Lee's Summit Republican: My bill will handle transfer problem...and send some students to private schools

In his latest report, Rep. Mike Cierpiot, R-Lee's Summit, explains his legislation attempting to fix the student transfer issue. He doesn't mention the word voucher. Apparently, that has been changed to "passport scholarship."

This week, I filed HB 1822, which is my attempt to fix the current and pending problems with the state's transfer issue for failing school districts.

HB1822 establishes that the State Board will intervene with a district as soon as it is rated as a Provisional District. The intervention means it ‘shall’ intervene with individualized improvement measures based on the districts and community’s needs. The state will also assign every building in the provisional district an accreditation classification. It ‘may’ work with the district to develop interventions specific to those underperforming schools. It also ‘may’ transfer the underperforming buildings to the State Achievement District.
If progress to accreditation is not made to 70% within 5 years the district ‘shall’ be classified as unaccredited. At that time the state board ‘shall’ transfer the underperforming buildings to the Achievement District.

The State Achievement District will be a sub division of the state. 3 board members appointed by the governor and confirmed by the senate.(defined in 162.1110 of HB1822)

School staff members fired after leaving disabled student on bus

(From the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education)

Two staff members at the Lakeview Woods State School located in Lee’s Summit were dismissed after a disabled 19-year-old student was left on a school bus Friday.

The bus driver and an aid left a non-verbal student in a wheelchair on the bus during the school day and found the student on the bus at the end of the day. School staff gave the student fluids and checked the student’s vital signs before taking her home.

Today the Department’s area director started a full inquiry into the incident to determine exactly what happened and if there were any other employees involved. The supervisor and the building administrator will evaluate the procedures used for taking attendance and checking students into and out of the school each day.

The school reported the situation to the Child Abuse and Prevention Hotline run by the Missouri Department of Social Services on Friday. The situation was deemed a Type 2 or non-emergency incident.

The two staff members were employees of the school and the bus company. Both were dismissed from their positions