to authorize $10,000 and $20,000 payments to borrowers. The HEROES Act was a central part of the Supreme Court case. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling that, “the (HEROES Act allows the Secretary to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the ground up.”

The SAVE plan, however, relies on the Higher Education Act. Petri described it as “an amendment to an existing plan.”

The law prescribes an income-driven repayment plan “paid over an extended period of time prescribed by the Secretary, not to exceed 25 years.” The wording of “not to exceed 25 years” was a central point in Monday’s arguments.

Divine said that while the federal government is using the wording as permission to forgive loans, he argued that the Secretary of Education should set rates that complete payment by 25 years.

“The text expressly requires repayment, ” he said, emphasizing the label of SAVE as a “repayment plan.”

Ross questioned this by saying that Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), a program that waives outstanding student debt after 10 years working in public service, is also named a repayment plan.

Divine said enrollees in PSLF make payments and must repay entirely “unless you satisfy the elements needed to obtain forgiveness.”

Petri said the Higher Education Act must be considered in full.

“We think that the full statutory language, taken as a whole, not only authorized in this plan but provides clear congressional authorization,” he said.

While the authorizing law has changed between the Supreme Court ruling and Monday’s arguments, Divine said the reason Missouri has standing in the case remains. He told the judge it was the “same exact theory of standing” argued last year, saying that the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) will be harmed if the plan goes into effect.

“MOHELA doesn’t just process loans, it owns loans… and it earns interest on those loans,” Divine said.

MOHELA is a quasi-governmental nonprofit. It did not consent to being part of the lawsuit that ended up before the Supreme Court, and internal communications released by loan-forgiveness activists show employees apprehension in being named.

MOHELA stands to lose $987 million if the plan is enacted in July, Divine argued.

U.S. Department of Justice attorney Simon Jerome said there are “problems with that number,” like the federal contract for many of these loans is expiring.

He also pointed to MOHELA’s request to downsize its portfolio by up to 1.5 million borrowers.

“And 1.5 million is quite a bit larger… than the 81,000 accounts slated for forgiveness under the SAVE Plan,” Jerome said.

Ross asked if the SAVE Plan might be removing borrowers in addition to MOHELA’s request.

“The department is committed to removing up to 1.5 million,” Jerome said. “There is room to right-size it.”

When loan payments resumed in the fall, MOHELA borrowers submitted complaints, like not receiving bills that led to them missing payment. As a result, the Department of Education fined MOHELA $7.2 million for “servicer failures.”

With fewer accounts to service, Jerome said, MOHELA can “get back on its feet.”

“These potential benefits, aren’t they all speculative?” Ross asked.

Jerome said the department used “a lot of data” in its estimation.

Divine also spoke about another entity he argues would be harmed, mentioning the Bank of North Dakota’s program refinancing federal loans. He said customers would not be likely to refinance with the bank after the SAVE Plan offers $0 payments and forgiveness.

“You don’t have to be an economist to understand that free money is appealing,” he said.

Jerome said this argument was “speculative.”

“For all of the Bank of North Dakota borrowers, I haven’t seen a single affidavit, haven’t seen a single statement from a borrower (promising to consolidate),” he said.

He looked at the bank’s website, he said, and noticed that it did not represent itself as a competitor with the federal government.

Jerome, additionally, told the judge he thought all the states should have to prove harm for the case to continue. In the previous Supreme Court case, just MOHELA’s harm was enough.

The timing of the case, which was filed in April months after the rule was proposed, will also come into consideration as there is a question of whether the attorney general’s office is too late.

Divine said the timing should be allowed because the office is only trying to proactively stop the program, rather than revoking loan forgiveness that has already occurred.

Ross asked him if he’s declaring “imminent harm,” why he didn’t file earlier.

Divine doesn’t read the Federal Register daily, he said, so he didn’t know about the rule until February.

Divine was part of a negotiated rulemaking committee on federal student loan relief from October to December, before removing himself from the committee. The committee was crafting the rule announced in April but discussed the SAVE plan, according to meeting transcripts.

Both the judge and Petri mentioned the State of Missouri’s involvement in negotiated rulemaking committees. MOHELA’s ​​Director Business Development & Government Relations Will Shaffner was part of the previous round of negotiated rulemaking in 2021-2022.

“I think any timing issue is a problem of (Missouri’s) own making,” Petri said.

He said the delay should “undermine an assertion of irreparable harm.”

MOHELA did not respond to a request for comment.

Article has been updated to correct Divine’s estimate of the SAVE Plan’s cost to taxpayers.

Sen. Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester, answers questions about his legislation expanding MOScholars during a press conference in January. His bill was expanded and signed into law by the end of this year's legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

During Missouri’s 2024 legislative session, 338 bills addressing education were filed: a mix of proposals to change curriculum, increase funding, boost oversight and others.

The House appeared poised to expedite more K-12 legislation by forming a Special Committee on Education Reform in addition to its usual Elementary and Secondary Education Committee.

Chair of the existing education committee Rep. Brad Pollitt, a Republican from Sedalia, told The Independent that the beginning of session was “hot and heavy” for his bill dubbed open enrollment.

The bill, which sought to allow students to enroll in neighboring school districts that opt in to the program, passed the House for the fourth year in a row.

But soon, it was “radio silence,” as he describes it, for his bill.

Pollitt’s bill, like many others, died behind closed doors as lawmakers negotiated what would become just two education bills signed into law this year.

The vehicle

One of the themes among the few hundred bills filed on education was the expansion of tax-credit scholarships for private schools, a program called MOScholars in Missouri.

MOScholars allows taxpayers to donate up to half of their tax burden to scholarship-distributing nonprofits and get a refund come tax time. The nonprofits, who report to the State Treasurer’s Office, give the money to private schools they partner with. Currently, the program is only in the state’s most populated areas.

Sen. Andrew Koenig, a Republican from Manchester, proposed to open MOScholars statewide and allow wealthier families to qualify for the scholarships. He also sought to raise the cap on tax credits for the program.

When his bill made it to the Senate floor, Democrats held a lengthy filibuster, and negotiations began. The closed-door deal brought the originally 12-page bill to over 150 pages.

Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, was a key negotiator for Senate Democrats. She told The Independent that large education changes in Missouri seem to require an omnibus bill, and her job was about balancing policies her caucus favored with changes others demanded.

“I think as a result of this law, what our schools are capable of and the support we are giving our teachers will hopefully be better as a result of some of the changes we’ve made,” she said.

Her priority was changing the formula that funds public schools. A provision added in negotiations will change a multiplier in the formula to slowly switch from funding based on just attendance to splitting between attendance and enrollment. A study commissioned by the state’s education department last year recommended an enrollment-based funding model.

The change to 50% attendance and 50% enrollment is estimated to bring an additional $47 million annually to public education, according to the fiscal note.

“​​I am sure there were great bills that tackled smaller problems,” Arthur said. “But in terms of really trying to address some of the major issues, these were the right provisions to do that.”

Priorities

Pollitt was part of the negotiations, too. Although he has spent years refining his open-enrollment legislation, he knew it wouldn’t make it onto Koenig’s bill. He said his bill “wasn’t a priority on either side of the aisle.”

“The side of the aisle that I’m on wanted educational choice that was more extensive than open enrollment, and the other side of the aisle didn’t want any school choice necessarily,” he said.

He said Senate Democrats could stomach the expansion of MOScholars, since it was already available in Democratic areas, but wouldn’t sit down for a new program in their areas like he was proposing. Arthur confirmed this to be true, adding that the new law’s expansion of charter schools into Boone County was unfavorable but was a long-time priority for Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden — a Republican from Columbia who has announced his retirement from state politics.

When the House was ready to debate Koenig’s bill on the floor (now loaded with the caucuses’ priorities), movement on other K-12 education bills stopped. Some of the bills didn’t move because they were completely incorporated into the larger education package, but others lacked support.

​​“In order to move that big bill, there was a lot of political capital spent on that,” Sen. Jill Carter, a Granby Republican, told The Independent.

She attempted to place her educational priority onto the bill after Senate leaders had completed negotiations and distributed the thick stacks of the legislation.

Her bill sought to remove school accreditation authority from the state’s education department by allowing school districts to use nationally recognized accrediting agencies instead. It also proposed replacing the Missouri Assessment Program, or MAP test, with a summative assessment “that meets federal requirements.”

The legislation received bipartisan support in committee and passed unanimously, but the committee’s vote was never reported on the Senate floor — a step required to come up for debate.

When she attempted to add it as an amendment to Koenig’s bill post-negotiations, she was advised against unbalancing the education package.

Sen. Curtis Trent, a Springfield Republican, told her the bill was “highly negotiated.” He had filed a bill that also sought to change the way school accreditation is done in Missouri, though his approach focused on performance and growth scores. His proposal would focus more on standardized testing, whereas Carter’s had a decentralized approach.

“This is a highly crafted, highly balanced, fine-tuned piece of legislation,” Trent said on the Senate floor. “Inserting it like this in the 11th hour… risks derailing this very important piece of legislation in a way that I don’t believe is fair to the underlying bill sponsor and everyone involved in the process.”

He indicated that he had an amendment to Carter’s legislation, and she withdrew her bill.

Arthur said she didn’t see enough support behind Carter’s bill, so it wasn’t likely to pass.

Both Carter and Pollitt are planning to refile their legislation.

Arthur, who has termed out of the Senate, said she recommends watching how new laws affect education before passing more large changes.

“(Koenig’s bill) is a major education omnibus bill, and it contains a lot of provisions that can shape and reshape education in Missouri,” she said. “I would recommend that the legislature let those things get fully implemented and see how they’re working before moving forward with anything else as substantial.”

A group of over 200 protesting MU Health's cancelation of transgender minors' prescriptions approaches Columbia City Hall Sept. 15. MU Health backed out of gender-affirming care for minors after the passage of a new state law including broad medical malpractice provisions (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A state investigation of the Washington University Transgender Center in St. Louis expanded to include therapists and social workers across the state who work with minors seeking gender-affirming care.

Documents made public as part of various lawsuits show that Attorney General Andrew Bailey has obtained a collection of unredacted and loosely redacted records of transgender children, including a list of patients that received care at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. 

He is also seeking untethered access to the university’s digital medical records system.

The attorney general’s use of private medical records, and the targeting of therapists and counselors, has interrupted the health care of LGBTQ Missourians and has families worrying about their children’s privacy.

Katy Erker-Lynch, executive director for Missouri LGBTQ advocacy organization PROMO, told The Independent she fears that the pressure will drive health care providers out of the state, especially impacting rural Missourians.

“The attorney general has created a hostile environment for medical providers where they are afraid to stay and practice medicine,” she said. 

The saga began last year when Bailey launched an investigation based on an affidavit from Washington University whistleblower Jamie Reed. Bailey is using the affidavit to question other gender-affirming-care providers like Planned Parenthood, which he has said he hopes to “eradicate.”

The probe involves the Missouri Division of Professional Registration, which oversees medical licensing in the state. According to records obtained by The Independent, the agency interviewed 57 health professionals as part of the inquiry and had 16 cases open as of early May.

While Bailey announced the division would assist in the investigation when he first announced it, therapists did not expect to be included — or have their license to practice put at risk. 

The division’s chief legal counsel, Sarah Ledgerwood, told The Independent that the division and its boards can’t join other officials’ investigations. When asked about Bailey’s investigation, she said the boards “can only complete investigations based on receipt of a complaint.”

Division Director Sheila Solon said last year that she anticipated complaints as part of the attorney general’s investigation.

Kelly Storck, a licensed clinical social worker with a focus on LGBTQ-positive therapy, was interviewed last year and expressed grave concerns about unredacted medical records of minors being in the hands of a state official who has repeatedly opposed gender-affirming care.

When the division contacted Storck for an interview, she hired a lawyer before meeting with the investigator.

During the meeting, she says the investigator had a small stack of unredacted letters Storck had sent the Transgender Center to recommend clients for gender-affirming care.

Storck recalled senior investigator Nick McBroom telling her he wasn’t fully sure what he was doing, saying she was taking the interview more seriously than it was. He questioned why she had a lawyer.

McBroom asked about the process of writing letters of support, Storck said, opening a file with just a portion of the letters she had sent to the Transgender Center. She said she noticed the documents had green underlines added and asked McBroom if they were his edits. He didn’t seem to know the source of the underlines.

After a 30-45 minute interview, McBroom asked her to write up her process. Through her attorney, she declined, and her case was closed soon after.

McBroom declined to speak to The Independent about the case.

“I still have a lot of distrust about who initiated it,” Storck said, “and who was in my documents.” 

Parents of transgender children told The Independent they have heard whispers of other therapists facing investigation.

Multiple providers declined to be interviewed about the investigation out of fear of retaliation. Storck, though, had already faced the attorney general as one of the plaintiffs attempting to block an emergency rule targeting transgender care filed by Bailey last year.

A fight for patient privacy

A legal battle between Washington University and the attorney general’s office shows the records used in the interviews may have directly come from the university itself.

In the attorney general’s office’s response to the litigation, a timeline is laid out of the university turning over three sets of documents. In its second document production, Washington University gave the attorney general a list of patients in a spreadsheet.

“The supplemental production included a spreadsheet titled ‘Transgender Patient data,’” the attorney general’s office wrote. “Which included various workbooks chronicling patient names, encounters and medications, among other information.”

The attorney general’s office has declined to comment about the scope of the investigation and the source of investigative documents. Washington University also declined comment. 

People who have received care at the Transgender Center have asked to be notified if their health records are accessed, but many assume some of their information is already in the attorney general’s hands.

The Independent asked Reed if she provided any of the documents to the attorney general. 

“I cannot definitively say what the therapists are being handed (or) where it came from,” she said. “We just don’t really know where those things directly came from. The one thing I will add is that any documents that were provided to the attorney general’s office from me were redacted.”

Reed said she did not give any documents that would be stored in the electronic health records software Epic. When asked where else the records could come from, she said, “email or shared drive.”

The records investigators had of Storck’s patients included names, something Reed said she redacted before providing to the attorney general.

Becky Hormuth and her 17-year-old son Levi, who was a patient at the Transgender Center, have been hearing about the scope of Bailey’s investigation for months.

They learned that the attorney general’s office had been looking into Levi’s psychologist’s records and heard about other providers that had interviews related to their support for gender-affirming care.

Levi said the attorney general’s work seemed like “complete government overreach.”

Bailey’s actions, like a tip line about gender-affirming care and an emergency rule that sought to limit access to certain procedures and prescriptions, prompted Hormuth to prepare to move out of state.

“It is very invasive, what he’s doing,” she told The Independent. “The state has already basically disrupted our lives. They’ve disrupted our families, our children’s lives with the legislation that has passed. Then for him to continue going on is even more invasive and damaging.”

When lawmakers passed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors that included a provision that allowed broad medical malpractice claims, the Transgender Center stopped providing Levi’s medication.

Hormuth learned from other parents to make her son’s medication stretch, just in case it would be a long time before a refill.

She had requested an appointment with a provider in Illinois prior to the law’s passage, and Levi was on a waiting list. The center told her at the time that they weren’t taking new out-of-state patients because there was already a large influx from multiple states.

But eventually, Hormuth got a call that they were ready to take out-of-state patients. So, she and Levi make periodic trips to Chicago to go to the doctor.

Levi is old enough to receive hormone-replacement therapy at the Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region’s clinics, which accept transgender patients 16 and up for gender-affirming care.

But Hormuth wanted to take her son someplace outside of Bailey’s reach.

“I was absolutely dead set against going to Planned Parenthood locally because I knew that as soon as we would establish ourselves at Planned Parenthood… that (Bailey) was going to come there and start digging through those papers and those personal records,” she said. “I absolutely was not going to give him the chance at any other aspect of our family’s life.”

Both branches of Planned Parenthood in Missouri are also subjects of Bailey’s investigation, according to court filings, despite the attorney general’s office only publicly announcing an investigation into the Transgender Center.

The attorney general is not allowed to investigate medical malpractice claims, but it can look into false advertising under the state’s consumer protection law, known as the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act. 

Bailey used that law to file an emergency rule, which he later rescinded before a court case could decide its bounds, and he is utilizing it again to dig into gender-affirming-care providers.

In a case in the Circuit Court of Jackson County, Bailey’s office admits the investigation into the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital has multiple subjects.

Planned Parenthood Great Plains filed a lawsuit to avoid the attorney general’s civil investigative demands which it argued sought sweeping information about its practice and patients.

In court documents, Solicitor General Josh Divine wrote that the civil investigative demand was looking into the organization and others in addition to the Transgender Center.

“The attorney general is investigating (the Transgender Center) and ‘others in the state’ who ‘may have used deception, fraud, false promises, misrepresentation, unfair practices, and/or the concealment, suppression, or omission of material facts within the scope of the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act,’” Divine wrote. “The attorney general has already made unequivocally clear that (Planned Parenthood) is under investigation.”

Similar arguments are on display in a case between the Planned Parenthood affiliate in St. Louis and the attorney general’s office.

“(Bailey’s) request encompasses hundreds, if not thousands, of patient records concerning treatment decisions, discussions with physicians, mental health assessments and prescription information, among other areas,” Planned Parenthood’s attorney wrote in its lawsuit.

Judges ruled in favor of the attorney general’s office in both cases, which have been recently appealed.

A case filed by Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City against Bailey’s investigative demands also went in favor of the attorney general.

Washington University’s case against the attorney general’s office is yet to be decided.

This fall, the attorney general’s office will defend the state in a case that seeks to reverse a ban on gender-affirming care for minors passed last legislative session.

Storck said the inquiry has compounded anxieties about access to gender-affirming care that patients have following the passage of the ban.

“I really was so afraid that some of my clients were going to be in absolute emergent situations and really struggle to get access to health care,” she said. “My patients have connected with what they need, but it is now an all-day or multiple-day event to get medical care. Previously, they could have gotten it (within two hours).”

Interns Santino Bono (left) and Alanna Nguyen stand with legislative assistant Dustin Bax after receiving resolutions from the Missouri House of Resolutions to commemorate their service (courtesy of Santino Bono).

In March, the phone in state Rep. Deb Lavender’s office in Jefferson City started ringing constantly, but the calls weren’t for her.

They were for her interns, Santino Bono and Alanna Nguyen.

The interns, along with Dylan Powers Cody, who was interning for state Rep. Peter Merideth, had spent months cross-checking spreadsheets to pinpoint school districts who had not yet claimed pandemic-era federal funds for homeless students.

Those federal dollars are part of the American Rescue Plan and must be budgeted by September. A large part of the interns’ project was calling districts to notify them that they had money that could expire if they didn’t act quickly.

The office got so many calls back from schools about the interns’ project that Lavender’s legislative assistant needed to create a voicemail folder just for them.

So far, they helped districts claim $1.15 million in funds in four months that can be used for a range of services for homeless students — from buying washers and dryers to temporary hotel stays and transit cards.

“We had multiple school districts call back and say, ‘We have twenty grand in the bank that we can use to help homeless students? No one really told us,’” Bono said in an interview with The Independent.

Most of the districts the interns reached had no idea they had funding available, Nguyen said.

“Then, they wanted more information on it,” she said. “Once they got the information on it, they were able to kind of kickstart it up and get things moving along.”

Bono expected the internship might be more menial, including the “intern trope of having to get coffee for people,” he said.

“To know that I could have potentially a much bigger impact on actual students, as a student myself, I’m really proud of that,” Bono said.

Missouri received an infusion of $9.6 million in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 for students experiencing homelessness, and schools were able to start using it in 2022.

But many of those schools had never received federal dollars to support homeless students before.

Tera Bock, director of homeless education for Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said the agency alerted school districts to the funding but that several challenges emerged.

“It is not funding that most districts are used to having, so they usually are supporting their students experiencing homelessness without any funding specific to that,” she said. “The extra funding creates the need for a shift in mindset as far as what they provide for those students.”

School districts have until the end of September to budget the remaining $6.1 million or lose out on it. 

Most schools received a few thousands dollars in federal aid for homeless students. The largest allocation, based on its homeless student population, went to St. Louis City which received $850,000.

The funding is best used for one-time costs, Bock said, like a vehicle to transport students with housing insecurity or to meet emergency needs.

“The district should really consider how they can use it in a way that is not going to create a financial burden in the future whenever they don’t have the funds anymore,” Bock said.

She said rural districts with a smaller population of students experiencing homelessness are the most likely to struggle to spend the money.

Bock has been in her role for a couple months, and the position was vacant briefly.

Part of her job is to contact each district’s homeless liaison, a position every district is federally required to have. But sometimes, the liaisons have multiple positions in schools, and Bock doesn’t hear back from them.

“Especially in the districts where they don’t typically see a large population of homeless students, they get multiple roles, and it just gets lost in the shuffle,” she said.

“We don’t have very many (districts) here in Missouri where that person is completely designated as their entire job for the most part,” she said. “They are wearing lots of different hats.”

Bock said she sends “lots of communication,” so “they should be aware” of the funds but wonders if liaisons are properly connected to district administration to get the money budgeted.

With more communication and activities planned, Bock is not concerned about being able to get more money claimed by districts.

“This is definitely a big piece of what I’m working on right now,” she said. “And our sights are set on Sept. 30.” 

Bock said the interns were “super helpful” in the process.

“There has been good communication whenever they need some backup information to support questions that are coming up,” she said. “So they’ve been great to work with.”

The interns are hopeful schools will continue allocating the funds.

“There’s still a lot to be done by September and session’s ending,” Bono said. “I’m going off to law school. I can’t keep calling school districts. So we’re just hoping that more awareness can be given to school districts to kind of get them to keep working towards this.”

Lavender said the funds might look modest in terms of the state’s overall budget but the impact on students is large. In Webster Groves, she said, the schools “got another $8,000 that I don’t think they knew was sitting there.”

Lavender’s legislative assistant Dustin Bax chimed in: “And $8,000 of backpacks, non-perishable foods, fuel cards — that goes a long way.”

Missouri State Board of Education members look line by line at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education budget Tuesday morning during their board meeting (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education anticipates asking lawmakers for more money later this year in order to meet the demands of a massive new education law and make up for reduced federal funding.

“My gut is… because you have a lot of federal authority deleted… ​​you’ll see the mother of all supplemental budgets, probably in a special session,” State Board of Education Chair Charlie Shields, of St. Joseph, said during Tuesday’s board meeting.

The budget approved by lawmakers for the fiscal year that begins July 1 is more than $1 billion short of the current year’s appropriation, despite a 3.2% bump in pay for the education department’s employees. 

This is before any possible vetoes or budget withholds by Gov. Mike Parson.

Kari Monsees, the department’s commissioner of financial and administrative services, told the board that a “common theme” of the budget was reductions in federal funding. And that impacts the amount of general revenue required next year, he said.

“Is that normal?” Mary Schrag, a board member from West Plains asked. “Is it considered realistic that we’re not going to use all those federal funds moving forward from year to year?”

Some items usually funded by federal money may be part of a supplemental request, Monsees said. He is most worried about the child-care-subsidy program, which encourages child care providers to serve low-income families.

The budget approved by lawmakers last week gives the department almost $260 million for two child care subsidies — a reduction of $23.4 million from current funding. The amount pulled from the state’s general revenue fund is stagnant between the fiscal years, showing a reduction in federal funding.

“We are seeing the case loads increase to the point where we’re going to need some of that capacity moving forward,” Monsees said. “It lowers the overall state budget by reducing some of those federal funds. The question is, is there enough left there?”

House Budget Chair Cody Smith, a Republican from Carthage, told reporters in a press conference last week that the House consolidated federal fund requests based on how much was used in the previous year. According to budget documents, the program has a projected 92% utilization rate in the upcoming fiscal year. .

The budget, which squeaked through hours before the constitutional deadline, doesn’t include provisions of an omnibus education bill recently signed into law by Parson. 

The bill at its core expands the K-12 tax-credit scholarships called MOScholars. But it also includes public-education priorities like a raise to the base teacher pay and scholarships for future educators. House lawmakers, in a floor debate on the legislation, wondered if there would be enough money in the state’s budget in future years to help districts raise teacher salaries and other costly provisions.

Pamela Westbrooks-Hodge, a board member from Pasadena Hills, noted the law’s projected price tag of $468 million when fully implemented.

“Do you feel like this budget adequately incorporates all the mandates that are outlined in this bill?” she asked Monsees. “There is a lot of concern from the educational community that there are a lot of unfunded mandates in this bill.”

A couple items, like expanding the small school grant program and providing lunch to pre-k students, are unfunded, Monsees said. He anticipates requesting the funding in a supplemental budget.

The mandated raise to teachers base pay doesn’t take effect until fiscal year 2026, he said. The state has been offering an opt-in matching grant program to raise teacher pay to $38,000, subject to annual reappropriation. This year, that amount will bump up to $40,000 before the new law forces districts to raise salaries with a grant program that will also require funds annually.

“The requests that you’re gonna see for fiscal year (2026) will be significant,” Monsees told board members. “It was going to be significant anyway, and (the new law) makes it where it will be an even bigger request.”

Shields also foresees budget woes.

“I think you are two to three years out from having a huge challenge,” he said.

Shields and Monsees agreed that they had never seen a budget process like the one that occurred last week, with closed-door negotiations and without a conference committee where lawmakers openly compromise on the budget.

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this report.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson begins the annual State of the State speech to a joint session of the legislature Jan. 24 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed legislation Tuesday that boosts the minimum salary for teachers, changes the formula for funding public schools and expands a tax-credit scholarship for private schools.

It also allows charter schools in Boone County and requires a public vote for districts seeking to go to a four-day school week.

When fully implemented, the legislation is estimated to cost roughly $468 million a year.

Parson signed the bill a day before the constitutional deadline to take action. His weekly schedule did not announce his intention to sign the legislation.

In a brief press release, he focused on the raise for teachers, which would boost minimum salary from $25,000 to $40,000 a year.

“I have and always will support Missouri teachers. Since the beginning of our administration, we’ve looked at ways to increase teacher pay and reward our educators for the hard work they do, and this legislation helps us continue that progress,” he said. “We ask a lot of our educators when it comes to teaching and caring for our children.”

Dean Johnson, CEO of K-12 education policy group Quality Schools Coalition, focused on investments in pre-k and teacher pay in a statement sent to the press following Parson’s signature.

Missouri House narrowly sends private-school tax credit, charter expansion to governor’s desk

“For too many years, Missouri education policy has been stagnant, lacking both a commitment to reform and a lack of resources,” he said. “The law signed by Gov. Parson today smartly brings new investments in Missouri’s educational future and will directly lead to better paid teachers and better prepared students.”

Johnson is one of few advocates for public education that has spoken in favor of the legislation.

A collaborative of 41 school districts called the Southwest Center for Educational Excellence wrote a letter to the governor, first reported by the Webb City Sentinel, raising concerns about raising minimum teacher pay. 

The districts worried that the mandate to increase pay did not come with guaranteed funding to make it happen.

“Increasing the minimum salary yearly per the consumer price index or inflation does not allow for a guarantee for state funding to follow indefinitely,” the school districts wrote. “Our member school districts are in complete agreement with this provision, except for the lack of any guarantees in the bill for required future funding.”

The Missouri School Boards’ Association crafted letters for school board members to send to the governor. For school districts paying teachers under $40,000, the letter addresses fears that the raise is an unfunded mandate.

“While there are provisions in this bill that increase statutory minimum teacher pay, the bill does not ensure state funding will be appropriated this year or any subsequent year to support such an increase,” the sample letter says. “Our district is funded in large part by local taxes, and I fear that if the teacher pay increase is funded at the expense of the foundation formula or school transportation or not funded at all, we as the board may be left to make up the difference with budget cuts or local tax increases.”

Seven Boone County school superintendents, representing all the local districts but Centralia, wrote to Parson on Friday asking for a veto.

The legislation authorizes charter schools in Boone County. Otherwise, charter schools are only allowed by state statute in Kansas City and St. Louis and in areas with unaccredited school districts. All of Boone County’s districts are currently accredited.

“Our districts include a tremendous range in student size and local revenue,” the superintendents wrote “The opening of a charter school and the depletion of state and local funds from our urban and rural districts will have a devastating effect on some of our continued ability to operate.”

They argue carving out Boone County might not pass legal muster.

Much of the opposition from public schools and associated organizations centers on the K-12 tax-credit scholarship expansion. The law, when enacted, will open the program statewide and increase the low-income qualifications from 200% of the free-and-reduced-lunch eligibility to 300%. 

The income cap, for a family of four, would be $166,500, under this school year’s reduced lunch eligibility.

The legislation began as a 12-page proposal to expand the tax-credit scholarship program, called MOScholars. Lobbyists representing public education entities testified in opposition to the legislation throughout the session.

Senate Democrats led a filibuster of the legislation, leading to a compromise and a 167-page education package.

The House did not amend the bill, since any changes would send the legislation back to the Senate for renegotiation. Lawmakers found a way to make requested changes by adding them to a separate House bill, clarifying things such as that homeschools are exempt from the state law that prohibits guns on school grounds.

This fix calmed the Missouri homeschool advocacy organization Families for Home Education, which posted on Facebook that it now had a neutral stance on the bill. It had previously opposed the legislation, with many homeschooling families asking to be written out of the tax-credit scholarship program to avoid the potential of government oversight.

Daniel Tucker, a leader with the Missouri Workers Center, teaches chants customized to an initiative petition to raise the minimum wage and mandate paid sick leave outside of the Secretary of State's office building in Jefferson City Wednesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

An initiative petition campaign that seeks to raise Missouri’s minimum wage delivered over 210,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office Wednesday afternoon — nearly double the amount needed to make the statewide ballot. 

It is the first of five initiative petitions the Secretary of State’s office expects to deliver signatures this week.

Petitioners need at least 107,246 signatures to make the ballot. A spokesperson for the Secretary of State said the office expects to complete the verification process around Aug. 8.

If approved by voters, the petition would raise the state’s minimum wage to $13.75 beginning in January 2025 and $15 in 2026, with annual cost-of-living increases after that. It also seeks to set the minimum paid sick leave to one hour per 30 hours worked, and paid sick leave would extend to caring for family members.

Marieta Ortiz, a restaurant worker from Kansas City who helped gather signatures, said during a rally at  the Secretary of State’s office in Jefferson City that this petition would benefit her as a mom of three, with a fourth child due this summer.

“I’ve spent multiple hours in the hospital losing pay over my sick kid,” she said. “As an expecting mom again, I’m going to automatically choose my kids no matter what.”

The petition’s organizers, Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages, rallied inside the Secretary of State’s office building after turning in boxes of signatures. Speakers said paid sick leave was just as important as a $15 minimum wage.

Alejandro Gallardo, a food-service worker from Columbia who gathered signatures, said he has to weigh the risks when he begins feeling sick. He needs to get paid, he said, but he doesn’t want to put himself and others at risk.

“It is a constant stress, a constant anxiety,” Gallardo said during the rally. “People come into work sick all the time because they have no choice.”

DeMarco Davidson, executive director of Metropolitan Congregations United, said Wednesday that the initiative is part of a historical movement to secure better wages.

“Today is the accumulation of years, years and years of people organizing and building power together to bring us here to this point,” he said.

The minimum wage is currently $12.30, a product of Proposition B in 2018 which raised the minimum wage from $7.85 to $12 in five years with cost-of-living adjustments thereafter. The 2018 initiative won over 62.3% of voters.

Before that, voters approved a minimum-wage hike in 2006, which raised the floor to $6.50 or the federal minimum wage, whichever is higher. It was passed with nearly 75% of the vote that year.

The State Board of Education voted to revoke a Kansas City school's charter, prompting a legal battle last fought in Missouri's western district court of appeals (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A Kansas City charter school for at-risk students will be allowed to stay open after an appeal of the state’s decision to revoke its charter.

In a ruling issued last week, the presiding judge of Missouri’s western district court of appeals ruled a charter school has the right to judicial review if the state attempts to shut it down.

The case comes after the State Board of Education and the Missouri Charter Public School Commission pulled the charter of Kansas City’s Genesis School last year, citing poor performance.

The appeals court decision, which follows a Cole County judge’s earlier ruling in favor of Genesis, rejects the State Board of Education’s argument that the board has final authority over a charter’s status.

Mallory McGowin, spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), said the department is looking at the ruling for potential procedural changes. Otherwise, she said, the State Board of Education’s role will remain as it is now and continue making decisions about charters.

“The charter model is designed to allow for flexibility to promote innovative approaches to educating students, along with a timely closure when low-performing charter schools fail to meet the academic standards outlined in statute,” she said. “The State Board’s role in this process is critical.”

McGowin could not comment on whether the department planned to appeal the decision.

The original case in Cole County reversed the charter revocation. The State Board of Education’s argument in appellate court was that a 2012 change to the law governing charter schools prevents them from seeking judicial review but it did not challenge the underlying argument.

During the original Cole County hearing, Genesis’s attorneys argued that the state didn’t have enough consecutive years of performance data to justify closing the school.

When the Missouri Charter Public School Commission met to consider the charter early in 2023, the latest performance data was from the 2017-18 school year.

The commission became Genesis’s sponsor in July of 2022 after the State Board of Education removed the University of Missouri’s ability to sponsor Genesis and other low-performing charters. 

In April of 2023, the State Board of Education heard Genesis’s appeal. Genesis, a K-8 school with a focus on high-risk students, had low performance scores and average growth, according to an assessment released a month before that hearing. 

The school had earned 42.7% on the new annual performance report. The department told school districts the scores, which were calculated under a new system, would not affect accreditation.

The Cole County judge ultimately determined the state’s decision to pull Genesis’ charter was “unlawful and arbitrary” because of the lack of data.

In the appeals court ruling, the judge wrote that Commissioner of Education Margie Vandeven noted “deficiencies” in the charter commission’s process. Still, the board made the decision to revoke Genesis’s charter.

The state education department had concerns with the Missouri Charter Public School Commission’s revocation process, McGowin said, but it had “even more significant concerns with allowing a school with long-term, chronic performance issues to remain open, particularly in the face of the educational uncertainty its attending families were facing in planning for the coming school year.” 

Chuck Hatfield, the attorney representing Genesis, told The Independent that the case is not likely to change the oversight of charter schools beyond allowing them to appeal administrative decisions.

“The issue the Court of Appeals decided was just whether a charter school has standing, but the underlying problem is they didn’t have [performance] data because of COVID,” he said. “So I can’t imagine that’s gonna happen again.”

For Kevin Foster, executive director of Genesis School, the process was “traumatic.”

“We didn’t find out until July that we were going to be open, and we survived,” he said.

Students were worried, Foster said, about where they were going to attend school, sometimes pulling focus from their schoolwork.

In December, Genesis scored 62% in the newest performance reports from the state’s education department. Kansas City School District scored 66.6%.

Genesis’s score is composed of two factors, performance and continuous improvement, in which the school scored 44% and 92.3%, respectively.

Foster said this illustrates the school’s ability to teach kids who enroll with a lower knowledge base than students in other areas and schools.

Genesis is located in Census Tract 60, an area where around 5% of residents have at least a bachelor’s degree and 31% are below the poverty line. Foster told The Independent that 81% of his students live within three miles of the school.

All the students at Genesis are eligible for free or reduced lunch, compared to a statewide rate of 47.4%.

The school markets itself for these students, setting itself as a space for a high-risk population. Foster said the state’s system of accountability deters charter schools like this.

“The accountability system is not designed to encourage people to do this work,” he said. “Not only is it not designed to encourage me to do this work, but now they are literally trying to close us, to take away our ability to do the work.”

The school’s charter will be up for renewal in 2025. Foster hopes a sponsor will continue to partner with Genesis.

“People just have a model of what reform is gonna look like, and a small little community charter school serving an at-risk population just doesn’t fit their model,” he said.

Hatfield said the state’s accountability program may continue to impact charter schools that serve high-risk students.

“That’s a real challenge for the way DESE does their (Missouri School Improvement Program) standards these days,” he said. “The schools that are really focused on highly challenged children, they are going to close a lot of them down if they are not more thoughtful about it.”

The Missouri Charter Public School Commission could not be reached for comment.

Paul Wagner, executive director of the Council on Public Higher Education in Missouri, testifies in a Missouri Senate committee hearing Tuesday morning (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Legislation that could expand the number of college credits universally transferable between Missouri’s public two-year and four-year institutions took another step towards becoming law on Tuesday as time runs short before lawmakers adjourn for the year.

A Senate committee, in its last scheduled meeting of the legislative session, debated and passed a bill Tuesday morning that seeks to create a 60-credit-hour core curriculum in concert with Missouri’s higher education institutions. Currently, there is a 42-credit-hour block that transfers between all Missouri’s public colleges, created in 2018.

The bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Cameron Parker of Campbell, passed the House unanimously earlier this month. 

“This will eliminate some problems for students transferring from a two-year to a four-year. It reduces the cost,” Parker told the committee. “What we’re looking at is a seamless transition from a two-year to a four-year.”

Parker’s bill calls for the coordinating board for higher education to craft the 60-hour block for “at least five degree programs with substantial enrollment.”

Paul Wagner, executive director of the Council on Public Higher Education in Missouri, testified in “soft opposition” because the bill could exclude students outside of popular degree programs.

“This only applies to a certain type of student,” he said. “That is a student that knows from the beginning that they want to major in one of the five degrees that are chosen.”

It is going to be a large undertaking to get each public college to agree on a 60-credit-hour program, he said.

“If we are going to put in that kind of work, we would prefer that there was a broader result,” Wagner said.

State Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat who serves on the committee, said Wagner’s comment was “well-taken.”

“I would like to see it more broadly applied,” she said.

She voted in favor of the bill, along with the other nine members in attendance.

Representatives from community colleges said the legislation would solve problems their students face.

Brian Miller, president and CEO of the Missouri Community College Association, testified that there is a “high frequency” of students retaking classes after transferring to a four-year university.

State Fair Community College President Brent Bates said his students have a similar frustration.

“Each year students transfer from State Fair Community College,” he said, “sometimes they are surprised when they transfer to a public university in the state and the classes don’t transfer as they anticipated.” 

To make it to the governor’s desk, the legislation must pass the Senate before the legislative session ends on May 17.

Sen. Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester, answers questions about his bill that would expand MOScholars during a press conference early in the 2024 legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A massive education bill that expands a private school scholarship program and opens up Boone County to charter schools squeaked out of the Missouri House and to the governor’s desk on Thursday, winning the bare minimum number of votes needed for passage. 

The 153-page bill, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Andrew Koenig of Manchester, is estimated to cost taxpayers $468 million when fully implemented. It passed 82-69 and heads to Gov. Mike Parson. Three Democrats joined with 79 Republicans in support of the bill, with 45 Democrats and 24 Republicans voting against. 

State Rep. Phil Christofanelli, a St. Peters Republican, carried the Senate bill and sponsored the legislation in 2021 that created the tax-credit scholarships, called MOScholars.

He said during Thursday’s debate that the bill combines his interest in the MOScholars program with investment in rural schools.

“We put together a package that serves all the diverse interests in education,” Christofanelli said.

The original bill was 12 pages, but negotiations in the Senate led to the inclusion of over a hundred pages of education legislation.

“We’re all going to take a step together,” Christofanelli said Thursday. “This is the most substantive investment in public education that this state has ever seen.”

Lawmakers filed 53 amendments prior to the vote, but none were allowed by GOP leadership  to offer them for consideration. 

Rep. Paula Brown, a Democrat from Hazelwood, said during debate that the Senate was controlling the process. 

“This is an esteemed chamber, and we’re acting like we don’t matter,” she said.

Christofanelli said the Senate had listened to concerns, and amendments were made to another bill Wednesday to smooth over issues with the larger package.

“My concern was that if I did those changes on this bill and sent it back into the Senate, it would get caught in the abyss and we would never have a law at the end,” he said.

He gathered input from key lawmakers, and delivered suggestions to the Senate. Then, Wednesday evening, the Senate introduced and passed a new version of Christofanelli’s bill on full-time virtual schools.

The House passed this second bill, with the fixes, after approving the larger education package.

Although the bill has measures to boost teacher salaries and school-district funding, Democrats had concerns. Many focused on the estimated cost.

“This is a bill that has some great, shiny things that we like in exchange for some really bad (things),” said House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat. “But as we’ve talked about, the real problem with this bill is the amount of money we have.”

Democrats from Boone County also spoke against the addition of charter schools in their community.

State Rep. David Tyson Smith, a Democrat from Columbia, called the bill “poison” to Boone County.

“Our schools are accredited. We don’t need this bill,” he said. “We are hanging on by a razor’s edge financially already. You bring charter schools into Boone County, which is what this bill specifically does, and it hurts us.”

As the final votes rolled in and the bill’s passage was assured, Koenig sat on the House dais, smiling as the bill he has called his top legislative priority made it across the finish line.

Sen. Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester, answers questions about his bill that would expand K-12 tax-credit scholarships during a committee meeting on Jan. 20 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Missouri Senate voted Wednesday night to ensure homeschool families are allowed to own firearms.

On a 27-4 vote, lawmakers approved legislation that originally was focused on cleaning up issues with Missouri’s virtual school program. 

But over the course of a five-hour recess in the Senate Wednesday, Republicans turned that legislation into a catch-all measure aimed at ensuring the House approves an even larger education bill approved by the Senate last month.

The bill approved Wednesday night was crafted to ease House concerns about a 153-page bill that passed the Senate to expand Missouri’s private school tax credit program and allowed charter schools in Boone County, along with other provisions aimed at bolstering public schools.

That bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Andrew Koenig of Manchester, told The Independent he would prefer the House pass the Senate’s education bill without changes and send it to the governor’s desk. Any changes in the House would bring it back to the Senate for debate, putting its changes at risk.

After the Senate passed Koenig’s legislation last month, criticism began popping up on social media and in the Capitol about a myriad of issues — primarily that homeschooling families may face additional government oversight.

Despite assurances from gun-rights groups, one concern focused on the idea that homeschoolers’ inclusion in the private school scholarship program would result in home educators being subject to laws banning guns in schools. 

The Missouri Firearms Coalition made a statement that it felt that gun-ownership was not threatened in the bill. And an attorney for Home School Legal Defense Association Scott Woodruff was adamant that he was not concerned about the provision.

“The idea (the bill)…. would make the criminal penalties of (state firearm code) apply to home schoolers with guns in their home is supported, at best, only by a long, thin string of assumptions and implications,” he wrote.

But House members were flooded with emails and social media messages expressing concerns, putting the bills’ chances of passing without being altered at risk. 

Koenig said Wednesday that the ability to own a gun was not threatened by his bill.

“I don’t know that it was a problem, but this definitely makes it a lot stronger,” he said. “Anytime we can clarify something in statute, then we make sure that interpretation is stronger.”

The bill applies the existing homeschool statute to particular sections of state law — avoiding applying the definition of a “home school” to the state code that prohibits firearms on school grounds.

The legislation approved Wednesday night expanded beyond virtual schools to include  changes such as connecting funding for K-12 tax-credit scholarships to state aid for public schools’ transportation. This is current state law, but Koenig’s bill separated the two.

The bill also exempts Warsaw School District from taking a vote to reauthorize the district’s current four-day school week. If Koenig’s bill passes, school districts that have switched to a four-day week in charter counties or cities with at least 30,000 residents will have to hold a vote to continue with an abbreviated week.

Similar provisions are included in amendments to Koenig’s bill filed by House members. Fifty-three amendments have already been filed on Koenig’s bill in the House.

House Majority Leader Jon Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, told reporters on Monday that he would prefer to pass the Senate’s version of Koenig’s bill but there was not a guarantee to do so.

Advocates for protections for survivors of childhood sexual abuse speak in front of the Missouri Supreme Court building prior to delivering a letter to the Missouri Attorney General (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A group including survivors of childhood sexual abuse is hoping Missouri lawmakers will change state law to give victims more time to sue their assailants and that the attorney general will provide more oversight of boarding schools and camps.

Douglas Lay, assistant director of Missouri Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told reporters Monday afternoon that he was abused at school as a child and didn’t tell his story for 40 years.

“The trauma is sufficient enough to stay silent,” he said alongside survivors and advocates outside the Missouri Supreme Court building.

Monday, he testified in a Missouri Senate committee in favor of extending the statute of limitations to give survivors more time to share. In town for the committee hearing, the group also delivered a letter to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey demanding he begin investigating camps and boarding schools that have been accused of abuse.

The committee held a hearing Monday on a bill that would place  a constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot to make the time limits for filing a civil action the same as it is for criminal prosecutions.

Currently, survivors of childhood sexual abuse can file a civil suit against perpetrators until they reach the age of 31 and against other defendants until the age of 26. There is no statute of limitations for criminal cases of rape.

A similar bill last year sought to allow survivors to file a claim until they reach 55 years old. 

Versions of the bill have yet to clear a committee in either the House or Senate, and with the legislative session ending May 17, their odds of passing are slim.

Kathryn Robb, executive director of nonprofit child-protection advocacy group CHILD USAdvocacy, said the statute of limitations is “arbitrary.”

“When the perpetrators silence the victims, they should not benefit from the statute of limitations that cuts (lawsuits) off,” she said. “It is just bad policy.”

Richard AuBuchon, executive director of the Missouri Civil Justice Reform, testified to the Senate  committee he believes there should be “finality” to cases.

“There should be fair process, like we do in Missouri, where the statute of limitations creates a constitutional right that the case is final,” he said.

Ken Chackes, a St. Louis-based attorney, told reporters he has represented 300 or more survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

“Many survivors told me I was the first person they ever told,” he said.

Some have waited years to share their stories, Chackes said, because they wanted to shield loved ones from pain.

“They don’t want to put their parents through the devastating impact of learning that their child… was abused and suffered this trauma,” he said.

He believes allowing them to bring civil proceedings will allow more people to share their experiences, and in turn, expose abuse.

Agape Boarding School will close its doors this month after years of abuse allegations

Lay and other advocates also delivered a letter to Bailey Monday asking for an investigation of facilities like Agape School in Stockton, Circle of Hope Ranch in Humansville and Kanakuk Kamps in Branson.

Agape has been accused of physical and sexual abuse, including restraint and starvation.

The daughter of the owners of Circle of Hope Girls’ Ranch came forward in 2021 with stories of abuse. The facility is now shuttered, and the owners face 100 felony counts under prosecution by the Attorney General’s Office.

Former campers have alleged sexual abuse by a Kanakuk Kamps staffer and concealment of the abuse.

The letter submitted to Bailey reads: “Ample evidence already exists in the public record that these institutions lack oversight and sometimes attract predators who hurt kids.”

Advocates said oversight of facilities with known abuse will lead to widespread change in the child-boarding industry.

“Institutions don’t change unless there’s a threat of liability,” Robb said. “Just look at the history of time. They don’t change unless they can be sued.”

Bailey, in a statement to The Independent, said he will always “fight for Missouri to be the safest state in the nation for children.”

In 2021, former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt bemoaned local authorities for holding up the closure of Agape Boarding School after years of abuse allegations.

Agape announced its closure in January of 2023, blaming financial strains. In late 2022, a Cole County judge ruled that the school’s director was allowed to remain off Missouri’s child-abuse registry.

The Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri (MOHELA)'s Columbia operating center, as photographed Feb. 28 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday dug into complaints against a Missouri-based student-loan servicer, though the organization’s executive director refused to attend. 

Wednesday’s meeting of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs focused on the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, or MOHELA, and other loan servicers that have received widespread criticism in recent years. 

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is the committee’s chair and has made student loan cancellation a key part of her political platform.

The hearing follows an explosive investigative report by the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) and the American Federation of Teachers alleging four in 10 people with a loan serviced by MOHELA have been impacted by servicing failures.

MOHELA, in a cease-and-desist letter dated March 25 to the SBPC, said the report contained “false, misleading and sensationalized claims.”

Yet committee members often looked to the SBPC’s deputy executive director and managing counsel, Persis Yu, to describe MOHELA’s conduct during Wednesday’s hearing.

Yu repeated elements of the SBPC’s report, saying Wednesday that, “MOHELA chose a complex call-deflection scheme, a Byzantine loop of misinformation and false promises.”

MOHELA’s “call deflection” was outlined in a playbook for the return-to-repayment period in the fall, but the servicer said it was given directions to use call deflection from the federal government. In fact, the FSA’s communications playbook sent to servicers in July 2023 mentions call deflection 13 times.

Some witnesses on Wednesday called for statutory fixes, saying that complaints against MOHELA stem from problems at a federal level.

There are two class-action lawsuits alleging MOHELA mismanaged loans. One additionally names the federal government as a plaintiff.

“Recent accusations suggesting servicers are responsible for a large backlog of public service loan forgiveness applications and that the backlog is intentional are also false,” Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, told the committee. “Today, FSA makes all decisions about whether to approve or deny forgiveness. So the vast majority of the backlog resides at a resource-constrained FSA.”

The latest Public Service Loan Forgiveness report, dated June 2023, shows a backlog of almost 890,000 applications. This report does not say where the applications are in the approval process and whether they are waiting on federal approval or action from MOHELA.

MOHELA said in its March 25 letter to the SBPC that it has fewer than 15,000 new forms to process.

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, said he felt like Buchanan was making excuses for MOHELA.

“​When I hear (issues) with this frequency and depth and stories, then you know something is wrong,” he said. “I support additional funding for the Office of Student Aid, but I don’t believe MOHELA was living up to its customer service commitments under its existing contract.”

Menendez mentioned legislation, like one that sought to eliminate student-loan relief as taxable income. The concept and perceived perks of loan forgiveness was part of the discussion.

Mayor of Kansas City Quinton Lucas was in Washington, D.C., to testify on Wednesday, telling the committee  he had a loan serviced by MOHELA but focusing primarily on federal relief programs.

“Student debt relief fundamentally would alleviate the financial burden on our residents, helping families cover rising costs of living and encouraging them importantly to invest in our local economies and their own futures,” he said.

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, lauded President Joe Biden’s administration’s efforts to trim student debt, adding the administration had “its hands tied behind its back” after a first attempt at loan forgiveness.

He brought up Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s successful case before the U.S. Supreme Court last year that blocked pandemic-induced loan forgiveness.

Warren noted that MOHELA was the crux of that case.

“The Republican states challenging President Biden’s plan basically couldn’t explain how they were harmed by student debt cancellation, and without an explanation of how they were harmed, they didn’t have legal standing to sue,” she said. “So their answer was MOHELA.”

Warnock had a similar view of the court’s decision, adding he believes MOHELA was “complicit” in the takedown of loan forgiveness because the company “stayed silent” during legal proceedings.

Internal communications released last year show employees were troubled about the quasi-governmental nonprofits inclusion in the lawsuit.

Tuesday, Bailey filed a lawsuit against another student-debt-relief plan, also naming MOHELA. It does not appear that the nonprofit consented to this lawsuit, either.

State Treasurer Vivek Malek testifies in January in support of a bill by Sen. Andrew Koenig that would expand the MOScholars program. Both are campaigning for the 2024 State Treasurer's election (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Lawmakers are raising concerns about what they believe is a lack of transparency in Missouri’s nearly two-year old private school tax credit program.

The administrator of the MOScholars program, State Treasurer Vivek Malek, says the criticism is misplaced, arguing lawmakers are making overly broad requests for data in a manner that is taxing the small staff in the treasurer’s office.

And the debate is playing out as the GOP-run legislature seeks to expand the program to make it available to more students, both by raising the income threshold and permitting its use statewide.

“It is honestly getting very difficult to get any information out of the treasurer’s office at all,” state Sen. Andrew Koenig, a Republican from Manchester who is running against Malek in the GOP primary, said during a Senate debate last month.

The criticism began during a Senate committee hearing on a MOScholars expansion bill in January. Democrats on the committee asked Malek and his staff about program demographics, information they argued has been murky.

“We’re having a hard time getting information,” state Sen. Tracy McCreery, a Democrat from Olivette, said during the hearing. “Do you have any thoughts on if the schools that are receiving the voucher plans should also be subject to Sunshine Law, just like other educational institutions?”

Malek told Democrats: “I can assure you my office will provide you those answers within 48 hours.”

State Sen. Doug Beck, an Affton Democrat, asked for data on the program before the January hearing and received a screenshot of a webpage with basic demographic information.

“After I asked for all the data, (a staff member) sent me a screenshot of a website,” Beck said. “That’s why I went off in the meeting. Like, this is crap.”

According to emails obtained by The Independent, Beck on Jan. 7 asked for “all the data you have compiled on the MO Scholars program.” He did not cite Missouri’s Sunshine Law, which outlines procedures for public records requests.

Ray Bozarth, Malek’s chief of staff,  responded, writing: “It’s my understanding you may have some questions regarding the MOScholars program. How may I help you?”

Kern Chhikara, Malek’s spokesman, told The Independent the treasurer’s office had to guess what Beck wanted because of the broad nature of his request.

“Sen. Beck asked vaguely for ‘all the data,’ and we interpreted that request as all the key metrics for the program,” Chhikara said. “When Sen. Beck complained about the data we provided him, we promptly followed up with data that was responsive to some of the various questions and concerns he expressed in a hearing.”

Immediately following the committee hearing, Bozarth sent a spreadsheet that answered questions Beck had, like how many students previously attended private schools before receiving MOScholars funding. Beck still has unanswered questions.

In the program’s first enrollment class, 33% of students had attended private school prior to receiving the scholarship, 36% attended public school, 24% were entering kindergarten or first grade and were thereby not counted as attending private or public schools previously. 

The remaining students were educated at home or in charter schools.

Beck is particularly concerned with the number of students who are receiving the money, which is rerouted from the state’s general fund, to pay for a private school they were already attending.

Koenig told The Independent he asked for data such as program enrollment by school, student demographics and student testing data. He never received the data showing which schools students attend. The Independent obtained a file with that information from the treasurer’s office in November.

In a statement to The Independent, Chhikara said the office only recalls Koenig’s request for performance data. A report on student performance must be publicly available, by state law, after the third year of the program, which would be next year.

The office has the raw data, but it does not have the staff required to generate a report.

“The legislature wrote the bill to require students to take a state achievement test or a nationally norm-referenced test. The problem here is that there are a lot of different norm referenced tests,” Chhikara told The Independent. “The large amount of eligible tests for students to take resulted in diversely formatted testing data being submitted to the State Treasurer’s Office.”

The sheer volume of testing data, and the diverse formatting, would require a full-time employee to learn software that could be used to aggregate the data, Chhikara said. 

 “We do not have the staff capacity to handle such a task,” he said, “which is why we had planned on posting the position this summer. If legislators want testing data provided sooner, they could change the statute.”

Koenig said he received some data but hoped to get more so that he could compare program participants to public-school test scores.

“I would have hoped that they would have done a little bit of work on that,” Koenig said, “because they would have at least gotten one year of data by May of last year.” 

The State Treasurer’s Office has 49 employees, according to the state’s accountability portal, with some not working any hours in the last pay period. In 2020, prior to the creation of MOScholar, the treasurer’s office had 51 employees on its books.

Malek has been at the helm of the operation since January of 2023, after Gov. Mike Parson appointed him to fill the vacancy left when Scott Fitzpatrick was elected state auditor. 

Much of the staff under Fitzpatrick followed him to the auditor’s office.

Beck said he never asked the office for information when Fitzpatrick was treasurer.

“I actually have more confidence that (Fitzpatrick) knew what was going on,” Beck said.

It is unclear whether Malek was aware of lawmakers’ difficulties with the office. Chhikara said he doesn’t know which inquiries staff members briefed Malek on.

“Generally,” he said, “staff keep (Malek) informed about media and legislator inquiries.” 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is leading a group of seven states in a legal challenge against the federal government's SAVE Plan, an income-driven student-loan repayment plan (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is seeking to squash a nearly eight-month-old program that has waived $1.2 billion in student loans for 153,000 borrowers and limited the payment amounts for 8 million others. 

He is joined by the attorneys general from Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s SAVE Plan, an income-driven repayment plan launched in August of last year and is set to be fully implemented in July.

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach filed his own legal challenge of the SAVE Plan at the end of March alongside 10 other states. Bailey said at the time that he was “extremely pleased” to see Kobach’s lawsuit, announcing the same day that he intended to file a similar motion.

He followed through on the promise Tuesday. 

“Between our two coalitions of states, we will get this matter in front of a judge even more quickly to deliver a win for the American people,” he said in a news release.

Bailey was part of a legal challenge of an earlier program for student-loan forgiveness, which culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court striking down the federal government’s plan last June.

In that lawsuit, the Department of Education had proposed using the Heroes Act to give widespread relief during the pandemic.

Included in Bailey’s argument in that lawsuit was that debt relief would hurt the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, or MOHELA. 

The quasi-governmental nonprofit did not consent to be part of the original lawsuit, and internal communications released last year showed some of the company’s employees expressing apprehension about being involved. .

Bailey’s latest lawsuit also claims harm against MOHELA.

“By accelerating the forgiveness timeline for the typical borrower by as much as 15 years, the final rule imposes financial harm on MOHELA, and thus the State of Missouri, by depriving MOHELA of up to 15 years in servicing fees,” the attorneys general wrote in the lawsuit.

MOHELA did not respond to a request for comment.

Although some of the arguments remain, the department has used a different federal law to justify the SAVE Plan. This time around, the department is pulling its authority from the Higher Education Act, which was first enacted in 1965 but has been amended since.

The Higher Education Act authorizes need-based financial aid for college students, among other provisions.

Bailey argues that, when Congress passed the Higher Education Act, they didn’t intend for it to be used as the SAVE Plan does.

The SAVE Plan, when fully implemented, would cap borrowers’ loan payments at 5% of their discretionary income. In February, the Department of Education announced that of the 7.5 million people that had enrolled in the program, 4.3 million had a $0 monthly payment.

The SAVE Plan also promises loan forgiveness within 10 years for those who borrowed $12,000 or less. For those who initially borrowed over $12,000, the department says it will relieve debts with an additional year for each $1,000 beyond $12,000 borrowed.

Bailey argues in Tuesday’s lawsuit that the 10-year period is problematic because of another federal program, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, or PSLF, which forgives student debt for those who have worked in public service for 10 years and made payments on their loans during that period.

“PSLF is so important for government agencies because, before the Final Rule, PSLF was comparatively much more generous than any other federal loan repayment program. That gave borrowers a sizeable incentive to work for public service employers,” the lawsuit says.

Bailey repeatedly refers to the 10-year cost of loan forgiveness citing both the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of $276 billion and the Penn-Wharton Budget Model’s $475 billion prediction.

The lawsuit mentions a debt-relief plan announced Monday by President Joe Biden but does not appear to explicitly challenge it. 

The SAVE Plan is a component of the latest plan, which also relies on the Higher Education Act.

Solicitor General Josh Divine, who signed Tuesday’s lawsuit on behalf of Bailey’s office, was part of a rulemaking committee that shapes the latest debt-relief plan announced Monday. He stepped down from the committee after his peers rejected his proposal to bring in business leaders as a constituency group.

“There’s essentially no program for small business owners, people who didn’t go to college, people who went to trade schools or went through alternative career processes,” Divine told the committee in December.

Bailey, who was appointed to his position by Gov. Mike Parson, is running for a full term in office this year.

Sen. Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, names education policy as a top priority in a speech after his colleagues unanimously approved his appointment as president pro tem on Jan. 4, 2023 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Caleb Rowden only has a few more months left as a Missouri lawmaker, and he wants to leave a legacy in his hometown of Columbia. 

The Senate president pro tem will leave office this year because of term limits, and before he’s done he wants to change state law to allow charter schools in the local district. And even though nearly every school district in his county opposes the change, Rowden knows this might be the last chance to get it done.

“My stated goal is not to abolish public education and just make everything private. That is never going to happen,” he told reporters Thursday. “I want public education to be functioning, hitting on all cylinders. I want those schools to be museums where people can go and get the best education that they can get anywhere in the world, in a public school in Missouri, that would be incredible.”

Rowden’s district was redrawn for this election, with population growth in Columbia requiring Boone County to get its own Senate seat. That gives Democrats a major advantage, and the frontrunner in the race to replace Rowden in the seat — former Democratic state Rep. Stephen Webber — is not on board with the charter school expansion. 

Suzette Waters, president of Columbia Public Schools’ Board of Education, said Rowden referred to the situation as they talked about her opposition to authorizing charter schools in the county. Rowden, she said, didn’t think the incoming senator would have the same appetite for charters.

“This was his last chance to get something done in Boone County, because with Stephen Webber coming in, it wasn’t gonna go,” Waters told The Independent.

Waters met with Rowden after the Senate approved a 153-page education bill that coupled charter school expansion in Boone County with myriad other provisions, from an expansion of a private school tax credit scholarship to a change to the formula that funds public schools.

Currently, Missouri only has charter schools in Kansas City and St. Louis. Charter schools, according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, are “independent public schools that are free from some rules and regulations that apply to traditional public school districts.”

Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Warrensburg Republican, prepared an amendment to the legislation that would have required a vote of Boone County residents to authorize charters. After a brief meeting in Rowden’s office, he ditched the idea.

Hoskins is currently running for Secretary of State, and was expecting to run against Rowden, who had announced his candidacy but had not yet filed at the time of their conversation.

Hoskins told The Independent that the meeting with Rowden didn’t include talk of the Secretary of State’s race nor any promises or deals. Less than a week after that meeting, Rowden announced his withdrawal from the race, saying a retirement from politics is what is best for his family.

“There were rumors and speculation that had been going on for several days because he had not yet filed,” Hoskins said, “but his decision to not run for Secretary of State had nothing to do with me not offering (my amendment).”

Hoskins has spoken negatively about Rowden’s role as president pro tem this session, especially after Rowden removed Hoskins and other members of the Senate Freedom Caucus from key committee positions. But when Rowden asked him not to offer the amendment, Hoskins agreed.

“Sen. Rowden has been an advocate for charter schools, and he’d like to see those going in Boone County,” Hoskins said. “This is his last year as well as my last year. I have supported charter schools in the past and ultimately decided not to offer that amendment.”

Rowden, who has represented Columbia since being elected to the Missouri House in 2012, has long called himself a “supporter of education reform.”

His advocacy for charter schools and K-12 tax-credit scholarships has earned him hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from like-minded donors, most notably retired investor Rex Sinquefield. Since 2020, Sinquefield and his wife have donated $625,000 to Rowden’s political action committee, Missouri Forward PAC.

Yet as the charter expansion makes its way through the legislative process, some critics have even begun to question Rowden’s motives.

Jeanne Snodgrass, vice president of Columbia Public Schools’ Board of Education, during a public hearing on the legislation Thursday in a Missouri House committee, voiced her opposition and wondered aloud, without naming names, whether “someone with a sister that runs private schools might want to expand to charters and then get public taxpayer money for that.”

Rowden’s sister, Rebekah Jouret, is the principal of Christian Chapel Academy in Columbia, a private Christian school with students grades K-8.

Rowden balked at the accusation, telling reporters his support for charters is not based on any personal or familial benefit.

“Their Christian school would never become a charter school because they’d have to give up a tremendous amount of autonomy and their ability to teach things that are grounded in faith. I can’t imagine that they would ever do that,” he said. “I, frankly, never had that conversation with my sister.

 “My support for education reform has been well-documented and has been long-running long before my sister was in that role.”

The legislation that could bring charter schools to Boone County originated as an expansion of the tax-credit scholarships. Rowden is in support of enlarging the program and told reporters earlier this year he would even be in favor of a state appropriation for the K-12 scholarships.

All but one of Boone County’s superintendents wrote in a letter earlier this month that lawmakers should focus on funding public schools.

“In Boone County, our public schools are the heart of our communities. Strong public schools mean strong, thriving communities. Public schools impact economic growth, workforce development, employment, and populations,” the superintendents of five Boone County school districts wrote. “Dismantling those structures by introducing charter schools will hurt the very fabric of our communities.”

Centralia was the only district left out of the signed letter to lawmakers.

Waters told The Independent that districts have concerns that introducing charter schools to Boone County will worsen an already restrictive budget.

“If every kid that leaves CPS and goes to a charter school comes from the same building in the same grade level, yes, we can economize by reducing our staff, just for those classes. But that’s not how it works,” she said. “They come from all different grade levels, a couple at this building, a couple at that building.”

She worries the district would have to cut services even if just a few hundred children leave Columbia Public Schools. She discussed this with Rowden earlier this month after the Senate approved the legislation.

Rowden described it as a “great conversation.”

“(Rowden) kept saying, ‘We’re only talking about a couple hundred kids. It is not going to hurt you guys that much,’” Waters recalls of their talk.

She told him her concerns, pushing against his lack of fear.

“I would say it was a respectful conversation, but at the  end of it, we come from polar opposite viewpoints on what is appropriate for Boone County public schools,” she said.

Rowden told reporters he hopes the legislation will pass with the inclusion of charter schools in his home county.

“I don’t think that the implementation of a charter school or two or three in Columbia would in any way keep public education from continuing to flourish and grow and regain the trust in the community,” he said.

A Missouri House committee is scheduled to vote on the legislation Tuesday.

State Sen. Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester, filed his candidacy for State Treasurer at the end of February. If elected, he would oversee the MOScholars program — a K-12 tax-credit scholarship he seeks to expand in his bill, SB727 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Homeschooling families and lobbyists representing public school groups renewed their opposition to a wide-ranging education bill on Thursday, outnumbering advocates who testified during a House committee hearing.

The criticism echoed previous concerns with the bill, despite a litany of new provisions added by the Senate designed to win over Democrats and public school advocates.

The bill began as an expansion to the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program, called MOScholars, with provisions to bump the income cap for program eligibility and end geographic restrictions. After negotiations, over a 100 pages added to the legislation by the Senate, including boosts to public-school funding, teacher recruitment efforts and the authorization of charter schools in Boone County.

Homeschoolers have questioned their inclusion in the MOScholars program, with many families saying they worry it will have negative long-term consequences for the larger homeschooling community.

The bill’s sponsor — Republican state Sen. Andrew Koenig of Manchester — created a new category in the legislation designed to assuage those concerns. Dubbed “family-paced education,” the group would mirror homeschool statute but would be allowed to participate in MOScholars.

“That way, at any point in time in the future, if there were some kind of strings that were attached, homeschoolers will be protected,” Koenig told the House’s Special Committee on Education Reform Thursday morning.

But homeschooling parents who testified Thursday were not won over.

“(Family-paced education) or homeschooling, whatever you want to call it, is the same thing as homeschooling. Legally, a court is likely to interpret (family-paced education) as homeschooling,” Melissa Jacobs, who homeschools her eight children, told the committee Thursday morning. “We do not want to have to be under the same regulations as a public school as far as curriculum goes.”

Jacobs said she heard from the Home School Legal Defense Association that the two terms — family-paced education and homeschooling — could be considered the same in a courtroom.

“In the future, the concern is that it would not be an opt-in thing and that would be required for all homeschoolers to register with the state and do state testing and change,” she said.

Some homeschooling families have requested to be completely removed from state programs like MOScholars to guarantee their independence.

In November, there were 13 homeschooled children enrolled in the MOScholars program, according to data from the State Treasurer’s Office.

The Senate’s efforts to mollify concerns of the public school community weren’t any more successful. 

Groups like the Missouri School Boards Association and the Missouri Association of School Administrators spoke in opposition to the bill even though it includes provisions to raise the base teacher pay and other increases to school funding.

Otto Fajen, lobbyist for the Missouri branch of the National Education Association, said he has financing worries beyond his objection to expanding MOScholars.

“There are provisions in here that substantially increase funding obligations,” he said.

He foresees a challenge for next year’s General Assembly, if the legislation passes, to fully fund the programs alongside a potential cut to corporate income taxes.

Additionally, the formula that funds Missouri’s public schools was recalculated in the fall, costing approximately $120 million in fiscal year 2025 and $300 million in fiscal year 2026.

Those who testified in favor of the bill on Thursday focused on things like the increase to teacher pay and the increased choice provided by the tax-credit scholarships.

Becki Uccello, whose daughter Izzi is a MOScholars recipient and uses a wheelchair, said the program allowed Izzi to attend an accessible school. Uccello told the committee her neighborhood school couldn’t make wheelchair-friendly modifications, offering to put it on a five-year plan. 

A nearby parochial school, she said, was more accommodating.

“Fortunately, Izzi qualified for a MOScholars scholarship because we live in Springfield and she has an (individualized education plan),” Uccello said. “But what about the families in nearby Nixa with students who have dyslexia and are not being taught to read?”

She said the bill’s proposal to open MOScholars statewide would be helpful to kids with similar experiences to her daughter’s.

Private schools are not required to accept students with individualized education plans, which outline goals and accommodations for students with disabilities, even with a MOScholars scholarship.

One person told the committee she believed that was an “equity issue.”

Representatives from conservative groups, like Lisa Pannett of ArmorVine and James Holderman of Stand for Health Freedom, also panned the legislation.

Holderman said he thought the MOScholars program could lead to government oversight of private schools, labeling it part of a “United Nations” and “globalist” agenda.

Pannett dubbed the legislation a “Democrat bill,” saying Senate Democrats — who unanimously voted against the bill — would have voted in favor of it “if they had to.”

Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independence Democrat, told reporters Thursday that his caucus does not agree with the expansion of MOScholars, which he called a “voucher system.

“We’ve seen these voucher systems be taken advantage of in other states and bankrupt public education systems, and doing all these other terrible things,” he said. 

In a compromise, Senators negotiated to boost public education funding.

“It’s a good compromise because everybody can find something they dislike in it, and everybody can find something they really do like in it,” Rizzo said.

House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat and gubernatorial candidate, told reporters that House Democrats have mixed opinions on the bill.

“Some of our members do support the voucher program, but I will tell you, personally, some of the concerns that I have is that we are taking away the cap of how much money we’re spending on (MOScholars),” she said.

The amount of tax credits allocated to MO Scholars expands and contracts proportional to the per-pupil funding of public school districts.

Quade said her focus is to maintain the investment in public schools as the House looks at the legislation.

The House’s Special Committee on Education Reform did not take action on the bill Thursday but is scheduled to vote on it Tuesday.

Missouri State Sen. Lauren Arthur, D-Kansas City, and Sen. Doug Beck, D-Affton, kick off a filibuster of a bill that would expand the state's K-12 tax-credit scholarships (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Senate Democrats ended their filibuster Tuesday of a bill that seeks to expand the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program — agreeing to let the legislation come to a vote after Republicans added provisions boosting public school funding and teacher retention efforts.

The bill receiving first-round approval by a 20-13 vote in the Senate Tuesday evening is the second version to come to the floor this week. The original 12-page bill ballooned to 76 pages before expanding to 153 pages Tuesday after negotiations.

“There are plenty of things (in the bill) that I dislike,” Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, told the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Andrew Koenig.

Koenig, a Republican from Manchester, acknowledged the compromise. 

“That makes two of us,” he said.

“I know that there are things you wish you could change, and there are things that I wish I could change. At the end of the day, I think we’ve gotten to that right balance,” Arthur said.

Republican Sens. Justin Brown of Rolla, Mike Moon of Ash Grove and Elaine Gannon of DeSoto joined Democrats voting against the bill.

Gannon has spoken against the bill at the committee level and told The Independent that she fears tax-credit scholarships pull money from public schools.

“If you want choice, pay for it. If they’re not happy, there’s other options out there, like charter schools and private schools.” she said. 

On the Senate floor Monday evening, she spoke about six counties who removed tax-credit scholarships from their local Republican Party platform.

“These six counties feel if they take public dollars, the government’s going to come in and regulate those parochial schools and private schools,” she said.

Currently only available in charter counties and cities with at least 30,000 residents, the legislation that won initial approval Tuesday would open the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program, MOScholars, statewide.

It would also increase the salary one can make to qualify for the program as low-income from 200% of the amount used to determine reduced lunch to 300%. The income cap, for a family of four, would be $166,500, under this school year’s reduced lunch eligibility.

The bill would additionally increase the amount awarded to those with limited English proficiency, those who qualify for free or reduced lunch and students with individualized education plans.

MOScholars currently has a ceiling of $50 million in tax credits, which it has not reached in its first couple years of the program. The bill seeks to raise the cap to $75 million, with an adjustment tied to the “percent increase or decrease in the amount of state aid distributed to school districts.”

Koenig has launched a campaign for State Treasurer, the office that oversees the MOScholars program.

The bill also would permit charter schools to open in Boone County. Currently, charter schools are only allowed in Kansas City and St. Louis.

Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, who is in his last year in the Senate, spoke in favor of adding a charter in his home county.

“We’re just trying to give another option for Columbia,” Rowden, a Republican from Columbia, said on the Senate floor.

These provisions were in place as Senate Democrats led a filibuster lasting roughly four hours before the chamber adjourned at 8 p.m. Monday. After closed-door negotiations, Koenig’s bill was amended to impact 24 additional sections of state law.

The changes include incentives for school districts in charter counties or cities with 30,000 or more residents to have instruction five days a week, changes to the state formula that funds public schools and boosting the minimum teacher salary to $40,000.

The foundation formula, which currently has a multiplier of student attendance, would shift to enrollment in its place. A study by Bruce Baker commissioned by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education suggested the switch last year.

“It is well understood that average daily attendance rates tend to be lower (relative to enrolled, eligible pupils) in districts that are higher in child poverty and in minority concentrations. As such, when state aid is calculated based on average daily attendance, that aid is systematically reduced in higher poverty, higher minority concentration districts,” Baker wrote.

A fiscal note has not been completed for the current version. Koenig said the changes to the state-aid formula, which would be ushered in 10% increments, would cost $70 million for each 10%.

Also added to the bill is the proposed creation of a literacy fund that could receive up to $5 million from the state’s general fund to provide grants for weekly reading programs.

Other additions include a proposal to permit school districts to pay teachers more who fill roles in “hard-to-staff” schools and areas, a boost to the career ladder program and additional pathways to teaching certifications.

One piece of the bill discussed Tuesday would allow people with bachelor’s degrees to complete an 18-hour teacher training program for credentials to teach in Missouri private schools.

Public schools could get more teachers into classrooms through a provision giving bachelor’s degree recipients “subject-area certifications” only for their areas of expertise. The bill also would strike an entrance exam to receive training in education.

Debate ended at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, with Senate leadership promising to send the bill to fiscal oversight in the morning. It needs to be approved by the Senate one more time before being sent to the House.

Autumn Equinox, a drag performer, tells Missouri House committee members that gender affirmation through drag has been lifesaving for her. The Special Committee on Public Policy debated restrictions on drag Wednesday afternoon (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

For the second year in a row, a Missouri House committee debated GOP-backed legislation that would face the same limits on drag performances as govern “sexually oriented businesses.”

The bill, sponsored by Bethany Republican Rep. Mazzie Christensen, would also create penalties for engaging in an adult cabaret performance in a location where it could be “reasonably expected to be viewed by a person who is not an adult.” The first offense would be a misdemeanor and the second a felony.

The House’s Special Committee on Public Policy debated the topic Wednesday afternoon, with a handful of opponents of the legislation attending the hearing dressed in drag.

“The intent of the bill is to protect minors,” Christensen told committee members. “Exposing children to sexual content before they’re emotionally mature enough to understand is extremely harmful to their brain development.”

Opponents to the legislation argued that not all drag is sexual in nature, and the legislation would further marginalize LGBTQ Missourians.

Christensen’s bill matches a version written at the committee level last year combining legislation filed by her and Rep. Ben Baker, a Republican from Neosho. While it cleared committee, it never made it to the House floor.

The bill defines an “adult cabaret performance” as a show that “appeals to a prurient interest” and “features topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers or male or female impersonators.”

Any business that offers an “adult cabaret” and makes over 30% of its revenue from sexually oriented material would be considered a “sexually oriented business.”

Sexually oriented businesses are restricted from operating between midnight and 6 a.m., selling alcohol or opening “one thousand feet of any preexisting primary or secondary school, house of worship, state-licensed day care facility, public library, public park, residence, or other sexually oriented business.”

Maxi Glamour, a drag performer based in St. Louis, said the zoning restrictions would prevent drag clubs from operating in the city of St. Louis. Glamour said people are moving out of the city as the state legislature enacts policies such as this.

“Jobs and progressive people are not seeing that they can be validated, appreciated and understood based on these draconian policies,” Glamour told the committee.

Lawmakers debated the bill’s language, some saying it was too “broad” and others telling attendees it would only impact sexually explicit performances.

“This legislation is aimed at folks that are wanting to conduct sexualized performances in the presence of children,” said Rep. Brad Hudson, a Cape Fair Republican.

Rep. Ashley Aune, a Democrat from Kansas City’s northland, said the language identifying “male or female impersonators” was particularly troubling and wondered whether restaurants like Twin Peaks or Hooters would fit the definition of a “sexually oriented business.”

Hudson disagreed. He said businesses must both feature the listed performers and “appeal to a prurient interest” to be restricted.

“If we were to craft this bill where there was no doubt that the only thing we were outlawing would be sexualized entertainment in the presence of young children, would (people) still be in opposition to this bill?” he asked.

Rep. Mark Sharp, a Kansas City Democrat, said at the top of the hearing that the committee “shouldn’t be hearing this bill.” He said he would be fine with his two-year-old seeing someone dressed in drag, but he said he wouldn’t want any prurient performances around his daughter.

“I think it was just to try to cover that one particular thing, I think this would be a lot of different, very different,” he said, referring to sexualized performances. “That’s not what the bill is. It does so much, so much more than that.”

Aune said it felt like an attack.

“If you just want to protect kids, why aren’t we just saying, ‘any performance by anyone that appeals to a prurient interest.’ Full stop,” she said.

The committee did not take action on the bill Wednesday.

State Sen. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, speaks in the Missouri Senate during the 2021 legislative session (Senate Communications).

A Missouri Senate committee Tuesday morning debated a bill that would ban school districts from discussing any topic or curriculum “similar to critical race theory or the 1619 Project.”

Last year, bills that sought to ban critical race theory spurred a Democratic filibuster in the Senate as opponents predicted “unintended consequences” that would remove parts of history from the classroom.

The bill discucssed Tuesday, sponsored by Warrensburg Republican Sen. Denny Hoskins, would allow Missouri’s attorney general to investigate compliance and would revoke half of a district’s state funding if a violation were found.

Hoskins, who is running in the Republican primary for secretary of state, told committee members his bill is not “trying to erase history.”

“We’re not saying that you can’t talk about history,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is say that, ‘Hey, just because you’re white, or you’re Black, that doesn’t make you automatically a racist. That doesn’t automatically mean that you think one way or another way.’”

Critical race theory, Hoskins argued, would label each of the white committee members and those that testified “a racist” and “an oppressor” because of their skin color.

Critical race theory, according to a Columbia News article, is the study of how racism has affected United States society and law.

Hoskins’s bill bars instruction of “divisive concepts,” which it defines as concepts that teach that “the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist.” or that “any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.”

No one testified in support of the legislation at Tuesday’s hearing.

Sharon Geuea Jones, a lobbyist for the Missouri NAACP and the LGBTQ advocacy group PROMO, tied similar efforts in recent years to increased violence toward Black students.

“We have to have these hard discussions. We have to have them in our educational sessions, and they have to be done in a way that is sensitive to everyone involved,” she said. “I don’t want any children, white, Black or otherwise, to feel like they are targeted by their peers.”

State Sen. Doug Beck, a Democrat from Affton, said he doesn’t like “the entire bill,” but noted that he had a particular qualm.

“My biggest issue right now is the last page of it giving the attorney general any type of power because the last two attorneys general have abused their office,” he said.

Beck said he was worried it would fuel attacks against public schools on social media.

Otto Fajen, a lobbyist for the Missouri branch of the National Education Association, said the bill could have consequences for already strained teacher recruitment and retention efforts.

“It is not so much the specifics of the bill itself, but the collateral damage it causes to, first, the desire to be in that space, to be a classroom teacher to devote your life to that while knowing that you’re going to have state laws basically communicating that the legislature has concerns about your professional judgment,” he said.

Fajen said education is important to democracy, and he worries teachers may pull back on more curriculum than the bill requires.

“This causes teachers to look at the topics that are most central to our public schools being a place where these informed discussions can be had,” he said, “and says, for fear of your livelihood, for fear of retaliation, for fear of all sorts of things that might happen: don’t delve deep into these discussions.”

The committee did not take action on the bill Tuesday.

Public Service Loan applications are processed by federal agencies before reaching the Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri, or MOHELA. The loan servicer says the two-step process can "take months" (Getty Images).

A Missouri-based loan servicing organization pushed back Friday on allegations that it mismanaged a federal aid program, arguing the U.S. Department of Education is partially to blame for complaints included in a recent report.

The Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri, better known as MOHELA, said in an emailed statement to The Independent that the company follows all guidelines laid out by the  U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid. That, the company said, may cause delays for borrowers.

“MOHELA does not have authority to process loan forgiveness until authorization is provided by FSA, which can take months to occur,” the servicer wrote.

MOHELA is currently the defendant in two class-action lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri — one of which also cites the Department of Education as a co-defendant. The lawsuits contend MOHELA’s “failure to timely process and render decisions for student loan borrowers” impacted people nationwide.

And on Wednesday, the American Federation of Teachers and the Student Borrower Protection Center published a 47-page report detailing what they referred to as MOHELA’s “servicing failures.”

MOHELA labeled the investigation a “PR campaign.”

MOHELA faces accusations it mismanaged federal student loan forgiveness program

“It is unfortunate and irresponsible that information is being spun to create a false narrative in an attempt to mislead the public. False accusations are being disingenuously branded as an investigative report,” it said.

The organizations behind Wednesday’s report began publishing information on MOHELA after the servicer was brought into a U.S. Supreme Court case that eventually struck down widespread student-loan forgiveness. MOHELA said the investigations make it seem as though it played an “active” role in the case when in fact Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey brought MOHELA into the case without its cooperation.

“The campaign claims that MOHELA was an active part of a legal challenge before the Supreme Court that challenged President Biden’s student debt relief proposal. This is false. MOHELA was not an active party in the case,” MOHELA wrote.

The report alleged MOHELA wrongfully denied Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) applications and padded its pockets doing so, which MOHELA denies.

“All borrowers entitled to PSLF are expected to receive it,” its spokesperson told The Independent. “Loans that are eligible and qualified for PSLF forgiveness are provided to MOHELA by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid for final processing and approval.”

FSA’s latest report on the status of PSLF applications, dated June 2023, says almost 890,000 applications are in “active processing.” A year prior, a month before MOHELA took over servicing of PSLF loans, the backlog was about 316,000 applications.

Borrowers have complained about long waits to receive approvals or denials, and receiving information from MOHELA can be frustrating because of a communication strategy that diverts them to the website.

In 2023, MOHELA fielded 1.3 million calls focused on Public Service Loan Forgiveness, according to its spokesperson. The servicer’s website currently warns of “high call volume.”

Democratic U.S. Senators, in a letter sent to MOHELA in July, said they were concerned that some callers waited up to nine hours to reach a customer-service representative.

In an expected surge of calls when student-loan-payments resumed in September, MOHELA unleashed a series of “call-deflection” messages, as they are called in the servicer’s communications playbook.

MOHELA said “call deflection” was a term used by FSA as it advised servicers to push customers to self-service options.

“MOHELA was directed by FSA to refer borrowers to and encourage the use of self-service options, whenever possible, to help manage the anticipated surge of millions of borrowers returning to payment at a time when all federal loan servicers were mandated by FSA to cut costs and limit customer service hours despite the anticipated high demand,”  it said.

“‘Deflection’ was used by FSA in its overarching Return to Repayment Playbook for servicers,” the statement continued.

MOHELA warned senators in August that rigid funding from the FSA would prohibit it from adding staff specifically for the surge.

It earned $68.7 million in PSLF servicing fees in fiscal year 2023, according to its financial statements.

The Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri (MOHELA)'s Columbia operating center, as photographed Feb. 28 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A quasi-governmental organization based in Missouri that services student loans is facing lawsuits and a scathing report from a pair of education organizations accusing it of gross mismanagement that needlessly resulted in borrowers losing thousands of dollars.

The accusations against the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, better known as MOHELA, were laid out in a 47-page report released Wednesday by the American Federation of Teachers and the Student Borrower Protection Center, which alleged four in 10 of MOHELA’s borrowers have been affected by “servicing failures,” such as a backlog of unprocessed loan-forgiveness applications, payment miscalculations and wrongfully denied applications.

The accusations are echoed in a pair of lawsuits. The first, filed in December, names only MOHELA as a defendant, while a second class-action suit filed in January targets both MOHELA and the U.S. Department of Education, citing “delays” from both entities.

Both lawsuits, filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, claim MOHELA’s  “failure to timely process and render decisions for student loan borrowers” impacted people nationwide.

MOHELA’s executive director did not respond to a request for comment.

The problems plaguing MOHELA has been documented in reports to U.S. senators, punitive action by the U.S. Department of Education and borrower complaints.

Many complaints focus on MOHELA’s handling of Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a federal program contracted to MOHELA in 2022 after the previous servicer FedLoan Servicing didn’t renew its contract.

Missouri company plays central role in downfall of Biden loan forgiveness program

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, or PSLF, forgives the student-loan debt of borrowers who work in public service and have made 10 years of payments.

 The program had flaws well before MOHELA’s involvement. In 2019, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that 99% of applications were denied, and wrote that the Department of Education “does not provide enough information on program requirements.”

President Joe Biden’s administration has promised to revamp the program, publicizing “regulatory improvements” and a limited PSLF waiver in 2021 and 2022 that allowed borrowers to receive credit for payments not typically eligible for the program.

In December, the Department of Education announced that 750,000 had their debt relieved through PSLF, writing that “only about 7,000 borrowers had received forgiveness through these programs at the start of the Biden-Harris Administration.” PSLF was created in 2007 under President George W. Bush’s administration.

MOHELA, prior to taking on the federal PSLF contract, had almost 2.5 million borrowers. But after taking the role as the only PSLF servicer, its portfolio ballooned to nearly 7.8 million borrowers.

In an August letter to six Democratic U.S. Senators who were trying to determine if MOHELA was ready to resume payments in September, the loan servicer admitted it would not be able to hire additional staff specifically for the surge of activity it expects, blaming a fixed-rate government contract. It earned $68.7 million in PSLF servicing fees in fiscal year 2023, according to its financial statements.

“While we continue to provide various self-service options and work to ensure as many as possible customer service representatives are ready and able to answer borrowers’ inquiries, we are limited in the funding available,” MOHELA wrote in its Aug. 8 letter. “Unfortunately, we are anticipating extended wait times and servicing delays as a result.”

MOHELA reported an average wait time of less than two minutes to connect with its customer service representatives via telephone in July 2023. Complaints referenced in the class-action lawsuit say wait times reached up to nine hours in 2022.

In October, the U.S. Department of Education withheld $7.2 million in payment from MOHELA after hearing about widespread issues.

“The Department found that MOHELA failed to meet its basic obligation by failing to send billing statements on time to 2.5 million borrowers — some within only seven days of their payment date — and over 800,000 borrowers being delinquent on their loans as a result,” the Department said in a press release.

The Democratic senators wrote to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in December with concerns about several student-loan servicers, including MOHELA.

“A Marine Corps veteran shared his experience of repeatedly trying to contact his loan servicer, MOHELA, to inquire about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, but was told his estimated wait time was over 140 minutes,” they wrote the secretary. “Another public servant reported that it is ‘virtually impossible’ to reach her servicer to resolve a time-sensitive issue that, if not resolved by the end of 2023, would make her ineligible for PSLF.”

When asked by the senators, MOHELA reported it had received 36,309 complaints in a year, of which almost 4,000 were still marked “unresolved” in its internal system.

The latest PSLF report, dated June 2023, by the Office of Federal Student Aid shows the servicer has a backlog of almost 890,000 applications.

While borrowers wait for an acceptance or denial, they still receive bills. Some may qualify for forbearance, or a pause to payments, but receiving the information requires traversing long wait times and a “call deflection” strategy.

MOHELA’s multi-stage call-deflection plan is outlined in a communications playbook created around the time student loans were set to resume. The strategy diverts callers to the website — where they aren’t able to complete every task.

Complaints compiled by the American Federation of Teachers and the Student Borrower Protection Center question the decision-making process behind PSLF application denials — a problem Politico reported on in 2021 before MOHELA serviced the program.

“Other denials were due to minor paperwork mix-ups, such as ‘improperly formatting the date.’ Another reason MOHELA listed for denial was that the borrower used an expired version of the application form. Other denial codes include: missing borrower date of birth, missing borrower signature, and missing signature date,” the AFT and SBPC’s report says.

A spreadsheet obtained by the organizations show MOHELA denied Public Service Loan Forgiveness to employees of the Missouri Department of Agriculture, Parkway School District, City of Lamar and other employers that should qualify a borrower for the program. MOHELA redacted the column showing the reason for denials.

MOHELA is currently in contract with the Department of Education through the end of 2024.

Missouri candidates wait to pull a number in the candidate-filing system Tuesday morning (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Political candidates who make national headlines — and those who may only be known in their hometown — descended on Jefferson City Tuesday morning for the first day of a month-long window to file to run for office in Missouri.

To run for office, candidates have no choice but to show up in person. Some take advantage of the moment, talking to journalists and sending press releases. Others exit through the building’s back door to avoid questions.

Those making the trek on the first day have a separate entrance into the James C. Kirkpatrick State Information Center, home of the Secretary of State’s office. First, they confirm registration with a political party and pay a fee to run under that party’s banner. 

Then they wait in a line on the building’s third floor.

U.S. Rep. Sam Graves was the first to get through the line Tuesday morning, finishing the process at 8:07 a.m. according to the Secretary of State’s website. A total of 435 candidates filed by 5 p.m.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft greeted candidates upstairs, smiling ear-to-ear while taking their photos as they waited in line and making quips about the political process.

Candidates’ place on the ballot is determined by a number they pull from an acrylic box as part of a lottery system. Those with the lowest numbers are first on the ballot.

A line of people with numbers in the 900s, some of the highest of the day, took a photo together. 

“The Bible says, ‘The first will be last,’” one said.

One filer joked with Ashcroft that, next election, the numbered tickets should be placed in a machine that blows them around the candidate — like the money-blowing machines in some arcades.

“Well, there are some people who don’t like machines in elections,” Ashcroft said with a laugh.

Valentina Gomez, a Republican candidate for Secretary of State who recently came under fire for burning books, has spoken against “voting machines.” She posted on X, formerly Twitter, that “we must blow up the corrupt voting machines” less than a week before filing day.

Gomez is one of four Republican candidates for Secretary of State who filed Tuesday along with three Democrats. Current Missouri lawmakers Denny Hoskins, a Republican state senator; Adam Schwadron, a Republican state representative; and Barbara Phifer, a Democratic state representative are running for Secretary of State.

Sen. Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican, has announced he’s running for secretary of state but did not file Tuesday.

Some of Tuesday’s filers brought political consultants and campaign managers. A staffer for Wesley Bell carried a kelly green Hermes Birkin bag with her as she followed Bell around the building.

Others brought loved ones. Gubernatorial candidate Mike Kehoe’s wife, Claudia, donned a kelly green suit to match her husband’s campaign colors.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Darrell Leon McClanahan III, who wore a feathered western hat, brought his children. McClanahan lost a bid for a U.S. Senate seat in 2022, receiving less than 1% of the votes in the primary.

A dozen supporters of U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, who represents Missouri’s First District, followed her around the building and reverberated in agreement as she spoke to reporters.

Democratic Attorney General candidate Elad Gross brought along one of his biggest fans and a campaign sidekick: Liberty Belle, his rescue dog.

Gross held a filing-day tailgate in the parking lot prior to registration opening, with Panera bagels and coffee. His truck says “End puppy mills,” along with campaign visuals.

He told The Independent he believes Liberty Belle came from an abusive breeding situation he would describe as a “puppy mill.” Liberty Belle, who is familiar with the campaign trail, hobbles on three legs with the fourth tucked.

Gross, who has raised almost $115,000 as the only Democrat in the attorney general race, is hoping to face candidates with much larger campaign war chests. Andrew Bailey, the current Attorney General appointed by Gov. Mike Parson, has raised over $2 million between his campaign and associated political action committee. Will Scharf, a former assistant U.S. attorney and an aide to ex-Gov. Eric Greitens, has raised almost $1.2 million. 

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley has $4.9 million on hand for his campaign to keep his seat. Hawley did not attend the first day of filing Tuesday.

His Democratic opponent, Marine veteran Lucas Kunce, filed that morning with nearly $2.2 million in hand for his campaign.

“I don’t care if you’re Democrat or Republican or who you’ve voted for in the past,” Kunce told reporters. “This race is going to make a huge difference, my race in this state. And we need to flip this seat.”

Other no-shows on Tuesday include State Treasurer Vivek Malek, who is facing State Sen. Andrew Koenig and State Rep. Cody Smith among others for his position.

This story has been updated at 6:18 p.m. Tuesday to reflect the cash on hand for U.S. Senate candidates.

After filing for re-election, Congresswoman Cori Bush speaks to reporters about her campaign (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

After filing for re-election, Congresswoman Cori Bush speaks to reporters about her campaign (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Wesley Bell, who is hoping to unseat Cori Bush for Missouri's First District congressional seat, tells reporters he believes Bush isn't properly representing the district (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Will Scharf, a GOP candidate for Missouri Attorney General, tells reporters about his campaign Tuesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Lucas Kunce, who is challenging Josh Hawley for a U.S. Senate seat, speaks to reporters on the first day of campaign filing Tuesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Lucas Kunce, who is challenging Josh Hawley for a U.S. Senate seat, speaks to reporters on the first day of campaign filing Tuesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe answers questions outside prior to filing his candidacy for governor Tuesday morning (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

State Sen. Bill Eigel, R-Weldon Spring, tells reporters his plan if he becomes governor, like a "capture and deport" policy for undocumented immigrants, prior to filing his candidacy Tuesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

State Rep. Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat, answers questions about her campaign for governor Tuesday before filing for candidacy (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

State Rep. Ed Lewis, R-Moberly, waits to file for re-election Tuesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

U.S. Rep Emanuel Cleaver walks through the Missouri candidate filing process Tuesday morning (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

State Sen. Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester, walks upstairs to file his candidacy for Missouri State Treasurer Tuesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft takes candidates' photos as they wait in line to file for the upcoming primary election (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Congresswoman Ann Wagner cringes after seeing the result of the lottery-based number draw. Candidates with high numbers will be below their opponents on the ballot (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Democratic candidate for Missouri Attorney General Elad Gross trots out of a room where candidates pull their filing number Tuesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Maria Yepez Damian, regional manager for Elad Gross's campaign, stands with Gross's dog Liberty Belle. Earlier in his campaign for Missouri Attorney General, Gross held a tour in Liberty Belle's name (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Washington University in St. Louis has quadrupled its portion of Pell-eligible students in the past decade (James Byard/Washington University).

Washington University in St. Louis — criticized a decade ago for rock-bottom low-income enrollment — says it has carved out spaces for economically disadvantaged students as part of a new plan to increase need-based aid.

Late last year, the university announced that 21% of its freshmen were Pell eligible, meaning they showed financial need after filling out a federal student aid application, and 17% were the first in their families to attend college.

Currently, Pell-eligible students make up around 18.5% of Ivy League students and 40% at other institutions, according to a study by policy analysts at the HEA Group.

Washington University recently shifted to “need-blind” admissions, meaning financial status is not considered in a student’s application, and replaced any need-based loans with scholarships.

In 2013, The New York Times quoted former Chancellor Mark Wrighton saying need-blind admissions were “not our highest priority.” That year, 6% of its first-year students were Pell-eligible.

Now, with nearly a four-fold increase in Pell-eligible students, current Chancellor Andrew Martin is seeing a change in the campus.

“We were basically ignoring a lot of our lower income students in the past because we were on a limited financial aid budget and so the quality of the student body is better,” he said in an interview with The Independent. “The socioeconomic diversity also provides geographic diversity and greater racial and ethnic diversity. 

“It is just a much more interesting student body. And that diversity helps create a much richer learning environment for everyone.”

Martin believes the university’s strategy could apply to other colleges hoping to increase socioeconomic diversity.

A new start

Martin took over as chancellor in 2019, and said he made education access “one of the three pillars of my leadership.”

“It is so important for us to go and find students with incredible talent wherever they happen to be,” he said. “There are a lot of talented students, particularly across Missouri and around the country who can’t afford a Washington University education, so we need to make it possible for them to be able to afford it.”

During the 2019-2020 school year, Washington University students paid an average of $27,233 after grants and scholarships, according to data reported to the U.S. Department of Education. A decade prior, students paid an average of $31,391, or $37,355 adjusted for inflation.

Based on this data, the average cost of attendance has decreased 27% over 10 years. Still, administrators have continued to unveil new options for students with financial need.

The “WashU Pledge,” announced during Martin’s inauguration, provides funding for any costs not covered by federal grants for students whose families make $75,000 or less a year. Students from Missouri and from 51 counties in the southern Illinois region are eligible.

“We had been hearing that some of the best students, that are lower income students, from the state were choosing to leave the state to go elsewhere,” Martin said. “And we thought that that was a real missed opportunity.”

Martin said universities interested in adopting a similar model should look into how many low-income students they can fund.

“If you don’t do it in a financially sustainable way, it’s obviously not going to last for the long term,” he said. “It is harmful for a university to bring in a large group of lower income students in one year and then the following year, say, ‘We can’t admit that many, so we’re gonna have to pull it back.’”

It may mean taking a slower approach, he said.

Martin also recommended having “comprehensive student support” for first-generation and low-income students.

“This isn’t about remedial coursework,” he said. “This is about taking incredibly talented students, some of whom have had limited opportunities, and how do they navigate a place that’s foreign to them?”

Washington University has a center, established in 2014, that seeks to do just that.

Mark Kamimura-Jiménez, the university’s associate vice chancellor for student affairs, works with students in the Taylor Family Center for Student Success — a key part of the university’s strategy for retaining low-income students.

There are a few cohorts catered to low-income and first-generation students, one being the Taylor Stars program. Kamimura-Jiménez said these cohorts allow students to connect with one another and university-provided resources, like guidance counselors specific to them.

There is also a physical space for students to study, talk, play games and build relationships in the center. Kamimura-Jiménez told The Independent it is like “another home space for them on campus.”

“It is a dedicated space for them to be able to ask questions that they may not feel as comfortable asking in other spaces,” he said.

Mentorship and tailored academic advising, he said, is integral to lowering attrition rates.

U.S. Department of Education data shows that 93% of Washington University’s students graduate within eight years of beginning classes, including 87% of Pell-eligible students. Martin said his goal is to get those rates to be as close as possible.

The goal of bringing first-generation students through graduation is growing nationally, with more philanthropy being devoted to this population.

Nick Watson, senior program officer for college program success at Bloomberg Philanthropies, said graduation rate is a focus of the nonprofit’s work through a program called the American Talent Initiative.

The American Talent Initiative seeks to graduate low- and moderate-income students at top universities through its 135 affiliated public and private colleges. Washington University is the only Missouri school in the program and has additionally launched into a related program, the Kessler Scholars Collaborative.

“The American Talent Initiative, in some ways, is a macro project of how do we get more students to college from lower income backgrounds,” Gail Gibson, Kessler Scholars’ executive director, told The Independent. “The opportunity for the Kessler Scholars project to work within that is more of this kind of micro examination of once we have low-income and especially first-generation students into institutions, what’s the experience of those students on the ground?”

Kessler Scholars Collaborative began at the University of Michigan, thanks to the generosity of alumni Judy Kessler Wilpon and Fred Wilpon, with its first set of students in 2017. By 2020, the scholarship program partnered with Bloomberg Philanthropies to expand.

Washington University welcomed its first Kessler Scholars last fall as one of 16 campuses accepted into the collaborative program.

The students are grouped into a cohort and equipped with mentors, career advising and a stipend.

“Research in higher ed has shown us that students who are part of a sort of smaller subset like a cohort based community do tend to perform better over time,” Gibson said.

Although Washington University already promises students they shouldn’t need to take out a loan to afford school, the Kessler Scholars program still provides money to its cohort. Gibson said participating campuses sometimes change the usage of the stipend, but it typically funds study-abroad expenses and internships she says first-generation students often miss out on. It can also be used as an emergency fund in some situations.

“Michigan found that actually if they were to offer these kinds of emergency grants for students to not miss opportunities, they actually would persist and graduate at the same rate of higher income peers,” Watson said.

Kessler Scholars participants at the University of Michigan graduated at nearly the same rate as peers whose parents had a bachelor’s degree, with 83% of Kessler participants graduating in four years compared to 84% of students not identified as first-generation.

Gibson said the program plans to publish its findings on best practices to improve these rates in hopes that more colleges will adopt policies to embrace first-generation and low-income students.

Beyond Washington University

Watson said a “perfect storm” of three factors may spur more need-based aid: a new federal student aid application, the redefinition of federal student aid and the end of affirmative action.

He said some colleges predicted the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down race-based admissions and were proactive.

“I do think a lot of particularly selective institutions got smart and started thinking about what would happen if we can’t use race in how we make holistic decisions around admissions right. So people started to look at other proxies, whether that was Pell and eligibility or whether that was first-generation status,” Watson said.

But the idea of meeting financial needs isn’t groundbreaking, he said.

“If you ask me if need-based aid is anything new? I don’t think so at all,” Watson said. “I think it is getting more attention because all these perfect storms are coming together.”

Gibson also predicts an increased focus on family income in coming years.

“First-generation status is not a perfect proxy for race or ethnic minority status. But it is one way to assure that your campus reflects more of a community and that it is a more diverse place than it otherwise would be,” Gibson said.

Watson said universities that want to support first-generation students and add socioeconomic diversity must make the mission a financial priority.

Washington University funds its need-based aid through its endowment fund, expendable gifts and the operating budget. Martin told The Independent that the university spends 4-5% of its endowment for grant programs, and he spends time traveling and promoting philanthropy.

“​​In terms of our operating budget, this is just putting our money where our mouth is,” he said. “We talk a good game about supporting first-generation, lower income students. By allocating our existing resources for that purpose, as opposed to other purposes, is us living up to that commitment.”

The net cost of attending a public, four-year college increased at a rate of 4.7% between 2019 and 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. The price of going to a not-for-profit university rose 4.8% in the same period.

The net cost rose more than the price of tuition and fees, showing a trend of declining aid nationwide.

Washington University is a private college, so it does not receive money from the state budget. Public universities must operate by a different set of rules, including a dependence on state lawmakers to allocate funding. 

Missouri’s higher education budget shakes down to around $5,944 per full-time-equivalent student, according to an analysis of state budgets by the National Science Board. Missouri ranks 38th in higher education funding on a per-pupil basis in this report.

Emily Haynam, executive director of student financial aid at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said donors are more likely to give to need-based aid than merit-based.

“They want their scholarships to help students who otherwise might not be able to afford to attend the college or help them ease the burden of attending college and provide more access and affordability to more students,” she said.

The university doesn’t have any specific grants for first-generation students, but it does consider Pell eligibility.

In 2018, the University of Missouri-Columbia added the “Missouri Land Grant” — unaffiliated with its federal funding as a land-grant university — that covers up to five years of tuition for Pell-eligible students from Missouri.

Haynam said the University of Missouri, like Washington University, has been “steadily growing our expenditures of scholarships.”

But admissions look different at the two colleges.

Martin said Washington University receives over 30,000 applicants for 1,800 seats.

“There are some colleges and universities that need to offer merit aid in order to be able to attract the very best students,” he said. “For those institutions, it’s really important that they continue to do that. We don’t need to do that in order to be able to recruit the very best.”

Christian Basi, director of public affairs at the University of Missouri-Columbia, told The Independent part of the college’s recruitment process is traveling to high schools statewide.

“You’re talking about everything from rural to urban and everywhere in between, our admissions team, it’s their job to make sure that we’re reaching a broad student body that would consider going to Mizzou,” he said.

Basi said the university has made small tweaks over the past eight years to lower the cost of services like dining and books.

“That kept us much more affordable than many of our other competitors that students were looking at either in-state or out-of-state,” he said.

Martin said he recently talked with a student from out of state who wasn’t considering a college education until a high-school counselor showed him colleges with extensive financial aid.

“He has been quite successful in our business school, and it’s life changing,” Martin said.

He feels excitement from students in need-based programs, saying many delve into their studies.

“It really engendered a lot of excitement among our student body and our entire community because we’re all pulling together,” he said. “This administration and the students and the faculty and the staff and our donors all piling on resources and focusing on a single goal is really paying off in terms of the quality of students we are able to recruit.”

Missouri State Reps. Doug Richey, R-Excelsior Springs, and Brad Hudson, R-Cape Fair, present bills to the House Special Committee on Education Reform Monday afternoon (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Organizations representing homeschool families raised concerns about legislation debated Monday seeking to expand a tax credit program that helps pay for students to attend private and religious schools. 

A dozen bills proposing changes to the tax-credit program, dubbed MOScholars, have been filed this legislative session in both the House and Senate. On Monday, a House committee debated four of them, each seeking to make the program more accessible to students across the state.

The program was created in 2021 and is currently only available to students identified as low-income qualifying for special education in charter counties or cities with at least 30,000 residents.

Three bills heard Monday would expand which areas of the state could participate. Two of those also increased the size of the program, and another lifted restrictions on how long a participant needed to have been attending public schools prior to receiving a scholarship. 

Sheryl Schmidt, a lobbyist for the homeschool organization Families for Home Education, said she watched other states tie oversight of homeschool families to educational-scholarship-account expansion.

She was opposed to all four bills debated on Monday, calling them “dangerous for Missouri homeschool freedoms.”

Two days prior to the hearing, Families for Home Education sent out a flier to families, asking them to testify in opposition of bills expanding MOScholars.

“What school choice really means is the government is paying for not only public and charter schools, but also for private and home schools,” it says. “Where there is ‘free’ money there is also a ‘poison pill’ of accountability (restrictions and regulations).”

Homeschooling families complained about potential for government oversight in a Senate committee hearing on a bill that would allow home-educated athletes to participate in public-school teams and clubs but define two categories of homeschooled.

Schmidt has reiterated a desire for privacy in her public testimony.

Three others representing homeschooling families took a similar stance Monday.

Danielle Dent-Breen, president of Kansas City Homeschool Connection, said homeschool families with MOScholars funding must submit to more oversight than self-funded peers, including standardized testing.

She said there are just 14 homeschool families using MOScholars, according to information she received from the State Treasurer’s Office. The Independent received a count of 13 homeschooled students, as of November 3.

The legislation

A bill by state Rep. Mark Matthiesen, a Republican from O’Fallon, would allow students who are currently enrolled in a private school to receive a MOScholars scholarship. The program currently requires recipients to have attended public school “for at least one semester in the past 12 months” or be of kindergarten age.

“My extremely simple bill simply eliminates the section that is an obstacle for students who might otherwise qualify for this,” he told the committee.

State Rep. Brad Hudson, a Republican from Cape Fair, wants to expand the program statewide rather than limiting scholarships to students living in the state’s most populated areas.

“What my bill does is it takes the current statute and it removes the geographic limitations that were approved in 2021 so that the program is open up to families and students statewide,” he said, briefly describing his two-paged bill to the committee.

Hudson’s and Matthiesen’s bills are expected to have no fiscal impact, since they do no not expand the amount of money that the program could accept.

Bills sponsored by Republican Reps. Phil Christofanelli of St. Peters and Doug Richey of Excelsior Springs propose a larger expansion of K-12 tax-credit scholarships at an estimated cost of $9.2 million.

Their legislation would allow for the program to amass $75 million in tax credits instead of the current $50 million cap and approve the appointment of an additional educational assistance organization once organizations can meet $25 million in tax credits annually.

Christofanelli and Richey also call for the end of geographic restrictions.

“I’m not a fan of telling someone that lives right across the county line that you don’t get to benefit from this when they have the very same interest that parents who live in the neighboring county do,” Richey said.

Christofanelli sponsored the bill that created the current program. He told the committee that negotiations led to the geographic restraints, among other things.

“That has been one of the most frustrating parts of the bill,” Christofanelli said. “There’s really no good reason to have those geographic restrictions in place.”

His legislation also calls for higher scholarship amounts for students who speak English as a second language, qualify for free or reduced lunch or have an individualized education plan. The increased amount follows multipliers used to give public schools more money for educating these student groups.

It would also remove background checks for homeschool families participating in the program.

“This legislation ultimately is where we want to go. It is where many other states have gone in providing a universal school choice option for every student that wants to avail themselves of one,” Christofanelli said. “It sets the balance between where I’d like to be and what I think we could practically accomplish in this legislative session.”

Advocates for public education believe the program takes away funding for public schools.

“Further expansion of vouchers in Missouri is detrimental to the public school system,” Nancy Copenhaver, legislative director for the League of Women Voters of Missouri, told the committee. “Which is severely underfunded, as shown by the ranking near the bottom of the country in beginning teacher salaries and average teacher salaries.”

According to the Missouri National Education Association, a teachers’ union, the state ranks 50th in average starting teacher pay and 47th in average teacher pay.

The committee did not take action on the bills Monday.

A tax-credit-scholarship expansion bill sponsored by state Sen. Andrew Koenig, a Manchester Republican, is currently being held for discussion in the Senate. The bill seeks to raise the income cap to be eligible for MOScholars, among provisions similar to Christofanelli’s and Richey’s bills.

A Senate committee is set to debate a pair of bills identical to Koenig’s Tuesday.

One bill, sponsored by Parkville Republican Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, mirrors the base bill. Legislation sponsored by Sen. Curtis Trent, a Springfield Republican, also includes provisions authorizing charter schools in three counties to match an approved committee substitute for Koenig’s bill. Luetkemeyer and Trent filed their bills last Wednesday.

Koenig said his bill was not ready for floor discussion when it came up on the Senate’s calendar last Wednesday.

Rep. Ed Lewis, R-Moberly, speaks in a House Elementary and Secondary Education hearing in April 2023 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Legislation boosting teacher recruitment and retention in Missouri is once again a priority of the Missouri House, with a hearing Wednesday morning on a pair of Republican-backed bills.

Rep. Ed Lewis, a Republican from Moberly, is sponsoring legislation based on the findings of the State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s blue ribbon commission. It is the third year he has sponsored legislation on teacher recruitment and retention.

“The problem is obvious to all of us at this point,” he told the committee. “We don’t have enough teachers for our public schools and, to some extent, for the private and parochial schools as well.”

After three years in a Missouri school district, an average 43.3% of teachers leave, according to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

According to the Missouri National Education Association, a teachers’ union, the state ranks 50th in average starting teacher pay and 47th in average teacher pay.

Lewis’s bill seeks to raise the base teacher pay, allow differentiated salary schedules for hard-to-staff areas and increase scholarships to recruit teachers, among other provisions.

Missouri state commission told low pay, lack of support is fueling teacher shortage

Rep. Ann Kelley, a Republican from Lamar, asked whether support staff could be added to the bill.

“The schools cannot be successful without the support staff, and the salaries of the support staff and retention and retaining those support staff is vital,” Kelley said.

Lewis was hesitant to increase the potential fiscal impact.

“We’re gonna have a hard time getting anything across the finish line on the other side,” he said, referring to the Senate.

Last year, he filed the teacher pay-raise proposals as separate bills before the committee combined them into one bill. The House overwhelmingly approved the legislation on a 145-5 vote, but filibusters in the Senate ran out the clock before it could be debated in that chamber.

Rep. Willard Haley, a Republican from Eldon, is also sponsoring a bill to raise teachers’ minimum salary — though his ask is a bit different. He hopes to raise the base to $46,000 by the 2027-28 school year. Fully implemented, the bill is estimated to cost up to $17.5 million.

“I just insist that it’s time that we start paying our teachers what they deserve,” Haley said.

He said teenagers with a high-school diploma can make more working at a local factory than some teachers do.

Currently, state statute allows schools to pay teachers as little as $25,000 or $33,000 for those with a master’s degree and 10 years of experience.

The state has a grant program, which is up for renewal annually, to raise teacher base salaries to $38,000. In the current school year, 310 school districts are using the grant for a total of 4,806 teachers, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education told The Independent.

Gov. Mike Parson has requested an increase to this program to raise the base to $40,000 for the next fiscal year.

Lewis doesn’t like relying on the annual appropriations for teacher salaries. He said he worries, with an upcoming gubernatorial election, the next governor may not fully fund the base-salary grant. 

“I don’t think we should legislate through the budget. I think that the policy should go first and the budget should follow,” he told the committee.

Haley’s bill prescribes a fund that would match district’s contributions 70/30 to get salaries to his preferred base.

Rep. Kathy Steinhoff, a Columbia Democrat, said she wanted a “broader” change.

“I look at our large school districts… 52% of our districts will see no impact from state dollars towards teacher salaries,” she said. “I feel pretty confident if we ask those districts ‘Are you having a retention problem?’ They would probably all say yes.”

Rep. Dan Stacy, a Republican from Blue Springs, asked if a base-pay increase could be tied to a decrease to another part of the budget. Haley said his bill is “top priority.”

“This is such a priority item that we must handle this,” he said. “We must fulfill this funding even at a cost to some other things. But education is that important to me.”

No one testified in opposition to the legislation Wednesday.

Perry Gorrell, interim legislative liaison for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said raising the base teacher pay is the Commissioner of Education’s top priority.

“We know that the greatest impact on student achievement is having highly qualified teachers for students. These two bills helped to ensure that,” he said.

Otto Fajen, lobbyist for the Missouri branch of the National Education Association, said the teachers’ union would like lawmakers to consider small schools with under 100 kids when looking at funding.

“While not that many of our members are going to benefit directly from the increase here, it sends a message that the legislature believes that entry pay and, overall, the earnings for teachers should resemble similar professions to make it a more viable choice going forward,” Fajen said.

Steve Carroll, a lobbyist representing the Cooperating School Districts of Greater Kansas City and St. Louis Public Schools, said he woke up at nearly 4 a.m. thinking about these bills.

He felt like his anxiety was pointless because the bills “probably won’t even make it across the finish line because of what’s going on in the Senate.”

But he saw the salary of a baseball player in a news article and marveled at society’s “priorities.” He believes teachers are the ones more deserving of higher pay.

State Rep. Paula Brown, D-Hazelwood, speaks during a July 2021 hearing of the Joint Committee on Education. She is sponsoring a bill to change statewide testing, accreditation and accountability (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Missouri lawmakers are considering a handful of bills in both the House and Senate that would change the way the state measures school performance and accreditation.

The House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee debated two bills Wednesday seeking to scrap systems developed by the state’s education department to assess schools. A Senate committee held a hearing on similar bills two weeks ago. 

Legislation sponsored by state Rep. Mike Haffner, a Republican from Pleasant Hill, would score schools purely based on achievement and growth. His bill would replace a more complex system currently used by the state to measure school effectiveness.

“We need to be measuring what matters to student achievement, student growth, college and career readiness while providing parents more transparency as to how individual schools and school districts are succeeding in providing a quality education,” he told the committee on Wednesday.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education oversees the Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP), which is in its sixth iteration. MSIP 6 measures school and district performance through factors such as standardized-test scores, perceived growth and attendance.

Districts’ MSIP 6 scores determine their accreditation, and highly-rated districts set the tone for state funding of public schools through the foundation formula.

Haffner told the committee he disagreed with some of the MSIP 6 metrics.

“We’ve got over 30% that’s based upon improvement planning, self study, climate and culture survey, required documentation,” he said. “That is not measuring academic achievement.”

Lawmaker proposes local control plan to opt Missouri districts out of state standards

But after meeting with the University of Missouri-Columbia last week, Haffner said he has started to appreciate the current growth model used by the department. Faculty at the university crafted the growth model, though some superintendents worry that the calculation is not transparent.

When Haffner filed the bill, he told The Independent through an aide that he was calculating growth differently.

State Rep. Kathy Steinhoff, a Columbia Democrat, said the language in the bill seems to prescribe a calculation of growth based on year-over-year change.

“When I look at this description, I’m just taking last year’s score and this year’s score and [finding] what’s the difference,” she said. “But I’m assuming that methodology you got from the university is much more detailed.”

Haffner said he was willing to talk about that element.

“We just want clear and accessible information to provide the information on student achievement and growth. What that looks like, we are willing to discuss,” he said.

Fewer districts should have the state’s full accreditation, Haffner said, since around a quarter of the state’s eighth-grade students are proficient in math and reading.

“Everybody sitting here on this committee is aware that our academic outcomes are now below national averages and are headed in the wrong direction,” he said, referring to the National Assessment of Education Progress. Missouri’s scores are “not significantly different from the average score” nationwide in each subject.

Otto Fajen, a lobbyist for the Missouri branch of the National Education Association, said educators are looking for more changes.

“We would be missing the opportunity to transform something that fundamentally just grades schools into something that fulfills the federal purpose, which has been narrowed and really seeks to make sure that we are actually supporting schools,” he said. “We have tools that we can pick up, but right now this bill wouldn’t be able to do that.”

He said legislation sponsored by Rep. Paula Brown, a Democrat from Hazelwood, would have that potential.

Brown’s bill, also discussed in committee Wednesday, would allow school districts to determine metrics of accountability that would then be approved by the state department.

Her legislation seeks to overhaul the Missouri Assessment Program, often called the MAP test, for an exam “developed by teachers in consultation with administrators, students, parents and community,” she said Wednesday.

“At the end of the day, the MAP just isn’t valid for all the things assessments should mean and give us,” Brown said.

An assessment is required to meet federal standards.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education would choose at least two national accreditation agencies to replace the MSIP 6 system.

No one testified in opposition to Brown’s bill.

The Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee approved a bill sponsored by Republican state Sen. Jill Carter of Granby that is similar to Brown’s last week. Carter filed similar legislation last year, which cleared committee but never came up for a vote by the full Senate. 

The Senate committee also debated a bill by Republican state Sen. Curtis Trent identical to Haffner’s two weeks ago. Trent is the newly appointed chair of the education committee, but has not yet taken up his bill for a vote.

Rep. Brad Pollitt, R-Sedalia, presents his open-enrollment legislation on the Missouri House floor last March. This year is the bill's fourth year to gain an initial approval from the originating chamber (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A bill that would allow students to enroll in neighboring school districts won initial approval in the Missouri House for the fourth year in a row Tuesday on an 83-69 vote. 

It is the first bill to be debated by the full House this legislative session. It must be approved one more time by the House before it is sent to the Senate for consideration. 

Bill sponsor Rep. Brad Pollitt, a Republican from Sedalia, described the proposal as “minor compared to what others want to do.”

“The status quo says the bill goes too far. The reform side says it doesn’t go far enough,” he said in his introduction of the bill.

A nearly identical bill narrowly passed the House in a 85-68 vote last year, just three more than a constitutional majority of the chamber. New to the legislation this year is the creation of an online portal that would track the number of students who have applied to enroll in accepting districts.

If passed, the legislation would allow students to leave their local school to enroll in districts that opt into the open enrollment. Districts are not required to add staff or programs, such as special education, for the program.

Transportation would be parents’ responsibility, unless the child qualifies for free or reduced lunch or has transportation under an individualized education plan. The bill calls for a fund to pay for bussing these students.

Pollitt placed a 3% cap on the number of students who can leave a district annually under open enrollment. He proposed a 1% cap for districts with a high number of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch, describing it as a compromise for the Senate. 

He removed the 1% cap upon advice from a caucus policy committee.

Some worry that, without that provision, open enrollment could lead to resegregation in some areas.

Rep. Kathy Steinhoff, a Columbia Democrat, complimented Pollitt but said the lack of “diversity protections” and other negatives “outweigh the positives.”

“One of the concerns is that it’s going to create a slow drain for several schools and districts,” she said.

Rep. Marlene Terry, a St. Louis Democrat, said the legislation would “destroy (her) school.”

“We do agree that parents should have choices, but what I keep hearing is a better environment or a better education,” she said. “Until you can tell me how you’re going to fix the environment and the education in the public school system to where my children stay, I’m going to continually be against this bill.”

Rep. Barbara Phifer, a Democrat from St. Louis, described open enrollment as a “patch on a big problem.” The problem, she said, is unequal funding of public schools.

“We pretend that there is no school choice, but we have made an economic decision here in the state of Missouri that those who are wealthy get better education than those who are not wealthy,” Phifer said. “We can argue about that, and we can actually change the way that we fund public education so that we have more equity.”

Rep. Peter Merideth, a St. Louis Democrat, said school funding was a timely topic. Earlier in the day, he had discussed the formula that determines state funding of public schools in the budget committee.

He said the state funding has lagged behind inflation. Wealthy communities’ local funding has allowed schools to be better equipped, and those without deep pockets may lose students under open enrollment.

Rep. Stephanie Hein, a Springfield Democrat, attempted to amend the bill to raise the base teacher pay to $46k statewide by the 2027-28 school year. The bill title would also change to “elementary and secondary education.”

Her attempt to change the title failed on a 44-109 party-line vote after Pollitt said it opened the bill “to anything else to do with public education.”

Pollitt said he was in favor of increasing teacher salaries but wanted his bill to stand alone.

Last year, Pollitt’s bill died waiting to come to the floor of the Senate. He told The Independent Senate leaders attached his legislation to a bill about teacher recruitment and retention in an attempt to avoid a filibuster.

Sen. Greg Razer, D-Kansas City, offers amendments to a bill that would bar transgender students from restrooms aligning with their gender identity in the Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee Tuesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Legislation seeking to create a “parents bill of rights” in Missouri was amended in committee Tuesday morning to add prohibitions on transgender students accessing restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.

A House hearing on standalone bills that sought to regulate school bathrooms took up the majority of a nearly nine-hour meeting last week. Missourians haven’t had a chance to testify on bathroom restrictions in the Senate this year, a fact that irked Democrats as the committee’s chairman — Republican Sen. Andrew Koenig of Manchester — briefly introduced the amendment.

Koenig added the bathroom amendment shortly before he was removed as chairman of the education committee. He lost his chairmanship Tuesday along with other members of the Senate’s Freedom Caucus following weeks of open warfare with the chamber’s GOP leadership.

Sen. Nick Schroer, a Republican from Defiance, said adding the bathroom amendment was an important step.

“It is a statewide issue that your biological sex matches which locker room and which restroom you’re going into,” Schroer said. “I know several of the school districts in St. Charles County have addressed it, but there’s still a need.”

Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat and the Senate’s only openly gay member, attempted to remove it, but his efforts fell short when only Republican Sen. Elaine Gannon of De Soto joined the Democratic committee members in favor of Razer’s proposal.

The original bill would require school staff to report to parents, within 24 hours, if a minor expresses “discomfort or confusion about the student’s documented identity” or desires to change their pronouns.

The bill also specifies that school personnel cannot “encourage a student under the age of 18 years old to adopt a gender identity or sexual orientation.”

Razer offered another amendment Tuesday that would require staff to contact the Missouri Department of Social Services whenever a parent is contacted regarding students’ LGBTQ status. The school would tell the agency that the child was at-risk of becoming homeless. His fear, Razer said, is that disapproving parents may kick a child out of their home. 

“I think we all can agree that we don’t want children to be homeless,” Razer told fellow committee members.

Sen. Doug Beck, a Democrat from Affton, added that there was a risk of child abuse as well, stacking another amendment atop Razer’s.

“If the parent is going to be notified,” Razer said, “the department needs to be notified that they may have a homeless child or an abused child on their hands.”

Sen. Rick Brattin, a Republican from Harrisonville, said he thought the Democratic amendments were unnecessary.

“Doesn’t the current existing law mandate reporting if they believe there is abuse or anything already going on?” he said. “So this is just redundancy.” 

Brattin said the amendments assume abuse, saying parents should be “innocent until proven guilty.” Razer thought it was best to be precautionary.

“You want to wait until the child is abused?” he asked. “You’re going to put a certain unacceptably large percentage of children at risk.”

Brattin argued with him, saying it was a “very small portion of children.”

Razer became visibly upset.

“If the law says ‘sexual orientation or gender identity,’ say a boy says, ‘I want to take this girl on a date to the dance,’ then do they have to call?” Razer asked. “If that’s not the case, then what we’re saying in your bill is you only call if the student is like me.”

Koenig said he was open to clarifying the bill’s language.

“What we don’t want is, we don’t want the teacher indoctrinating the child to make one decision or the other, or to specifically change names or pronouns,” he said.

State Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, said teachers are not trying to change students’ sexuality or gender identity.

“Without teachers indoctrinating students, there are still conversations about students’ personal lives, who they like, who they want to take to the dance and how they’re feeling at that moment,” she said. “By putting in statute requirements of the teachers to notify parents in conversations where I think we should allow them a little discretion to make the right call, it creates all sorts of additional problems.”

Brattin said he thought the discussion of sexual orientation was “muddying the waters.” He said the bill addresses situations where teachers help children transition by providing clothes or changing their name without parental consent.

“To say that a teacher should have those sorts of conversations, I think is beyond the scope of a teacher,” he said.

Koenig’s bill passed, with the committee’s Democratic members and Gannon in opposition.

The committee’s new chairperson Sen. Curtis Trent, a Republican from Springfield, will be responsible for reporting the bill as “passed” on the Senate floor for it to continue forward. He voted in favor of the legislation.

Sen. Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester, answers questions about his bill that would expand MOScholars during a press conference after the second week of the legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The next few weeks of legislative action are primed for debate over opening up access for Missouri students to leave their neighborhood schools — though escalating dysfunction in the Senate may change those plans.

Proposals to allow open enrollment between school districts and expand tax-credit scholarships for private schools are among the first bills to clear legislative committees. Eight more bills have had committee hearings already or are teed up for hearings this week. 

After years of failed efforts to get their priorities across the finish line, advocates for making major changes to Missouri’s public school system feel they have the momentum.

“The days are gone of us relying on the old-guard talking point that traditional public school is the only way to go and it’s the only thing that the government’s ever going to support or value or put in front of parents,” said Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican.

But resistance in the House, coupled with gridlock in the Senate, could ultimately derail those efforts.

“Everybody thinks the House can pass anything. But when it comes to schools and school choice, that’s an area that a large number of people have broad opinions on,” Republican Rep. Brad Pollitt of Sedalia told The Independent. “So to say that the House can pass anything, that is not true.”

Senate

GOP infighting has plagued the Senate in the first three weeks of the legislative session, with the years-long fight between Republican leadership and a minority within the caucus once again grinding legislative action to a halt.

On Thursday, with the Senate unable to function due to a filibuster by dissident senators who have converged under the umbrella of the “Freedom Caucus,” Rowden hinted at retribution.

“I have never ever done anything punitive…If (behavior) doesn’t change and we don’t figure out a way to act like adults and act like the people who sent us here have a stake in this game, that’s going to change,” Rowden told state Sen. Andrew Koenig, a Manchester Republican, during last week’s nine-hour filibuster. 

Yet one of the main areas of agreement between leadership and the dissident senators is education.

Koenig, who chairs the Senate Education and Workforce Development committee, is the sponsor of two bills that leverage tax credits to fund private and home education. His legislation that would expand MOScholars, a K-12 scholarship program through the treasurer’s office, is set to be debated in the Senate next week. It is the second bill scheduled for discussion on the Senate floor this year.

Koenig is running for State Treasurer and would administer the program if elected.

The MOScholars program is currently struggling to meet the current demand for scholarships. Koenig’s bill would make more students eligible without providing a solution to the funding woes.

Rowden has praised Koenig’s legislation, even voicing support for a state appropriate for private school scholarships, though he acknowledged that would be an incredibly difficult thing to pass. 

“This is going to be slow movement because it is a divisive issue on this floor,” he said. “But I would vote for anything and everything that allows for every kid and parent to have choice.”

Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican, told The Independent she would also be open to adding a state appropriation for MOScholars.

“Why not?” she said.

“We don’t mind spending billions on something that’s not working,” O’Laughlin said, saying she was disappointed with public schools’ math and reading scores. “So I’d certainly be open to that discussion.”

Last week, Koenig added a provision to his MoScholars expansion that would allow charter schools to operate in St. Louis, St. Charles and Boone counties. His committee has not heard public testimony on expanding charter schools yet this year.

Koenig is also sponsoring another way for families to fund private schools that passed his committee last week 5-4 — with Republican Sen. Elaine Gannon of De Soto joining the committee’s Democrats in opposition. She told Koenig the proposal would drain the “public school money away.”

The fiscal note on the bill estimated $900 million to $1.5 billion in state expenditures.

Koenig told The Independent that his narrower scholarship bill, with charter school expansion attached, is more likely to find success this year.

Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, a Democrat from Independence, told reporters state funds would be better spent on teacher recruitment and retention efforts.

“The two education bills we heard this week in committee would put somewhere between a $900 million to a $1.5 billion hole in our budget,” he said, “making it impossible to raise teacher pay.” 

Missouri ranks 47th in average teacher pay and 50th in average starting teacher salaries, according to the Missouri National Education Association.

House

Across the Capitol rotunda in the House, education bills have faced long odds and traditionally squeaked out of the GOP-dominated chamber with the bare minimum of support required to pass.

A bill sponsored by Pollitt passed the House last year and was set to clear the Senate after it was tacked onto legislation on teacher recruitment and retention. The bill seeks to allow public school districts to accept students from neighboring communities, with state funding following the students.

Senate gridlock killed the bill’s chances. 

“I want us to pass open enrollment and start with school choice within the public school system,” Pollitt told The Independent. “I’m open to listening to (other proposals). But I’m more wanting to do some things within the public school system first and foremost.”

Pollitt touts his legislation as a way to increase choice for families while supporting public schools, although the Missouri National Education Association, Missouri State Teachers Association, St. Louis Public Schools, the Cooperating School Districts of Greater Kansas City and the Missouri Council of School Administrators testified in opposition to his legislation.

The bill passed the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, which Pollit chairs, on an 11-6 vote.

Although it didn’t get floor time in the Senate last year, O’Laughlin said she support’s Pollitt’s legislation.

Another sign of the issue’s momentum in the House is the creation this year of the Special Committee on Education Reform. Pollitt said he was informed of the committee prior to its formation.

The committee has already held a hearing on bills that would authorize charter schools in St. Louis, St. Charles and Boone Counties sponsored by representatives in the area. It will meet again Monday evening to debate virtual schools and superintendent pay.

The committee has not yet scheduled a vote for the charter-school bills.

LGBTQ+ activists eyed eight bills up for hearings Wednesday, which proponent and opponents arrived at the Missouri Capitol to testify on throughout the afternoon and into the evening (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

With state law already banning transgender youth from accessing puberty blockers and hormones, a Missouri House committee met late into the evening Wednesday to debate adding more restrictions.

Two statehouse hearing rooms overflowed with witnesses in favor and against bills in the House Emerging Issues Committee that would determine whether it should be compulsory for medical professionals to provide gender-affirming care or if transgender people can use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity.

The committee had a similar hearing a year ago, when it heard bills seeking to limit transgender Missourians’ rights and place restrictions on drag performances.

Wednesday’s nearly nine-hour meeting began with bills sponsored by Republican state Rep. Brad Hudson of Cape Fair that would eliminate a four-year sunset on a law enacted last year banning gender-affirming care for minors. It would also strike a section of the law allowing those already receiving treatment to continue.

These provisions were added as a compromise after Democrats in the Senate filibustered the legislation last spring.

But most testimony lingered on Hudson’s other bill, which would allow medical professionals to object to providing gender-affirming care to transgender patients — both children and adults.

“Every American should have the freedom to operate according to their ethical and religious beliefs, and that includes doctors, nurses and other medical providers,” he told the committee. “The Constitution protects their freedom as much as everyone else’s.”

He said he based his bill on current laws allowing doctors to opt out of providing abortions.

David Stansfield, a family medicine doctor in Hillsboro and member of the Catholic Medical Association, said he previously treated a transgender woman — misgendering her while telling his story — but does not want to provide gender-affirming care again.

“The ability to say no to certain medical procedures, whether they be about transgender medicine or just in general, needs to be in the purview of the physician,” he told committee members.

Leandra Morgenthaler, a medical student at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said she has felt berated in her studies because of her Catholic faith. She would like the option to choose not to perform certain procedures, like gender-affirming care.

“My classmates who share my beliefs and I have been told we should not intersect faith and medicine because of our religion,” she said, “that anyone who has faith beliefs like ours are obviously having the wrong opinion.” 

Others were worried the bill may further reduce care options and have additional unintended consequences.

Cassie Brown, executive director of the Missouri chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, said the bill seeks to protect providers, whereas medical practice typically protects patients.

“The reason why all of these ethical codes exist is because patients are in a more vulnerable situation,” she said. “And gender-affirming care has been shown to reduce depression, anxiety and suicidality.”

Rep. Doug Mann, a Democrat from Columbia, asked Hudson who would be held responsible if care is withheld from a transgender person and they are harmed or die as a result. Hudson said it was a “hypothetical,” though many opposing the bill linked gender-affirming care with alleviating suicidality.

Winston Apple testified that he watched his grandson struggle, getting poor grades and suffering with depression until transitioning.

“Now, representative Hudson wants to keep him safe by taking away his right to continue the treatments that have kept him safe from unhappiness, depression and possibly suicide,” Apple told the committee. “I am here today hoping to keep my grandchild safe from politicians who want to violate his god-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Katy Erker-Lynch, executive director for Missouri LGBTQ advocacy group PROMO, said last year’s legislation has had a life-changing impact on transgender Missourians  — pushing some to move out of state. During her testimony, she honored a transgender man who she said died by suicide in December.

“The total harm this legislative body has committed against trans and queer Missourians is incalculable,” she said.

Shannon Cooper, a former Republican lawmaker and a lobbyist representing Kansas City and the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, said both entities fear the legislation is keeping people from moving to the area.

“We are looking for folks who want to come to Kansas City and continue to make it a very vibrant community, and legislation like this has consistently held people back from making a decision to come move to the state of Missouri, to move into the Kansas City region,” he said. “Currently, we are almost 100,000 employees short of the job opportunities that are there.”

Rep. Ashley Aune, a Kansas City Democrat, asked if Hudson’s bills could affect investment in the region.

“There are many companies that and also events that want to know what kind of community they’re looking at and investing millions of dollars in,” Cooper said.

Restrooms and locker rooms

Four bills seek to legislate bathroom and locker-room usage by biological sex.

Rep. Adam Schnelting, a Republican from St. Charles, is sponsoring a bill that would allow parents to sue school districts for allowing a person of the opposite sex into restrooms with their child. He said his bill was intended to prevent sexual assaults.

Aune asked him to name an example of an assault his bill would prevent. He couldn’t, later alleging incidents happened in his local school district.

Schnelting said he based part of his bill from sample legislation by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C..

Republican Reps. Ben Baker of Neosho, and Chris Lonsdale of Liberty filed identical bills to legislate school restrooms.

“As a father of four daughters, I can tell you that it is imperative that we act and protect our children by implementing a universal statewide policy,” Baker told the committee.

Lonsdale described the legislation as “not the most controversial bill we’ve heard in committee,” and said he was inspired by incidents in the national news. He used the pre-transition name, or “deadname,” of swimmer Lia Thomas.

Lonsdale’s and Baker’s bills define biological sex by the sex “indicated on their birth certificate.” It allows for accommodations, like a single-stall restroom, with the approval of parents.

Some questioned the parental approval, saying it could reveal children’s gender identity to unsupportive parents.

Focusing primarily on adults, a bill by Republican Rep. Mark Matthiesen of O’Fallon would place these restrictions on restrooms and locker rooms in the workplace. It would bar transgender people from their chosen restroom unless they have completed “a full medical procedure to change (their) sex.”

Matthiesen said the legislation was intended to protect women.

“As we work together to ensure that all people have access to public spaces, it has been at the expense of biological women,” he said.

He said he was urged to write the bill after constituents worried for female lifeguards at a local pool.

“It needs to start at the state level and bring people together to provide the facilities that accommodate everyone’s needs but certainly not at the expense of women,” he said.

Cooper testified in opposition to Matthiesen’s bill, saying employers don’t want to talk to employees about bathrooms and gender.

“We don’t need you-all telling us all how to use the bathroom,” he said.

Representatives for the City of St. Louis and the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry also told committee members that the bill would hurt businesses.

Others opposed to the legislation said transgender people are more vulnerable to assault.

“Sexual assault and sexual harassment on the basis of being (transgender) happens as well in schools,” Mann said. “It happens at a much higher rate. By forcing them to go into a bathroom that is against their gender identity, the way they present themselves, you’re putting them at risk.”

There is currently a case in Platte County Circuit Court where a 16-year-old transgender girl alleges she faced a threat of sexual assault after being forced to use the boys’ restroom at school.

May Hall, a transgender college student, told the committee she uses the men’s restroom because she doesn’t want to make other women feel uncomfortable. But her conscientiousness  has consequences.

“I’ve walked in, and people have groped me; people have called me names; people have called me slurs,” she said. “It is an extremely uncomfortable environment, but I continue to in some spaces use the men’s restroom purely to not discomfort cisgender women.”

Charlie Adams, a transgender medical school student, said he has worked in states with similar laws in place. He doesn’t feel comfortable using the women’s restroom, as would align with the sex at birth, because it doesn’t match his gender.

Adams has broad shoulders, a beard and thick eyebrows. Aune wondered what it would be like if he tried to enter a women’s restroom.

“Talk to me about the concern of just using the restroom that you are using, a men’s restroom, versus what the response would be if you walked in looking as you do, sir, into a women’s restroom,” she said.

Adams said this bill would force him to use the women’s restroom, or otherwise break the law.

The committee did not take action on any of the bills Wednesday night.

This story has been updated to reflect the gender of a person mentioned in public testimony.

Sen. Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester, answers questions about his bill that would expand MOScholars during a committee meeting Wednesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Income and geographic restrictions would be loosened for a tax-credit program that provides scholarships to help pay for private school tuition under a bill debated Wednesday by the Senate’s education committee.

Sen. Andrew Koenig, a Manchester Republican and the committee’s chairman, is sponsoring the legislation seeking to expand MoScholars. Koenig is running this year to become State Treasurer, the office that oversees the MoScholars program.

“This is a win for everybody in the situation for kids, and it provides parents options,” Koenig told the committee.

The bill, which is estimated could cost the state $9.2 million, would allow students throughout Missouri to enroll in the program and raise the maximum family income from 200% of the amount needed to qualify for free or reduced lunch to 400%. 

In 2024, the maximum family salary for a family of four that would be eligible under Koenig’s bill is $220,000.

Sen. Tracy McCreery, a Democrat from St. Louis, questioned why the legislation allowed more affluent families to access money that otherwise would go toward the state’s general fund, asking Koenig why he chose this amount.

Koenig said he would prefer to remove the income cap completely.

“When someone is going to a traditional public school, we don’t means-test them,” he said. “All kids should have this option. Obviously, that’s not what I filed because I thought that might be difficult to pass.”

Currently, the students eligible have difficulty obtaining the tax-credit scholarships because funding lags behind the school year and student demand. Some of the educational assistance organizations, which grant the scholarships, are back-funding renewal scholarships.

Audrey Baker, a parent from Kansas City who testified on Wednesday, said the program is important for students like her daughter, a young student with health issues. Her daughter received interventions in her public school during kindergarten but found more stability in her private school, Baker said.

She applied for a scholarship through the Herzog Tomorrow Foundation, one of the MOScholars providers, and didn’t receive the funds because the foundation was short on money, she said. She drained an educational savings account to pay for her daughter’s tuition.

McCreery asked Koenig why he would expand the program given its current challenges. She also requested the program prioritize students in unaccredited and provisionally accredited schools.

“We’ve got more demand for these vouchers than money,” she said. “So why wouldn’t we be focusing on where the need is.”

Koenig said the program was new, and he hoped more money would come into MOScholars.

“If your concern is that some kids might not have access to this who really need it, we can always make it part of the foundation formula and do direct funding,” he said.

His legislation does not include a state appropriation, but it would expand the cap on the amount of tax credits the program can receive. It also would increase the scholarship amount for students with poor English language skills, who qualify for free or reduced lunch or have an individualized education plan.

State Treasurer Vivek Malek testified in favor of the bill, focusing on the geographic expansion, saying that he believes students should have the opportunity enroll  “​​whether they live in Ladue or in Laddonia, or in St. Louis City or in Sikeston.”

He did not comment on the provision that would allow families making 400% of the amount to qualify for free or reduced lunch to be eligible.

Sen. Doug Beck, an Affton Democrat, asked Malek and MOScholars program administrator David Masterson whether student achievement was being recorded. Malek said that data is collected after the third year of the program, or school year 2024-25.

Beck questioned expanding the program before this data is available.

“We raised $9 million last year. This year, we raised $17 million,” Malek said. “And as the program is expanding, I think it is more wise to expand it now than to wait.”

Opposition to the bill included education groups like Missouri Council for School Administrators and the Missouri National Education Association, a teacher’s union.

A new system

Koenig presented a second bill to the committee Wednesday that would remove the need for the MOScholars program, allowing educational expenses to be reimbursed through a tax credit if a student attends a school outside of their home district.

The bill’s fiscal note estimates that it would cost around $900 million to $1.5 billion. Koenig said Wednesday that he believes excluding homeschooled students could shave off $700 million.

Families would be able to receive up to the amount of the state adequacy target for each student, which is the amount the state calculates in state aid per pupil.

Sen. Elaine Gannon, a Republican from De Soto, asked Koenig where the money would come from.

Koenig said parents would be reimbursed for the expenses when they do their taxes. He said some of the money comes from Proposition C, a sales tax approved by voters in 1982 for schools and highways.

“You want to take funding that’s been designated for the public school system since 1982?” Gannon asked.

She accused the bill of “draining the public school money away.”

Koenig said he doesn’t think Proposition C money belongs solely to the public school system.

“I don’t view that money as owned by the institutions,” he said. “It is there to educate the children of the state of Missouri, and that’s the purpose behind it.”

Gannon pushed back, saying it belongs to the schools.

“This money was designated in 1982 for public schools, and now you’re wanting to take that money and spend it where it should not be spent,” she said, banging her hand against the desk.

Sen. Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat, said he wanted more information from homeschool families if they were to receive public dollars.

“I’ve always been bothered that we don’t have oversight over homeschools to make sure that the kids are getting taught,” he said. “I suspect most are. I suspect some are not.”

Rep. Brad Pollitt, R-Sedalia, presents his open enrollment bill to the House Elementary and Seconday Education Committee Wednesday morning (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

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 told The Independent at the close of last year’s session 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.”

Lawmakers lament failure of bills aimed at addressing Missouri teacher shortage

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 passed the House last session in a 85-69 vote.

On Tuesday, the State Board of Education will review a study on the four-day school week (Getty Images).

With more Missouri school districts switching to four-day weeks — including some of the largest — education leaders and state legislators are raising concerns.

Four-day weeks have been an option for Missouri schools since 2011, and now over 30% of the state’s districts have adopted this shortened week — serving around 11% of the state’s students. Many of the districts are in rural parts of the state.

Some state lawmakers, concerned with the shortened schedule, are pushing bills to reign in the practice. And on Tuesday, the State Board of Education was originally scheduled to review a study on the four-day school week, though that has been delayed due to possible inclement weather.

The study concludes that, overall, the four-day schedule had “no statistically significant effect on either academic achievement or building growth.” Academic achievement looks at one year of scores whereas building growth compares students scores over time.

Schools that adopted a four-day school week both before and after the pandemic were included in the study. Data is limited on recent adopters like the Independence School District, which made the switch this year, but the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is seeing trends.

Districts that switched before the pandemic were more likely to be rural, whereas districts embracing four-day weeks now are likely to be in towns, have multiracial populations and have more foster students, according to the report.

Jon Turner, an associate professor at Missouri State University who researches the four-day school week, was not surprised that the department found little to no effect on academic achievement.

“It is pretty consistent nationwide,” he told The Independent. “As you protect instructional hours, there is a minimal if any negative academic impact.”

The research he has studied has shown that the four-day week does not diminish academics so long as the instructional hours remain constant. Currently, state law requires 1,044 hours in school.

Legislation

Three bills have already been filed this legislative session that focus on the length of school weeks, coming from both sides of the aisle.

Sen. Doug Beck, an Affton Democrat, got an amendment approved in the Senate last year that would have required a local vote to authorize a four-day school week. This year, Beck has a bill that would allow towns with fewer than 30,000 residents to adopt a four-day school week by a vote of the school board, as is law now, but larger cities would have to seek voter approval.

“I’ve talked to my colleagues, and they said in the rural area, they didn’t want to have the five-day part,” Beck told The Independent. “This would still allow them to do that. But if you’re in (larger areas), you still could go four days. You just have to get the vote of the people.”

Republican Rep. Aaron McMullen and Democratic Rep. Robert Sauls — both from Independence, where the school district made headlines with its switch to a four-day week — filed similar bills.

McMullen is worried for the families in his city coordinating daycare and other services with an extra day off.

“My main concern is the economic impact that it has on the city,” he told The Independent. “Essentially, we’re giving less services but still charging the same amount of tax.”

Turner said that while there is not a negative academic outcome, the effect on families varies situationally. Schools providing special education are required to keep the hours of intervention specified in students’ individualized learning plan, which is a document that outlines accommodations and goals. But some students receiving these services may miss the fifth day.

“I do believe that we should get involved,” McMullen said. “But we should be able to give the ability for people to actually have the final say on it. We’re trying to empower the people that live in the school district to have the final say on whether or not they should go to four days.”

McMullen’s bill mirrors Beck’s by only requiring a public vote in larger localities.

But Beck’s and Sauls’ bills would provide incentives for districts that choose a five-day week. Districts with at least 175 school days can choose their school year’s start date, an option not available since the 2020-21 school year.

Their legislation also calls for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to pay districts with at least 169 school days a two percent bonus, calculated by the previous year’s state aid, to go toward boosting teacher salaries.

Beck said this provision gets to the heart of the issue: Recruiting and retaining teachers. 

“The main reason why we have school districts going four days is not because of children learning better or any study that they’ve done,” he said. “The original thing was they couldn’t keep teachers, and this was to bring teachers in.”

When the Independence School District announced its switch, Superintendent Dale Herl said in an introductory video that the four-day week was to maintain a workforce.

The cause

Turner, who also serves on the board of the Missouri Association of Rural Education, told The Independent the four-day week is born from the educator hiring struggles Missouri districts are facing, particularly in rural areas.

“Never when I met any of those superintendents when I said, ‘Why did you do this?’ Not one said we wanted to do this. This was a part of a bigger vision,” he said. “This is a symptom of what schools are having to do to keep educators in classrooms teaching.”

In December, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education told the state board that nearly a quarter of student teachers are the teacher of record for their classroom — meaning the class doesn’t have a certified teacher overseeing that student.

Turner said salaries for experienced teachers can vary greatly within a 30-mile radius, incentivizing educators to drive out of their rural town of residence and teach where they are better compensated.

To compete, the rural districts can utilize a four-day school week as an incentive for their workforce to stay.

“You’ve got wealthier, typically suburban, larger school districts that are able to out-compete in the job marketplace for your applicants, so you have this constant turnover in the small rural schools,” Turner said. “That’s what this four-day week is showing is that it is really the only arrow that rural school districts have in their quiver to fight the higher paying salaries.”

School districts on Missouri’s border face competition across state lines, Turner said. Arkansas increased its minimum teacher salary to $50,000 beginning last July.

Missouri lawmakers have proposed hikes to teacher wages and other benefits, though few passed last year.

McMullen, though he didn’t include the teacher-wage incentive in his bill, said he is in favor of increasing teacher pay.

“​​We need to allocate more money to public schools but have that actually go to teacher salaries and not to administration,” he said.

Beck hopes the legislature will discuss issues like teacher wages, like a bill that would increase the base teacher salary. He thinks there is enough interest to get the legislation through, though it may have to be an amendment to a larger bill.

“I truly have some really good bipartisan support on this bill, maybe more on the Republican side,” he said.

McMullen feels similarly, saying it is difficult to pass a standalone bill through the Senate.

“We have a very, very good chance of getting this bill and some aspects passed this year.”

Sen. Ben Brown, R-Washington, listens during the first day of Missouri’s legislative session Jan. 4 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A bill to allow home-educated students to participate in Missouri public school activities is back for the upcoming legislative session — and has been coupled with provisions rolling back state oversight of homeschooling families.

Sen. Ben Brown, a Washington Republican, pre-filed a 52-page bill that largely resembles the version he sponsored that cleared the Senate last session.

While it initially was only two pages and focused on giving homeschool kids the opportunity to play sports and join clubs in public schools, it now would add a new category for home-educated students and rescind attendance officers’ authority over homeschool families.

“As a former athlete myself whose childhood was greatly impacted by my participation in the sport of wrestling, I feel strongly that it is wrong to deny these potentially life-changing opportunities to children,” Brown told the Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee during a March hearing.

The Missouri State High School Activities Association policy is to allow homeschooled students to participate in their local school districts’ sports if they are enrolled in at least one credit hour of instruction, which is typically two classes in non-block-scheduled schools. School districts are allowed to be more restrictive and ban homeschool participation.

Brown’s bill would prohibit schools from requiring enrollment in classes, but any instruction or training required for the club or sport would still be allowed.

No one testified in opposition to the bill in March, but that was expanded to remove local oversight of homeschooling families.

Oversight

State Rep. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat, said what concerns her about the legislation is “simply not knowing which students are being homeschooled.”

“It’s imperative… that when parents make the decision to homeschool their child, we have some reporting procedures in place so that we know which students are actually being homeschooled,” she said in an interview with The Independent.

The bill would remove a section of state law that says families “may provide…  a declaration of enrollment stating their intent for the child to attend a home school” to the local school district or the county recorder of deeds.

Kim Quon, a regional director for the Missouri homeschool advocacy organization Families for Home Education, told The Independent that the statute’s wording “causes confusion for everybody.”

She said the declaration of enrollment is optional because the law says they “may provide” that document. Quon recommends families notify a school in writing if a child is homeschooled, but some have felt obligated to do this by school administrators.

The bill also would rescind a law allowing attendance officers to investigate compliance with the state’s compulsory attendance law. The law requires home schools to offer at least 1,000 hours of instruction, with at least 600 of those in core subjects like reading and math.

Quon said families document their hours of learning but do not submit that information for review.

“We don’t submit our hours,” she said. “It’s not anybody’s business.”

She is also opposed to attendance officers checking on homeschooling families, saying: “There just doesn’t need to be that level of scrutiny.”

School attendance officers and the Department of Social Services’s Children’s Division can assess whether a child is being neglected after being removed from public school.

A study from the state of Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate found that 36% of families that pulled their children out of public school in a three-year period had at least one accepted report of child abuse or neglect. A majority had multiple reports of abuse or neglect.

Quon said the Children’s Division could still investigate instances of neglect, but she is worried attendance officers may abuse their power.

The Independent asked if she heard of attendance officers investigating families that are tracking hours and homeschooling.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not aware of this happening too terribly much. But the fact that it’s there leaves that option for anybody to do that.”

Homeschooled athletes

Quon said homeschooling families have different reactions to the idea of their kids in public-school sports and clubs.

Some value the privacy of being detached from the school district while others desire access to the amenities their tax dollars help pay for.

Brown’s bill could help alleviate some homeschooling families’ privacy concerns, said Zeke Spieker, legislative assistant to Sen. Jill Carter, a Republican from Granby. Carter testified in favor of Brown’s bill in March.

“There’s always a concern that when you give school students access to these activities that there are going to be some strings attached that would cause a loss of homeschool freedom,” Spieker said. “So last year, in an effort to try to assuage some of those concerns, they created the FLEX category.”

Brown’s bill calls for the defining of “FLEX schools,” or family-led educational experience schools. The differences between FLEX students and homeschool students are that FLEX students can participate in public-school activities and obtain K-12 scholarships through the state’s MOScholars tax-credit program.

Spieker, who was homeschooled himself, said some homeschooling families are still concerned about the FLEX language.

He and his family have talked with home educators for years and made trips to the Missouri Capitol to ask for the ability to play in public school sports.

Spieker said he’s watched opportunities for homeschooled children grow during his family’s advocacy. His brother Jonah, a high-school senior, was homeschooled but played on Webb City’s football team.

Quon said the bill could benefit students further away from Missouri’s major cities the most, where there aren’t many options outside of public school activities.

She said the Families for Home Education’s position on the legislation is “neutral as long as nobody does anything crazy with the bill.”

Last legislative session, the bill expanded in a House committee to include provisions about four-day school weeks, school board vacancies, foster-child enrollment and other education matters. It was never debated on the House floor.

Nurrenbern said the amendments will likely determine the bill’s fate.

“There will be hopefully some good amendments that can be attached to this and make it,” she said. “If there’s more good than bad in the bill, I think it will pass.”

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released its annual performance reports on Monday, which measure districts on standardized tests, attendance rates and other factors. It showed 70% of districts had a lower score for the 2022-23 school year than the previous year (Getty Images)

​​Livingston County R-III was among a litany of school districts last year with a performance report that could have put its accreditation in jeopardy.

But this year, it has the highest score in Missouri, swelling more than 35 points to receive 96.1% of the points possible — a synthesis of student test scores, attendance, school-district planning and other metrics.

Holliday C-2 School District swung the opposite direction. After scoring in the top 20% of Missouri’s 550 districts and charter schools last year, it now sits among the bottom five with zeros and “null” across standardized-testing criteria.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released its annual performance reports on Monday, which measure districts on standardized tests, attendance rates and other factors. It showed 70% of districts had a lower score for the 2022-23 school year than the previous year.

Impact of declining scores unclear as Missouri lawmakers continue education debate

But school administrators are raising red flags about the data, pointing to massive swings in scores in both directions across the state and wondering — with only a year to go before the data will impact school-district accreditation — whether the testing program’s formula needs to be adjusted.

“In some districts that I know of, who are having essentially the same faculty and the same students using the same resources and the same methodologies are seeing perhaps a 10 to 15%  drop in their (annual performance report) score from the first year of MSIP6 to the current year,” Kyle Kruse, superintendent of the St. Clair School District, told The Independent. “That raises some question marks for me.”

The Missouri School Improvement Program 6, known as MSIP 6, is being phased in over a period of three years for the department to be able to fully apply its point system. This year, the program included “growth scores,” which administrators say can lower the district’s overall grade and be misunderstood.

“What (the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) is calling the growth scores really isn’t growth at all,” Gregg Klinginsmith, superintendent of the Warren County School District, told The Independent.

He said the growth scores show if students are beating expectations on standardized tests but don’t  represent how much the student body has learned. A school can receive a low score for growth, but it only shows that students are not meeting the target the growth formula predicted.

Klinginsmith, who serves on the MSIP advisory committee, would like a deeper look at the way growth is calculated. He’s asked for a copy of the formula, only receiving a summary of it rather than the full calculation.

When The Independent asked for the formula’s documentation, the department pointed to resources that summarize the calculations.

Reports from 2013 explains the Missouri Growth Model in more detail, though the multi-step formula is blotted out from the technical documentation.

Doug Hayter, executive director of the Missouri Association of School Administrators, said educators have a lot of questions about the growth model.

“There’s more work to be done in investigating that change because that has had an impact on the scores,” he said. “And I’m not sure that everyone really fully understands how it works and the impact that it’s having.”

It really boils down to “how well DESE predicted your school will do,” Klinginsmith said. “They adjust that formula from year to year, and the growth scores really is what is separating districts.”

“The lack of transparency on it is an even bigger issue,” he continued.

The model relies on predicting standardized test scores based on previous years’ performance and comparing the result to the prediction. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education believes the model reveals a school’s instructional effectiveness, according to the summary report.

The previous annual performance report scores were the first in the sixth version of the Missouri School Improvement Program, and growth scores were only available for English and math. Monday’s release, which gives scores from the 2022-23 school year, includes growth points for social studies and science as well — an additional 12 points of MSIP 6’s possible 192 points.

Growth is a quarter of a school district’s score. Other data includes the maintenance of school improvement plans, attendance and career and academic plans for students entering high school.

Kruse believes there are “cliffs” throughout the scoring system — so crossing a threshold, like a 90% attendance rate, can boost a score significantly and not proportional to the actual performance.

The department’s guide to MSIP 6 shows scoring tables where points are assigned in levels. For example, the “postsecondary readiness” metric (which looks at students’ scores on the ACT and advanced coursework) gives schools 10 points for student averages 75% and above. For 67.2% to 71.4%, schools receive 7.5 points.

There are many table-based scores in the MSIP 6 system, allowing districts to drop in score while performing similarly to previous years.

 “This year, in year two of the MSIP 6 accreditation system, we may have exposed some potential flaws in the system that will need to be studied and addressed,” Kruse told The Independent.

Recalibration

Under MSIP6, fewer schools are scoring high marks when compared to the previous scoring system.

In 2018 under MSIP 5, 371 school districts and charter schools scored at least 90%. Now, just 26 districts and charters met that target.

Growth is one of the things that is measured differently between the two systems.

“In MSIP 6, a (district) must show growth using the Missouri Growth Model in order to receive full points. In MSIP 5, an (district) could earn points through status, growth, or improvement — or through a combination of status and growth or status and improvement,” the department’s chief communications officer Mallory McGowin said. “This policy change was made based on feedback from multiple stakeholder groups.”

A bar chart showing the distribution of scores looks more like a bell curve now than the top-heavy MSIP 5.

Lisa Sireno, assistant commissioner of the office of quality schools, told reporters last week that the department believes MSIP6 is “a more accurate representation of performance.”

Hayter said some educators have questioned the scoring when looking at districts’ ranking between the two scoring systems.

“They’re not afraid of accountability, but they want it to be fair and balanced,” he told The Independent. “Where is the realistic picture of so many districts in MSIP5 apparently doing exceedingly well, and then now because we change the system, they’ve been dispersed.”

The top-scoring district in 2018, Clever R-V School District, is 331st under MSIP 6 — sinking from 99% to 75.2%.

Although it has become harder to maintain a top score, the score needed to be an accredited school district has not changed.

Sireno said that full accreditation is 70% and above, under 50% is unaccredited and between is provisionally accredited.

The department is set to make accreditation decisions after reviewing next year’s data. But Klinginsmith worries the scores aren’t steady enough to make the classification decision in a year.

Scores this year moved by an average of 5.4%, in either direction, with some districts seeing larger changes.

A total of 42 districts’ and charter schools’ scores decreased by at least 10% compared to their last annual performance report, and 39 had an increase of at least 10%.

Kruse worries about the number of districts losing double digits in points.

“If a school does essentially the same performance and the district score drops 10% or 14%, I don’t think that’s an accurate portrayal of how that district is serving students,” he said. “That has ramifications that go beyond just the school setting. It goes into how a community could be perceived.”

If based solely on this year’s scores, 447 districts and charter schools are in the accredited range, 99 would be provisionally accredited and five are in the unaccredited tier.

The five in the unaccredited range, four charter schools and one single-school district, are smaller and more likely to be impacted by changes in the student body,

McGowin told The Independent that classification decisions would consider all three years of MSIP 6 scores.

Klinginsmith hopes the department will look at districts’ highest scores in each category over three years to determine accreditation.

“That gives everybody an opportunity if they have a good year to carry that through to show, ‘hey, we can do good things,’” he said.

Ultimately, though, he — and others — would like a second look at the scoring system before it determines districts’ fate.

Missouri University of Science and Technology campus (Michael Pierce/Missouri S&T)

Missouri University of Science and Technology will grant K-12 scholarships through the state’s tax-credit-based program MOScholars beginning in the 2024-2025 school year.

A nonprofit within Missouri S&T will become the seventh educational assistance organization, or EAO, in the MOScholars program. EAOs receive donations through a process overseen by the state treasurer and remit the money into scholarships for private-school and homeschool expenses.

According to emails obtained by The Independent in an open records request, Stephen Roberts, vice chancellor of strategic initiatives for Missouri S&T, shared information about the program with other administrators as early as May, describing MOScholars as a “philanthropy opportunity/vehicle.”

He told The Independent on Wednesday that the program’s objectives align with the goals of the university and its partnered nonprofit, the Kummer Institute Foundation.

Funding lag creates barrier for Missouri private school tax credit program

“Missouri S&T is a public land grant university, and as such has a responsibility to provide broad access to educational opportunities in the K-12 community,” he said in a statement. “The aims of the Missouri Scholars program have strong overlap with these objectives.”

Roberts wrote in a May 10 email that students could potentially use MOScholars’s $6,500 funding to pay for Missouri S&T camps or dual-enrollment programs.

Andrew Careaga, who leads the university’s communications, had the same impression in May after talking to the treasurer.

“State Treasurer Vivek Malek describes this program as an opportunity for individuals to earn tax credits by designating funds to scholarships for our summer camps if we were to become designated as an EAO,” he wrote in an email.

Roberts told The Independent that the K-12 scholarships only cover costs administered by a student’s school.

“The rules prohibit award of scholarships so that students can access educational programs offered directly by the EAO,” he said. “For a student to be awarded a scholarship, the educational programs must be offered directly by the eligible schools.”

But the idea of participating in MOScholars wasn’t enthusiastically received by all administrators.

Missouri S&T is a public higher education institution with public K-12 partnerships, such as Project Lead the Way — a program with STEM courses for high school students offering college credit. Beth Kania-Gosche, chair of the university’s department of teacher education and certification, wrote in an October email that she had a “PR concern” about participating in MOScholars.

“The other EAOs are all religious organizations,” she wrote. “We have to submit a fundraising plan as part of the application, and I have concerns about publicly connecting the STEM Center to fundraising for a controversial topic like school vouchers.”

“We partner with public schools on all of our programming,” she continued, “and if they have the perception we are raising funds for school vouchers, it’s problematic. “

Facilitators of the MOScholars program shy from the term “vouchers” because Missouri’s K-12 scholarships are not a direct state appropriation, although the program  does affect state finance. Donations made to the program, because they receive a 1:1 tax credit, come out of the state’s general fund.

Colin Potts, Missouri S&T’s provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, replied to address Kania-Gosche’s fears, but it is unclear if any resolution was reached.

“Beth, I know that you had some concerns about the wisdom of being seen to be supporting schools that have a less than rigorous approach to STEM and that this could undermine your relationships with public schools,” he wrote. “We’ll do what we can to avoid any issues of this kind.” 

The application listed 11 schools the university is willing to issue scholarships to, with the disclaimer that the “list may not be inclusive.” All but one of these schools are religious.

Roberts told The Independent the program allows EAOs to grant scholarships to students with expenses in any public or private school, not just those listed on the application.

“Our intent would be to award as broadly as possible under these rules,” he said.

The university will accept applicants from Cape Girardeau, Cape Girardeau County, Jefferson City, Cole County,
Springfield, Greene County,
St. Louis and St. Louis County.

Missouri S&T also plans to support homeschooled students, according to the application.

The 11 schools listed on the application are: Calgary Lutheran High School, Helias Catholic High School, Immaculate Conception, Nerinx Hall, Notre Dame Regional High School, Notre Dame High School,
St. Louis University High School, St. Peter Interparish School, St. Joseph Cathedral School,
Thomas Jefferson Independent Day School and Webster County Parochial #1.

Email records show coordination between the university and the treasurer.

Mehrzad Boroujerdi, the university’s vice provost and dean of the College of Arts, Sciences and Education, wrote Oct. 30 Malek told the Missouri S&T to submit its application as though it was a nonprofit organization.

“(The Treasurer) said he would work to give us some grace period in terms of creating a 501c3 after the application,” Boroujerdi wrote.

The university submitted its application Oct. 31, the day it was due, writing that a nonprofit within Missouri S&T called the Kummer Institute for Student Success, Research and Economic Development will serve as the required 501c3.

Kummer Institute leaders were included in early conversations about the program, but the decision to use the nonprofit as the EAO vehicle seems to occur the day the application is submitted.

“Let’s submit the application under the Kummer Foundation which is a 501c3,” Alysha O’Neil, vice chancellor for finance and operations, wrote the morning the application was submitted.

Missouri S&T and the Kummer Institute Foundation requested $1million in tax credits for the 2024-2025 school year and plans to serve 136 students.

“I am thrilled to see the number of educational assistance organizations participating in MOScholars is growing,” State Treasurer Vivek Malek said in a statement. “We welcome the Kummer Institute Foundation and commend them for their interest in providing educational opportunities as an EAO.”

The MOScholars program is currently pushing for more funding as it faces a lag between the school year and donations, prompting some EAOs to loan their own money and increase fundraising.

The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital is the subject of an investigation by the Missouri Attorney General(Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey alleged in a counterclaim filed Thursday that the federal government may be involved in Washington University’s refusal to give his office access to patient records. 

Bailey’s request for records is part of an investigation into the university’s Transgender Center.

The counterclaim points to a perceived change in the university’s requests and compliance with the attorney general’s demands but does not appear to have specific evidence of federal obtrusion.

“We will not let Joe Biden and his federal bureaucrats interfere with our investigation into the pediatric transgender clinic,” Bailey  said in a statement. “These documents are critical to exposing that children were subject to irreversible, life-altering procedures without full and informed parental consent.”

His counterclaim comes after Washington University filed a lawsuit Monday asking a St. Louis Circuit Court judge to narrow Bailey’s civil investigative demands. The university argued Bailey lacks the authority to ask for private health information.

Representing the attorney general’s office, Solicitor General Joshua Divine wrote that Washington University may be facing outside influence.

“The state has reason to believe that the federal government has quietly pressured Washington University not to comply with this lawful, critical investigation, and has used HIPAA as its leverage for that pressure,” he wrote in the counterclaim.

Wash U alleges Missouri AG illegally sought patient records from transgender center

Divine asks for a court order ruling the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) “does not prohibit compliance with the (civil investigative demands).”

The attorney general’s office submitted numerous exhibits Thursday, sealed from the public, showing the communication between the state and the university. The counterclaim alleges Washington University initially agreed to grant access to its digital patient records but later became less compliant, citing HIPAA.

Divine repeatedly mentions documents initially sent to the attorney general on April 7. The first time the university sent the requested information, the attorney general’s office did not download the documents before the shared link expired, the counterclaim says.

Then, after reminders to re-send the records, Divine wrote, the office received a file they could not open.

During a Sept. 1 teleconference, Washington University’s counsel said the records would be sent again but with protected health information redacted.

“Which he had never done in any prior production and had never suggested was necessary,” Divine wrote, referring to redactions.

He described the response as “heavily censored, with redactions often spanning full paragraphs or entire pages of responsive and relevant material.”

This request is an example of what Divine describes as the university “changing its position,” but a main battle in the litigation is view-only access to the software that stores all patients’ records.

Washington University argued in the initial lawsuit that wide-ranging access is not permitted under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, a consumer-protection law the attorney general is using to investigate Washington University Transgender Center.

Divine argues that the investigation is looking into deception in the sale or advertisement of health care, and therefore, within the MMPA’s bounds.

“Inducing a person to purchase gender transition services through unfair or deceptive practices leads to life-altering physical consequences,” the counterclaim says.

The investigation, he wrote, is looking into allegations made by former employee Jamie Reed. These allegations include that the Transgender Center was “boosting patient volume by falsely advertising compliance with [the] Endocrine Society, World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and similar group guidelines while in fact sharply deviating from those guidelines.”

Washington University has vehemently denied Reed’s accusations and argues the attorney general does not have the authority to investigate medical decision making, only sales and advertising.

But the attorney general’s office “denies that the MMPA forbids investigating medical malpractice issues.”

“With respect to the attorney general, the consumer-protection statute grants extraordinarily broad authority,” Divine wrote.

In April, Bailey used the MMPA to issue an emergency rule restricting both kids’ and adults’ access to gender-affirming care. The ACLU of Missouri filed to stop the rule’s implementation, and a judge granted a temporary injunction.

Bailey ultimately withdrew the rule after the state’s legislature passed a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

Washington University stopped treating minors for gender dysphoria in September, citing concerns about the new law’s provision placing more liability on physicians than other treatments.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks Jan. 20 to the Missouri chapter of the Federalist Society on the Missouri House of Representatives chamber (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey does not have the legal authority to demand access to patient records at the Washington University Transgender Center, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in St. Louis Circuit Court.

Bailey cited Missouri’s consumer protection law, known as the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, to demand access to all electronic health records from patients at the Transgender Center as part of his investigation into the center’s practices.

In the lawsuit, Washington University is asking Judge Jason Sengheiser to determine if Bailey’s civil investigative demands are legal and to what extent in order to modify Bailey’s request, noting that the Merchandising Practices Act pertains to false advertising “in connection with the sale or advertisement of any merchandise in trade or commerce or the solicitation of any funds for any charitable purpose.”

Washington University’s attorney, James Bennett, wrote in the lawsuit that the university has turned over documents related to advertising but argued that patient care is outside of the MMPA’s bounds.

“Certain statements have been made by the attorney general that have caused Washington University to further question whether all of the requests (including those at issue now) are properly within the scope of the MMPA,” he wrote. “The statements suggested that the investigation was directed at medical decision making as much if not more than it was directed to sales or advertising.”

Bailey’s office also requested information from a Transgender Center physician and nurse. The lawsuit says the demands “appear to call for testimony about specific patients and medical decision making.”

During recent discussions about the demand, the lawsuit states, the attorney general’s office told Washington University that it “views the appropriate scope of its investigation to include consent to treatment, referrals for treatment, prescribing decisions and compliance with the standard of care for treating the (Transgender Center’s) patients.”

Bailey sent the initial civil investigative demands to Washington University Feb. 23 — two weeks after former Transgender Center employee Jamie Reed published allegations against the center in a national media outlet.

Bennett wrote that Bailey’s demand appears to be based in part on Reed’s affidavit to the attorney general.

Transgender Center patients and their parents have raised concerns over Reed’s allegations and expressed anxiety with health records and identifiable details being shared with Bailey and the public.

The lawsuit focuses on concern for patient privacy, noting patient records are protected under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

HIPAA preempts state laws but allows the disclosure of protected health information to a “health oversight agency.”

“Historically, the Missouri state health oversight agency has been the Board of Healing Arts,” Bennett wrote in the litigation. “No case has held that the attorney general is a ‘health oversight agency.’”

Washington University asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights whether the state attorney general would be considered a health oversight agency, the lawsuit says. It did not receive an answer.

In a statement to The Independent, Bailey called the records he’s seeking “critical to exposing that children were subject to irreversible, life-altering procedures without full and informed parental consent.”

This investigation is not the first time Bailey used the MMPA to regulate gender-affirming care.

Bailey filed an emergency rule in April under the MMPA that sought to place restrictions on receiving gender-affirming care for both transgender children and adults. A judge blocked the implementation temporarily, but Bailey withdrew the rule before a final verdict was reached.

Washington University stopped treating transgender minors for gender dysphoria in September, citing concerns about a new law’s provision placing more liability on physicians than other treatments.

Karla Eslinger enters the State Board of Education meeting Tuesday. Eslinger will succeed Commissioner of Education Margie Vandeven, the board announced Tuesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

State Sen. Karla Eslinger will be Missouri’s next commissioner of education beginning in June, the State Board of Education announced during its meeting Tuesday.

Board President Charlie Shields told reporters Eslinger was the only candidate the board considered.

The board has met in closed session twice since the last public meeting — in which current Commissioner of Education Margie Vandeven revealed her plans to retire at the end of June. The board also began its meeting Tuesday in closed session for an hour.

“We had a set of unique circumstances with a unique candidate,” Shields told reporters. “Once we were presented with the quality of candidate that we had, in Dr. Eslinger, we wanted to move forward very, very quickly.”

In previous years, the board opened applications for the position, but Shields said that was not necessary after they found Eslinger.

He said the board has used the three closed-door meetings to discuss the transition between commissioners. Vandeven and Eslinger will overlap through the month of June.

“There are just different things that I think would be helpful for anyone coming into the position to know and understand about the agency itself,” Vandeven said of the transition. “So I plan to be as helpful as I can and then get out of her way.”

Eslinger received a standing ovation from attendees of the meeting Tuesday.

“We all want the same thing,” Eslinger said of various education stakeholders. “We want our children to be successful. We want our communities to be successful. We want our state to be successful. I believe in intentionally working directly with and respecting each of these various groups.”

Eslinger, a Republican from Wasola, is in her first term as state senator for the 33rd District and has been raising money to run for reelection next year. State Rep. Brad Hudson, fellow Republican and Cape Fair resident, was the only other potential candidate with a campaign committee for the 33rd district.

She will continue her work as a state senator until June 1, when she will join Vandeven in the commissioner’s spot and begin the transition.

Her experience in education ranges from her beginning as an elementary-school teacher in a rural Ozark County school, through the ranks of administration in a couple Missouri schools and a three-year stint as the assistant commissioner in the office of educator quality.

Vandeven and Eslinger worked together within the department during Eslinger’s time as assistant commissioner from 2010 to 2013.

“I’ve seen (Eslinger’s) work,” Vandeven told reporters. “I’ve seen how she is so committed to the children and the family in the state. And I’ve seen that in action.”

State Board member Donald Claycomb, of Linn, said “her experience and her credentials are probably hard to beat, if not impossible to beat” during the announcement.

Her latest role before serving in Missouri’s General Assembly was as a senior analyst for education services with the AEM Corporation, where she advised U.S. Department of Education officials, according to her Senate bio.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from The College of the Ozarks before attaining a master’s degree in education and a specialist’s degree in superintendency and the educational system from Missouri State University. She holds a doctorate in educational leadership and policy analysis from the University of Missouri-Columbia, as listed in her Senate bio.

Her two daughters are also Missouri educators, with one serving as a principal and the other as a teacher, according to her Missouri Ethics Commission filing. Eslinger, talking to the board Tuesday, said her “whole family is public school people.”

“In such an environment as this, we are incredibly blessed to have such a strong candidate, and when that blessing is before you, you have to move with deliberate speed,” Pamela Westbrooks Hodge, a board member from Pasadena Hills, said during the meeting. “I just don’t think we could ask for a candidate with a richer cadre of experiences.”

In the 2023 legislative session, Eslinger filed five bills related to education, with a particular focus on education funding. None of these bills made it to the Senate floor, though provisions of legislation signed by the governor mirror a bill she wrote on nursing education.

She told reporters she turned down a spot on the Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee in 2023, saying her focus was “economic development, infrastructure, broadband, roads and that kind of stuff” to help her constituents.

Charter-school and tax-credit-scholarship advocates are eyeing the position of commissioner to expand their programs in Missouri. In 2021, Eslinger voted against the bill that created the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program.

Co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Education Sen. Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester, and Rep. Doug Richey, R-Excelsior Springs, wrote a letter to the State Board of Education laying out the values they expect for the next commissioner.

“We need to downsize (the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education), focus singularly upon classroom instruction, value ed choice, remove woke activism, and regain parental trust and confidence,” Richey wrote on social media, with the co-chairs’ letter.

Eslinger described herself as a supporter of “good schools” when talking to the board Tuesday.

“I support work towards good schools, period. Good schools,” Eslinger said to the board. “I support parent choice. I support public charters. I support rural schools, I support urban schools, K-12 systems, early childhood education, you name it.”

Eslinger’s 2023 bills included legislation that, if passed, would’ve reduced funding for charter schools in years that the state transportation aid is not fully funded.

She also proposed the creation of a patriotic and civics class for teachers with a $3,000 incentive for educators who complete the program. Koenig asked for a similar course in a multifaceted bill that passed the Senate early in the 2023 session before dying at legislative deadline.

Board members praised Vandeven’s work as a “strong foundation” for Eslinger to build on.

“​​We start at the basis of where Dr. Vandeven has taken this department,” board member Peter Herschend, of Branson, told fellow members.

Vandeven said she was “thrilled” with the board’s pick.

“I have worked with Dr. Eslinger in various capacities over a decade,” she said after the announcement. “So I have seen her proven leadership, and I understand her commitment to the students in Missouri, which is so very essential.”

This story has been updated.

A qualifying foster parent under the proposed federal rule would need to be educated on the needs of the child’s sexuality or gender identity and, if the child wishes, “facilitate the child's access to age-appropriate resources, services, and activities that support their health and well-being" (photo illustration by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey this week joined with 18 other states to oppose a proposed federal rule that aims to protect LGBTQ youth in foster care and provide them with necessary services.

The attorneys general argue in a letter to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services that the proposed rule — which requires states to provide safe and appropriate placements with providers who are appropriately trained about the child’s sexual orientation or gender identity  — amounts to religion-based discrimination and violates freedom of speech.

“As a foster parent myself,” Bailey said in a news release Tuesday, “I am deeply invested in protecting children and putting their best interests first.”

“Biden’s proposed rule does exactly the opposite by enacting policies meant to exclude people with deeply held religious beliefs from being foster parents.”

The rule is part of a package of federal proposals on foster care and is an extension of the Biden administration’s broader push to protect LGBTQ kids in foster care.

“Because of family rejection and abuse,” the Biden administration said in a September press release, LGBTQ children are “overrepresented in foster care where they face poor outcomes, including mistreatment and discrimination because of who they are.”

State agencies would be required under the rule to provide safe and appropriate foster care placements for those who are “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex,” along with children who are “non-binary or have non-conforming gender identity or expression.”

A qualifying foster parent would need to be educated on the needs of the child’s sexuality or gender identity and, if the child wishes, “facilitate the child’s access to age-appropriate resources, services, and activities that support their health and well-being.”

An example of a safe and appropriate placement is one where a provider is “expected to utilize the child’s identified pronouns, chosen name, and allow the child to dress in an age-appropriate manner,” according to the proposal, “that the child believes reflects their self-identified gender identity and expression.”

The attorneys general characterize that as “forcing an individual to use another’s preferred pronouns by government fiat,” in violation of the First Amendment.

Robert Fischer, director of communications for Missouri LGBTQ advocacy organization PROMO, said the freedom of religion “doesn’t give any person the right to impose those beliefs on others, particularly to discriminate.” 

“Any state official who claims to put ‘children’s interests first’ and in the same breath is willing to risk their well-being and opportunity to thrive in the name of religion — I think that speaks for itself,” Fischer told The Independent. 

The rule prohibits retaliation against children who identify as LGBTQ or are perceived as LGBTQ.

Public agencies would need to notify children about the option to request foster homes identified as “safe and appropriate” and tell them how to report concerns about their placement.

Agencies would also have to go through extra steps before placing transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming children in group care settings that are divided by sex.

The “majority” of states, according to the proposed rule, would have to “expand their efforts” to recruit and identify providers who could meet the needs of LGBTQ children.

Missouri guidelines

Laws and policies for protecting LGBTQ youth in foster care — relating to kids’ rights, supports, placement considerations, caregiver qualifications and definitions — currently vary by state. 

According to a federal report published in January, which reviewed states’ laws and policies, Missouri does not have laws or policies explicitly addressing any of those five categories.

Most states — 39 states and Washington, D.C. — have “explicit protections from harassment or discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression,” according to a federal report, as of January. Missouri is not one of them. 

Twenty-two  states and D.C. as of January, require agencies to provide tailored services and supports to LGBTQ youth, and eight states and D.C. offer case management and facilitate access to “gender-affirming medical, mental health and social services.”

Children’s Division, the agency within the Missouri Department of Social Services that oversees foster care, offers guidance on their website for providers and child welfare staff in “supporting LGBTQ youth in foster care,” but still does not appear to have official policy on the issue.

A spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Social Services did not respond to a request for comment. 

Those guidelines include using the child’s “preferred name and pronouns,” along with establishing a supportive environment and providing “physically and emotionally safe and supportive care and resources regardless of one’s personal attitudes and beliefs.”

The Department of Social Services is part of the administration of Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, and the guidelines were in place the entire time Bailey was serving as Parson’s general counsel — the second highest ranking job in the governor’s office.  

Asked whether he raised any objections to the guidelines during his tenure with Parson, Bailey’s spokesperson said he “had no involvement in crafting [the Department of Social Services’] ‘best practices’ as general counsel.”

AG arguments

The 19 attorneys general contend the federal rule would “remove faith-based providers from the foster care system” because of their “religious beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

They cite Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled a public agency couldn’t force private, religious foster agencies to allow same-sex foster parents.

The proposed rule itself also acknowledges the Supreme Court case and alleges that by not requiring religious foster-care providers to welcome LGBTQ children, it is complying with the court’s precedent.

But the attorneys general do not believe this is enough. Their letter argues the proposal violates freedom of religion because those unwilling to support LGBTQ foster children “would be excluded from providing care to as many as one-third of foster children ages 12-21.”

“In addition to discriminating against religion, the proposed rule will harm children by limiting the number of available foster homes, harm families by risking kinship placements, and harm states by increasing costs and decreasing care options,” the letter says.

The rule would “discourage individuals and organizations of faith from joining or continuing in foster care,” the attorneys general argue, and “reduce family setting options.” Without faith-based foster parents, the attorneys general say, children would be more likely to be placed in congregate settings.

They also say the rule could disqualify family members who volunteer as placement, or kinship care, if the family member does not agree to support the child’s sexuality or gender identity with age-appropriate resources, as the rule entails.

This story was updated since it was first published.