Neosho School District among those using AI, digital tools to prevent suicides

By Meg Cunningham

Beacon: Missouri 

As a school counselor in Neosho, Missouri, Tracy Clements was skeptical that an AI tool could help her students’ mental health, or make any dent in the school's suicide prevention efforts.

She entered the Neosho School District in the fall of 2012. Over the years, she started to notice a trend. 

“I was an elementary building-level counselor for probably six years, and we just kept having all these suicides.” Clements said. “I was like, ‘Why is nobody doing anything about this?’ And nobody seemed to know what to do.” 

She became the director of counseling for the district, and started developing a communitywide mental health task force to try to chip away at the problem. 

After a few years, she was approached with a new tool: a beta version of an AI software that would monitor student activity on their school computers. It could flag signs a student could be in crisis. 

That software and others like it were booming as students were confined to their homes during the COVID pandemic, with the objective of keeping students safe while they weren’t physically in school. 

“I was like, you know, ‘I don’t have time to play with your toys,’” she said. “‘Have fun with it, but I have real work to do.’” 

Within weeks, Clements said, she got an alert that a student had searched how much of a medicine it took to kill someone. She tried calling the student’s parents and couldn’t reach them. So she drove to the student’s home, where she saw pills and a glass of water on the kitchen table. 

“We got all the services in place, and then I just cried the whole way home,” she said.

The close call changed her mind about how effective the program could be. And at the time, Neosho needed help. 

Missouri suicide prevention resources
988 hotline: call or text
Crisis Text Line: Text TALK to 741741
Missouri Suicide Prevention Network

In 2020, 31% of students in Newton County — home to Neosho — reported to the state Department of Mental Health that they were always or often very sad in the past 30 days, compared to 25% of other surveyed Missouri students. Newton County students also reported slightly higher feelings of hopelessness, appetite and sleep changes, which can all be linked to mental health struggles. 

That year, the district adopted GoGuardian Beacon, a version of student activity monitoring software that focuses specifically on mental health and student safety. It sends different types of alerts to school administrators based on how urgent situations seem. In the case of after-hours alerts, districts often use relationships with local law enforcement to check on students and ensure their safety. 

GoGuardian Beacon claims that since 2020 their software has protected nearly 20,000 students nationwide from physical harm, and counties that use their software have 26% lower youth suicide rates. 

In Neosho, there were an average of two student suicides a year before the program was adopted. Now, the company credits their efforts with student suicides dropping to zero for the past four years. 

There are no studies showing exactly how effective GoGuardian’s program and others like it — such as Bark, Gaggle or Securly — are at keeping students safe. While GoGuardian focuses on mental health flags, other programs flag for things like hate speech, gender expression, bullying or harassment. 

Despite indications that such software can help stem suicides, it also raises questions. Privacy experts warn of the potential downsides of the software. And student mental health advocates say schools must find ways outside of these programs to ensure students experiencing crises have other tools to address their needs. 

Does suicide prevention outweigh privacy concerns?

Clements said she was most surprised by the program’s ability to catch students who may be at risk, and found it was flagging students much earlier than other metrics the district was using. 

GoGuardian Beacon “was catching things sooner, before their behavior started to change on the outside, because kids are more honest with Google,” Clements said. “Those high-flyer kids who have good social skills and can mask when they are struggling — those kids we were able to catch further upstream and get services in place.” 

When Neosho was rolling out the program, the school district held a sparsely attended informational meeting for parents to learn more about the software. They had little public feedback, but consenting to the program became part of the district’s technology release forms – by allowing your student to use this school-supplied laptop, parents were signing off to have their activity monitored. 

The AI software flags certain search terms, but GoGuardian also has trained the staff screening the alerts behind the scenes before they are sent to school officials. The school can also give feedback about how accurate the alert was, to help the system continue learning. 

“I think we have kids that are able to stay at school and successfully complete school because they’re getting the services they need,” said Tim Lewis, Neosho School District’s chief of police. “I’ve been a part of it for the last four or five years, and it has grown, and it is getting better and better every day,” 

The New Franklin School District in Howard County, Missouri, uses a free version of a program called Bark to scan student activity in a similar way. The district has about 400 students, but has generated hundreds of thousands of alerts since 2022. 

“It scans their emails, documents, slides, presentations, sheets, all of those kinds of things,” said Jackie Starke, a former teacher who is now a consulting technology director for New Franklin. 

“Sometimes our kids are dealing with issues that we don’t realize,” Starke said. “It has helped us identify some students who may have considered self-harm and get them routed.” 

“Sometimes our kids are dealing with issues that we don’t realize. It has helped us identify some students who may have considered self-harm and get them routed.” 

Jackie Starke, a former teacher who is now a consulting technology director for New Franklin School District

From 2020 to 2022, Missouri was ranked 28th nationwide for its youth suicide rate. 

In 2024, 21.5% of Missouri students surveyed about their mental health said they attempted to harm themselves in a deliberate but not suicidal way. The numbers have slightly improved since 2021, when 22% of high school students said they had seriously considered suicide, compared to 11.7% of students in 2024. 

Still, about 56% of students surveyed in 2024 said they were sometimes, often or always “very sad.” And the numbers are consistently higher for female students compared to their male counterparts. 

How are suicide prevention digital monitoring tools applied across student groups? 

New Franklin and Neosho both have access to every alert that has been generated across their districts since they adopted these programs. Schools say the programs help keep students safe, but privacy experts have concerns about how they’re being used and what could be done with that data. 

“Ultimately, the tool is available to the school, and there are many ways to customize your use of these tools,” said Kristin Woelfel, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology’s civic technology team. “All it takes is for somebody to decide, ‘We want to find all students who fit into this category, or we want to flag this particular content.’ That in itself is a little scary.” 

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) runs an annual survey of students, parents and teachers whose schools use student surveillance programs. In their 2024 survey, 88% of teachers said their school uses some form of technology to track students’ online activity.

It’s a booming industry. An ACLU research report found that lobbyists by 2023 had secured more than $300 million in federal funding to improve school safety through these software products. In 2021, K-12 schools and colleges across the U.S. spent about $3.1 billion on these security software types, up from $2.7 billion in 2017. 

But the way those programs are applied, Woelfel said, changes across demographics. 

For example, CDT found that students with an individualized education program or a 504 plan to accommodate students with disabilities were more likely to get in trouble for how they respond to school staff when their online activity was flagged. Of that group, 33% of students got in trouble for how they responded, versus 27% of students without an IEP or 504 plan. 

They also found that LGBTQ+ students were more likely to experience adverse effects. CDT found that 55% of LGBTQ+ students said they got in trouble or know someone who got in trouble as a result of their activity that was flagged, versus 41% of non-LGBTQ+ students. 

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Another 18% of LGBTQ+ students said they were outed by the software, or know of someone who was. 

That concern has been addressed by some companies. In early 2023, Gaggle announced it would no longer flag students who use words like “gay” and “lesbian” in school assignments and chat messages. 

The ACLU report also found that algorithms have been shown to be worse at recognizing and categorizing Black dialects, and tools used to screen online comments for hate speech and cyberbullying disproportionately flag posts from Black students. 

The CDT survey found that Black and Hispanic students were more likely than white students to report content being filtered or blocked: 42% of Black students and 33% of Hispanic students said content associated with students of color was more likely to be blocked or filtered, compared to 28% of white students. 

“There are particular students who find themselves a little bit more vulnerable when these technologies are being used,” Woelfel said. 

When surveyed, 42% of parents said they’d like to opt their child out of AI use for student safety purposes, and 81% of parents said they thought it was important they were given the chance to give input on how the  software was used. 

How school devices are used for different demographics of students is another element Woelfel worries about. If a student has access to a personal computer at home, that could provide them with more privacy. But if they rely on their school computer, their risk could be higher, she said.

“Should privacy be reserved to people who can pay for it?” Woelfel said. “I think that’s a valid question.” 

The districts told The Beacon that they hadn’t talked with the state about these software products and how they should be used. There’s no estimate of how many Missouri school districts are using these digital tools for student safety purposes. 

When contacted, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said that schools that accept federal e-rate money for internet connectivity and equipment are required to follow the Children’s Internet Protection Act, which calls for safety policies and the use of technology to filter obscene and harmful content. 

Beyond technology, how can schools keep students safe in the digital age? 

In New Franklin, administrators use the data and their knowledge of the student to assess how much of a threat an alert may be, Starke said. 

“I can see if there is a pattern, or maybe somebody who hits an alert a little more often,” she said. “There are some kids, if they hit an alert, they go up the priority list … because there are potential issues that could have been serious.” 

“We can’t go without it,” she added. “There are just too many things that students have access to compared to before they had phones and computers in their hands all of the time.” 

Starke and the district have discussed upgrading to the paid version of Bark, which would allow parents to see alerts. But she questions if total access to the alerts would be helpful for every student. 

“I would want to investigate that more,” Starke said. “That can be a tricky situation, because sometimes parents are the biggest part of the issue.” 

Clements, the former Neosho counselor, doesn’t give GoGuaridan Beacon full credit for helping catch students in crises. She pointed to all of the previous communitywide work that taught students coping skills and what resources they had access to, if they needed them. 

And mental health experts urge districts to ensure students are getting the support they need outside of digital monitoring. 

But Missouri’s lack of mental health resources is pervasive, both in rural and urban areas, said Keith Herman, a curators’ professor in educational psychology at the University of Missouri.

He and his colleagues developed an early identification system for schools to assist students who may be at risk of experiencing mental health crises. The system included a student survey and a path for support for students that doesn’t rely on technology, which can’t pick up on all of the subtleties of mental health. 

“They lack some of the more nuanced focus on identifying kids early with emerging risks, and then getting them the support and services in school or the community to prevent some of the things that threat detection software systems are detecting much farther downstream,” Herman said. 

But especially in rural schools, monitoring software can help pick up some of the slack when districts may be understaffed or have less access to nearby resources. 

“In those communities, often there’s not enough mental health providers to refer kids to when they do have needs that are outside the scope of the school,” Herman said. 

And connecting students with resources, or knowing how to follow up to make sure they’re safe, is often the hardest part. 

“It’s not enough to give tools like detection systems,” Herman said. He said schools need robust training on how to handle the systems, how to tailor them to their needs, and how to properly respond to students. And they need the tools to help students out, even if their mental health doesn’t seem to be in an urgent crisis. 

But many schools don’t have sufficient resources to seek out that training for their teachers, Herman said, which can be a barrier to using these tools as safely and effectively as possible. 

Ultimately, he said, a school and communitywide lens, not focused on individual students, is the best way to try and address student mental health. 

“Getting adults in a school or community to think about … ‘What can we do differently in our environment to have fewer kids having these types of concerns?’” Herman said. “That type of thinking centers mental health as not something to be ashamed of … but more of something that we have a collective responsibility for thinking through.” 

This article first appeared on Beacon: Missouri and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Jason Smith: Rooting out waste, abuse and fraud

(From Eighth District Congressman Jason Smith)

Ever since President Donald Trump took office, he’s worked around the clock to cut wasteful spending and right-size the federal government. 

One of the most important tools he has in this fight is the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This agency, which was created by President Trump, is doing a great job exposing the federal government’s lack of transparency and endless appetite for wasting your hard-earned tax dollars.

That’s especially true when it comes to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). DOGE has exposed how this government agency has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on ridiculous things like putting on drag shows in Ecuador, pushing atheism in Nepal, teaching illegal immigrants how to circumvent U.S. immigration law, giving condoms to the Taliban, and spreading LGBTQ awareness across the world. I strongly support the president’s efforts to ensure USAID will no longer be able to waste taxpayer money to advance the Left’s radical agenda.

Thanks to DOGE, we also learned that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is spending millions of dollars on things that have nothing to do with helping communities recover after a major disaster. According to Elon Musk, who is assisting DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts, FEMA spent $59 million to house illegal immigrants in luxury New York City hotels. Thankfully, Department of Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem – who has jurisdiction over FEMA – is fighting tooth and nail to significantly overhaul this federal agency.

Unsurprisingly, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been a major target of DOGE’s efforts to right-size the federal government and protect Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars. Together, DOGE and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin are working tirelessly to rein in this federal agency. 

Zeldin canceled a $50 million “environmental justice grant” for an organization that believes “climate justice travels through a Free Palestine.” Zeldin followed up by canceling nine government contracts related to DEI and so-called environmental justice, resulting in nearly $60 million in taxpayer savings. I’m glad we now have an EPA director who is committed to reforming this out-of-control federal agency.

The Department of Education is another federal agency that is rightly being exposed for wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. This month, the Education Department canceled over $600 million in grants to institutions and nonprofits that were wasting taxpayer dollars to train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies, including critical race theory and DEI training. 

The agency also set strict rules aimed at stopping COVID-relief funding from being used by school boards on ridiculous things like spending $86,000 on hotel rooms in Las Vegas, $393,000 to rent out a Major League Baseball Stadium, and $60,000 to purchase pool passes. It’s only been a few weeks, but DOGE is off to a great start. 

According to DOGE, it has saved taxpayers $55 billion. But that’s not all it has accomplished. It has also shined a bright light on just how bloated and inefficient the federal government has become. It’s no secret why Washington Democrats strongly oppose DOGE: it threatens to undo their decades-long efforts to expand government command and control over Americans.

Missouri lawmakers unlikely to prioritize teacher pay as past efforts bring growth

By Annelise Hanshaw

Missouri Independent

More Missouri educators are staying in their jobs following efforts to raise teachers’ base pay and provide alternative measures for certification, the State Board of Education learned last week.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education predicts schools will have fewer vacancies in the future, speaking positively about small gains and outlining a path for more improvement.

“It is encouraging data to see because it signals that while supply of new teachers is increasing, we’re also seeing a decrease in the demand for new teachers,” Paul Katnik, assistant commissioner in the office of educator quality, told the board.

Following Katnik’s presentation, the department announced the creation of a playbook to improve teacher recruitment and retention in Missouri with eight cornerstones to guide lawmakers and education officials.

“The data confirms we’re making positive, incremental progress, and this indicates we are doing the right things,” Katnik said. “The data also indicates we have more work yet to do.”

Teacher retention in Missouri increased in the 2023-24 school year after a decrease the year prior. Among all Missouri teachers, 88.7% remained in the profession, compared to 88.2% the year prior.

Despite a continued push for teacher recruitment efforts from the state department, lawmakers have less emphasis on the problem than in years past with few bills filed addressing the issue head on.

“From what we passed last year, there will be a $700 million core increase, so that will be the increase this year,” state Rep. Ed Lewis, a Republican from Moberly, told The Independent. “Will we go beyond that? No, I can’t imagine that we have any appetite to go higher than that this year.”

Lewis has filed numerous bills aimed at teacher recruitment and retention in years past, and his legislation was made law in a large education package last year. His proposals included a grant that helps upcoming teachers pay for college education, so long as they teach in Missouri afterward.

The new law is expected to pour hundreds of millions into schools alongside an increase to the formula that funds public schools.

This year, Lewis hopes to just see “tweaks” to the existing measures and funding in the appropriations process.

“We have to realize that we just put a lot of money into education, and we’ve got to make sure that we appropriate all that and that we figure out how, long term going forward, we’re going to continue to meet the educational needs in public education,” he said.

Still, a few bills seek to expand programs to retain teachers.

State Rep. Kathy Steinhoff, a Democrat from Columbia, filed a bill hoping to create a grant program incentivizing teachers to stay in their jobs. But, Steinhoff knows the appetite for public education spending is particularly weak this year.

Steinhoff’s bill would combine local efforts with a matching fund from the state to supplement teacher salaries by $5,000 to $6,000 annually.

Last year, the legislature increased the minimum teacher pay to $40,000 and $46,000 for those with at least 10 years of experience. Base pay for those with at least 10 years of experience will rise to $48,000 over two years.

The pay bump has caused compression in some districts, with teachers having served in a district for five years making little more than newcomers, Steinhoff said. And average teacher pay, which rose to over $55,000 this year in Missouri, is still “way behind” careers requiring similar levels of education.

Lewis said districts could use the increase to the foundation formula to make “more competitive” salary schedules, putting onus on local authorities to use the state funds for retention.

A bill proposed by state Rep. Ben Keathley, a Republican from Chesterfield, seeks to dictate how much districts can spend on administrative salaries compared with teacher compensation. The bill would require districts to spend at least 88% of educator salaries on teachers in the 2026-27 school year, with that portion rising 1% annually until it reaches 95%.

Other bills filed addressing teacher pay include fixes to a provision passed last year that incentivizes a five-day school week, clarifying that a school calendar can be shorter based on inclement weather and still qualify.

Lewis also filed legislation that would sunset a fund created to help districts raise teacher salaries to the new minimum in 2035, unless the grant is renewed.

GET THE MORNING HEADL

Record spending fuels Missouri campaigns to legalize sports gambling, new casino

By Rudi Keller

Missouri Independent

It’s time to bet the over-under on how much will be spent this year on gambling ballot measures in Missouri.

A good mark might be $60 million. Online bookies poured $32 million so far into the Amendment 2 campaign to legalize sports betting, and a casino company grumpy about the deal countered with $14 million to defeat it.

(Photo- The Isle of Capri casino in Boonville, owned by Caesars Entertainment, has contributed $4.7 million to the campaign to defeat Amendment 2, which would legalize sports wagering in Missouri= Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

The campaign for Amendment 5, to authorize a new casino at the Lake of the Ozarks, adds $9.4 million — bringing the total to more than $55 million.

 

Winning for Missouri Education, the Amendment 2 campaign funded by DraftKings and FanDuel, has already set a record for the most money donated to a ballot measure campaign. The previous record was $31 million raised by supporters of a 2006 proposal to protect stem cell research.

The initiative campaign began with vocal support from major professional sports teams but none have contributed any cash for the effort.

“It is a large state, with a lot of TV markets, so it certainly takes resources to get your message out,” said Jack Cardetti, spokesman for the campaign. “But the most important thing is that you have a good message and a good initiative for voters.”

Caesars Entertainment is the casino company that dislikes the proposal enough to spend big against it. Caesars employs 2,000 people in Missouri and has a branded online sports betting platform that competes with FanDuel and DraftKings.

The proposal will mainly benefit the online platforms that have no significant presence in the state, said Brooke Foster, spokeswoman for Missourians Against the Deceptive Online Gambling Amendment.

“Obviously they’re not opposed to sports betting,” she said of Caesars’ opposition to Amendment 2. “If it were written in a way that would actually benefit Missouri and Missourians in a more substantial way, it would be different.”

The Amendment 5 campaign cost is being split between Bally’s Corp., which hopes to get the new license, and developer RIS Inc., which holds the land to build it.

“For us, without any organized opposition that we’re aware of, it’s simply a matter of educating the voters about what our amendment does,” said Ed Rhode, a consultant working with the YesOn5 committee. “And what we’re seeing is the more educated they become about this issue, the more likely they are to support it.”

Whether the broadcast spending on the gambling measure exceeds spending by statewide candidates would be an interesting side bet. So far, candidates for statewide office have spent $13.1 million on broadcast time, as tracked by The Independent, while the gambling campaigns have spent $13.7 million.

All three major efforts focus their messages on one issue – education funding.

Winning for Missouri Education promises that sports wagering will net more than $100 million for education programs over the first five years.

“Legalizing sports betting will generate tens of millions of dollars every year for our classrooms, helping increase teacher pay,” one ad states.

The Caesars-funded opposition challenges the sincerity of that promise, arguing write-offs and other carve-outs mean the result will be insignificant.

It is “Lottery 2.0,” one ad states.

“Teachers were told the lottery would raise a lot of money for schools, but that didn’t happen,” the ad begins.

The casino at the Lake of the Ozarks is also selling educational benefits and does so by including language directing all the tax money to early childhood literacy programs in public schools.

The $14.3 million estimate for revenue is “53% more funding for childhood literacy across Missouri, without raising taxes,” the campaign’s ad states.

As the election nears, Winning for Missouri Education is adding a new message — sports betting is already occurring and Missouri isn’t getting any benefit. Hundreds of thousands of Missourians already have accounts with online platforms. All it takes to place a legal bet is cross into a state where it is legal — a list that includes every state bordering Missouri except Oklahoma.

“Let’s fund education is the more effective argument,” said Terry Smith, a political science professor at Columbia College.“The argument that is less explicitly made, but I’ve heard from a lot of people, is that people are going to gamble on sports, and right now Kansas and states that we border are making all the money. Why shouldn’t we get our share?”

Amendment 2

If voters legalize sports betting, the Missouri Gaming Commission could issue up to 14 licenses for online wagers. Six would go to the major sports teams, six would go to the casino operators and two would be reserved for online bookmakers.

Each of the 13 casinos and each of the sports teams could also operate an in-person, retail sports betting operation on their properties.

The push to legalize sports wagering in Missouri began after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal law against wagering on sporting events in 2018. More than 35 states have legalized some form of the gambling since the court decision.

In the bill that was the closest lawmakers ever got to a resolution of the issue, there were no licenses for independent online bookmakers like DraftKings or FanDuel. Instead, the online platforms would have had to provide products branded to a sports team or casino.

The online platforms generate the cash. An economic study produced for Winning for Missouri Education estimates that $21.8 billion will be wagered during the first five years after legalization and more than 98% of the bets will be placed online.

That same study pegs the net to the state over that period at $134 million. Revenue in the fifth year is estimated at $38.7 million, about $10 million more than the maximum annual revenue projected by the fiscal note for the ballot measure.

Questioning the quality of those revenue estimates is a major thrust of the opposition campaign. The proposal before voters sets the tax at 10% of the net revenue — the money lost on wagers that don’t pay out.

But before the tax is applied, the operators would be able to deduct promotional giveaways — the inducements such as free bets to join a platform — as well as applicable federal taxes. Before any money gets to education programs, the initiative sets aside $5 million annually to support help for problem gamblers.

The figures presented in the economic study result in an effective tax rate of 1.4% of actual losses in the first year and 6.9% in the fifth year. As Missouri nets $134 million, those figures show the gambling operators would keep $86 million in tax savings due to write-offs.

“We want the state to be getting lots of revenue off this,” Cardetti said. “But to get people over from the illicit sports betting market or from going over to other states, those promotional credits in the early days are important, but they end up netting the state more revenue in the long run.”

Kansas, which legalized sports betting in September 2022, has received $19.4 million in tax revenue on $4.4 billion wagered, according to data from the Kansas Lottery.

The promotional credits would be capped at 25% of the amount wagered, Cardetti noted, a limit that is not in place in Kansas.

The ads that emphasize Missouri could receive no net revenue from sports wagering is based on the fiscal note estimate, Foster said. The range listed there is zero to $28.9 million annually.

“It’s basically taxpayers subsidizing their marketing,” she said. “Because that’s a marketing tool for them to give you $1,000 to match what’s in your account. But then they are, on paper, in the red.”

Caesars opposes the amendment in part because it does not allow the company to offer online platforms branded to its Missouri properties — Harrah’s Kansas City, Isle of Capri in Boonville and Horseshoe St. Louis at Lumiere Place.

“If we’re going to expand, it needs to be a little more equitable, as far as what the companies actually get,” she said. “But also, they have a concern that’s secondary, which is that there may be some fall off on the business that they’re able to do.”

The opposition campaign is just one company whining they don’t get a big enough slice, Cardetti said.

“The opponents of Amendment 2 are flawed, hugely flawed messengers,” Cardetti said. “Most Missourians can see right through a ‘No’ campaign when they realize that it’s almost entirely funded by one of the largest casino companies in the world.”

Amendment 5

If Amendment 5 passes, it would authorize the MIssouri Gaming Commission to issue one new casino license at a location on the Osage River between Bagnell Dam and its confluence with the Missouri River.

The original law authorizing casino gambling, passed in 1992, limited it to locations on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. An initiative backed by casino operators passed in 2008 to cap the number of licenses at 13, equal to the casinos then existing or licensed for construction.

There’s no guarantee that Bally’s would receive the license or that the location owned by RIS will be awarded the license. But with local backing and everything ready for an application once the measure passes, it has a big head start.

The investment won’t just be a casino, Rhode said. It will be a destination facility at a normally seasonal tourism location, bringing people at otherwise slack times.

“Having a multifaceted tourism attraction at the lake, which includes a casino, a spa, hotel, convention center and other benefits, is going to be a year round economic boon to that region,” he said. “We’re talking $400 million in investment and 500 permanent jobs.”

One casino is almost certain to be built near the lake. The Osage Nation launched a project in 2021 to have a property in Miller County taken into trust as ancestral lands where it could operate a casino and convention center.

Despite the direct challenge from Amendment 5, the tribal government has not tried to stop it.

The fiscal note for Amendment 5 estimates that it would add about $14.3 million to the state treasury each year. Each casino’s net winnings are taxed at 21% and there are no deductions for promotions such as free bets.

The Mark Twain casino in Hannibal has the smallest annual revenue and paid $7 million in fiscal 2024. The Ameristar casino in St. Charles had the largest revenue and paid $58 million.

“This is not us making up a number,” Rhode said. “This is the state auditor assigning this number so that number is what it is. We feel confident in sharing that number.”

The lottery problem

Forty years ago, Missouri also had two gambling proposals on the November ballot.

One established a state lottery, the other authorized parimutuel wagering on horse races. The lottery was passed by lawmakers to follow a move by 10 other states in the early 1980s to authorize lotteries.

The need for new money in education programs was a major selling point for the lottery, Smith said. The nation was coming out of a major recession that had sapped revenues and there was little appetite for raising taxes.

But the bill creating the lottery didn’t earmark the money. Instead, it went into the general revenue fund, where it was only a small portion of the whole. The general revenue fund pays for public schools, higher education, state prisons, Medicaid and a host of other programs.

“If all of a sudden there was an increase in the amount of revenue that was dumped into the K-12 budget and there was no change in the rest of the budget, that’s one thing,” Smith said. “But that history tells us that’s not how it’s going to work.”

The foundation formula is the name of the main state aid program for local schools. When the lottery sold its first ticket, in fiscal 1986, the foundation formula appropriation was $823 million. The following fiscal year, when the lottery contributed $80 million to general revenue, the general revenue transfer to the school fund increased by $73 million.

Throughout the late 1980s, as national figures showed Missouri near the bottom in per-pupil spending and teacher pay, complaints grew that the lottery had not produced the promised results for education.

That led to a 1992 ballot measure earmarking all lottery revenue for education programs. In the first fiscal year that was in effect, the earmarked funds were used for programs supporting minimum teacher salaries and the Career Ladder stipends.

The following year, in fiscal 1995, the foundation formula received its first appropriation of earmarked lottery funds, $33 million. That was about 25% of all lottery revenue that year. The foundation formula appropriation total was $1.4 billion.

Today all net revenue from bingo, the lottery and casinos is earmarked for education. In the current year’s budget, the lottery is providing $329 million and casino taxes are tapped for $457 million for the $4 billion foundation formula.

Any revenue from Amendment 2 will be an insignificant addition and have no impact on teacher pay, Foster said.

“If you want sports gambling, say that, but don’t put out television ads that have teachers saying teachers are going to get raises,” she said. “We did the math, and even if it was that top $28.9 million, there’s around 900,000 public school kids in Missouri, so that’s 30 bucks a kid.”

Under existing provisions of the constitution, any new revenue from either gambling measure must be used for education programs. The sports wagering amendment does not define which programs the money will support while the Osage River casino proposal adds the earmarking to literacy programs.

The new revenue from sports wagering will make a difference, Cardetti said.

“Not a penny of benefit is going to Missouri, despite the fact that we know thousands of Missourians are already making bets,” he said. “This is the way that we can bring these revenues back to the state of Missouri and regulate something that Missourians are already doing today.”

Election prospects

The good news from history for the promoters of Amendment 2 and Amendment 5 is that Missourians have rarely met a gambling proposal they didn’t like.

Since 1980, 10 gambling questions have appeared on the ballot and only two — to allow betting on simulcast horse races and authorize a casino at Rockaway Beach on Lake Taneycomo — have been defeated.

In the August St. Louis University/YouGov poll, 50% of voters surveyed said they supported sports wagering after reading the Amendment 2 ballot language while 30% were opposed. The poll did not ask about Amendment 5.

None of the past gambling campaigns had the kind of well-funded opposition that Amendment 2 has drawn. The ads from both sides are filling broadcast airwaves, streaming services and platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.

“We’re using very similar messages that we do on TV and on radio, but now people’s viewing habits are so different and diverse that you’ve got to go meet people where they are,” Cardetti said.

The anti campaign is having an impact, Foster said.

“It’s definitely tightened,” she said. “It’s margin of error type close, so we’re really pleased to see that.”

The opposition ads clearly state the target is Amendment 2 but the message of skepticism about gambling revenue going to education is having a spillover effect on Amendment 5.

“I bet that they don’t like us or our messaging,” she said.

The opposition to Amendment 2 is making backers of Amendment 5 work harder, Rhode said.

“We’re definitely seeing a little bit of confusion among the voters,” he said. “But the more that we are out there educating voters, you know, sort of what this amendment does, we find the support coming our way.”

The message that the six major professional sports teams back Amendment 2, and that it will keep revenue at home, is just being rolled out to supplement the education message.

“It makes absolutely zero sense that we have a public policy in the state of Missouri that actively pushes people to go spend money in other states,” Cardetti said.

The opposition campaign would have a tougher sell if that was the message to promote sports wagering from the beginning, Foster said.

“That would be much stronger,” she said. “But the argument ‘let’s make gambling more accessible” is going to hit a lot more roadblocks than ‘let’s give this free money to kids.’”

There are downsides to sports wagering that have not been part of the debate. Earlier this month, The Guardian reported on threats and abuse targeting college athletes who don’t achieve the individual statistics that are fodder for wagers.

And Smith said he’s not entirely comfortable with the bet-from-anywhere nature of sports wagering.

“I’ve observed a lot of young people who are addicted to their phones,” Smith said. “And you know, this is one more piece of candy for them that they might not be able to resist.”

Missouri House bill takes aim at ‘cesspool’ of meatpacking sludge

By Allison Kite

Missouri Independent

Between Vallerie Steele, her seven siblings and their children, there’s always a birthday or anniversary to celebrate on the family’s southwest Missouri farm. The summer months are typically a parade of pool parties and barbecues.

Until last year.

(Photo- Denali Water Solutions operates storage basins for meatpacking sludge in Missouri. Legislation in the Missouri House would impose regulations to help rural residents who complain of unbearable smells from the facilities. (USGAO/Wikipedia).

The stench coming from the lagoon across the road from Steele’s home has become unbearable. It holds waste Denali Water Solutions collects from meatpacking plants before spreading it as free fertilizer on farmers’ properties.

 

The smell from the “cesspool of rotting flesh” has forced the family inside, she said.

“Nobody wants to eat a burger or a hot dog if it smells like rotten crap in the air,” Steele said in an interview with The Independent. “It’s just disgusting.”

She tried to stain her porch three times last summer but couldn’t stand to be outside because of the smell. One of her sons was bullied at school because the stench of the lagoon clung to his clothes. Children at her younger son’s combined elementary and middle school beg their teachers to stay inside during recess.

“It literally burns your lungs, your chest,” she said. “I’m an ICU nurse — like, I know this isn’t normal.”

Steele leads a coalition of southwest Missouri residents fighting for more regulation of Denali’s — and similar — lagoons. She implored state lawmakers last month to pass legislation meant to protect rural neighbors and impose more regulations on wastewater sludge haulers.

And on Thursday, the Missouri House voted 151-2 to pass legislation that would require companies like Denali to have water pollution permits and follow certain design requirements for its facilities.

Facilities like Denali’s would have to be at least 1,000, 2,000 or 4,000 feet from the nearest public building or home depending on the size of the lagoon. And the state would have to establish sampling rules for the basins and require groundwater monitoring in hydrologically sensitive areas.

Sponsored by state Reps. Ed Lewis, a Moberly Republican, and Dirk Deaton, a Noel Republican, the legislation now moves to the Missouri Senate for consideration. The House attached an emergency clause, meaning if it clears the Senate and is signed by the governor the new regulations would go into effect immediately.

Arkansas-based Denali’s communications director, Samuel Liebl, said in a statement that Lewis and Deaton’s bill would add “excessive and unnecessary costs to food manufacturers and would have negative impacts on the state’s economy and businesses.”

“While Denali supports revised regulations focused on transparency, we feel strongly the bill voted on in the Missouri House…this week requires significant revisions,” he said.

Liebl said there was “high demand among farmers for food processing residuals due to their valuable nutrients.”

“Our model allows them to receive them without any added expense, helping keep food costs down for Missouri residents,” he said.

Denali operates three lagoons in McDonald, Newton and Macon counties and built a fourth that has not been filled in Randolph County. Before last fall, it spread meatpacking sludge over 20,000 acres in the state. Farmers that work with Denali can have the sludge spread on their fields as free fertilizer.

But under an agreement with state environmental regulators, the company is currently draining its lagoons until it can obtain a permit to operate.

An abrupt regulatory change

Until last year, Denali had a permit from the Missouri Fertilizer Control Board, which exempted it from having to get a permit from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. That meant the state’s environmental regulators couldn’t impose any instructions on Denali unless its sludge polluted the state’s waterways, a policy decried by Deaton.

“Nobody seems to know exactly how it got there — when, why and what for and who thought it was a good idea,” he said.

 

But the fertilizer board last year decided it didn’t have authority over Denali because it provides its sludge for free rather than selling it as a commercial fertilizer. Without a fertilizer permit, Denali had to get a permit from the Department of Natural Resources.

Denali has sued the fertilizer board in an attempt to have its fertilizer permit reinstated.

After the fertilizer board’s decision, Missouri environmental regulators allowed Denali to keep operating in the interim until, in October, the company applied so much sludge to a field just before it rained that regulators reversed course.

Following complaints, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources visited a site where Denali had applied waste and found “standing pools of liquids and solids” and such huge quantities of meatpacking and sewage sludge it covered the vegetation on the fields, according to a document from the state. It was expected to rain in the coming days, meaning the sludge could pollute nearby streams.

Under an agreement the state and Denali reached last month, the company is now prohibited from applying waste to fields in Missouri and must start draining its lagoons. It was also ordered to pay $21,665 in fines.

Until Denali receives permits to resume its operations, it has to haul its waste to a treatment facility or take it out of Missouri and apply it to farmland in another state.

That wasn’t the company’s only violation.

In 2022, it dumped 36 truck loads — or 165,000 gallons — of sludge onto only five acres a day ahead of heavy rains. The waste flowed onto neighboring property and into a waterway.

Denali has received four violations since 2022.

Rural neighbors fight back

Around the same time the state investigated Denali in the fall of 2023, Steele and nearby neighbors sued in an attempt to force regulation of the sludge.

The group — Stop Land Use Our Ground and Environment, or S.L.U.D.G.E — argues the state should be treating Denali as a solid waste business and not allow it to spread the material on individuals’ fields.

Another group called Citizens of Randolph County Against Pollution, or C.R.A.P. is fighting the lagoon Denali constructed in their area but has yet to fill. In September, a judge in that lawsuit prohibited the state from granting a permit to Denali without court permission.

The outcry from neighbors has gotten so bad that one landowner whose field Denali uses to spread the sludge has been charged with four misdemeanor counts of disturbing the peace.

In a probable cause statement filed in the case, an investigator said 10 residents near one of Denali’s lagoons complained about the “noxious and offensive” odor and reported that they couldn’t stand to be outside.

“I have also received statements that the smell interferes with efforts to sell houses, therefore, (affecting) their property values,” the probable cause statement says. “One victim stated ‘we feel like hostages in our own home.’”

Deaton said when he took office in 2019, he was flooded with constituent emails and letters concerned about Denali.

“We oftentimes say we got hundreds of emails. I don’t know about you; sometimes I wonder— did they really get hundreds of emails?” Deaton said in a committee hearing. “Let me tell you, I’m happy to show you. I’ve gotten hundreds of emails, probably over 1,000 at this point.”

Steele, a member of S.L.U.D.G.E, said the odor had exacerbated neighbors’ asthma and caused kids at the nearby baseball fields to throw up behind dugouts.

“If these people had to dump this stuff in their front yard, they wouldn’t do it,” Steele said.

Rep. Tim Taylor, a Republican from Bunceton, questioned a lobbyist for Denali in a hearing last month about the contents of the sludge.

“Tell me why in the world a company that’s looking to make a profit would give away a product for free when they can easily charge even a small amount of money and make money,” Taylor said. “To see that, I can’t see it in any other way, except that ‘as long as we don’t charge for it, nobody’s going to ask any questions.’”

The lawsuit is still pending, and S.L.U.D.G.E.’s lawyer, Stephen Jeffery, is fighting for the ability to take samples of the material. Denali and partnering farmers have not complied with Jeffery’s subpoenas.

Jeffery filed a motion to hold Denali and the farmers in contempt of court for failing to comply with the subpoenas. A hearing on the issue is set for Friday.

John Hoke, director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ water protection program, said the material that comes from meatpacking plants that pay Denali to haul away waste was tested for nutrients and heavy metals under the fertilizer control board.

But once the materials are combined in Denali’s lagoons, it’s less clear what the total composition is.

 

“You need to know what nutrients are in that material before you land apply to make sure you’re not causing any negative impacts to the soils,” Hoke said, adding that enhanced monitoring was included as a provision in Denali’s pending permits.

Lewis implored colleagues Thursday to adopt his legislation imposing regulations on Denali and to do so with an emergency clause to allow the bill to take effect quickly.


“It’ll definitely secure our food supply, make that safer,” Lewis said, “but it will also make the rivers and the streams of Missouri safer.”

Missouri’s new effort to punish libraries is vindictive and harmful

By James Tager

for the Missouri Independent

Late last month, Missouri’s House passed a budget that would strip all state funding for public libraries — $4.5 million in total.

Republican lawmakers say they are doing this to retaliate against a lawsuit by Missouri librarians, who hope to see a new law against “explicit sexual material” in schools — in reality, a book banning mandate — declared unconstitutional. 

(Photo- Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” is among the books being targeted nationwide by public school book bans- Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector).

The book ban mandate, which was tacked on as an amendment to a larger bill expanding the rights of sexual assault victims, treats school librarians as potential sex criminals.

It has already struck fear in the ranks of librarians statewide.

This effort to defund public libraries is vindictive and would harm Missourians, especially children who lawmakers are claiming to protect, by shrinking access to libraries’ educational materials and programs.

The budget proposal is about political power—with children as pawns.

Here’s what happened.

In August 2022, Missouri passed Senate Bill 775 that created important new protections for sexual assault survivors. As the bill moved through the Senate, a Republican lawmaker added an amendment that made it a Class A misdemeanor for librarians or teachers to provide “explicit sexual material” to a student.

While the majority of the Missouri Senate condemned the amendment as a “self-serving” effort to hijack an uncontroversial bill, the law still passed with the amended language.

Make no mistake: This amendment enables book banning on a statewide scale.

The measure’s definition of “explicit sexual material” is sweeping, applying to any visual depiction of a range of physical attributes or acts. And while there are carve-outs for images with serious artistic or scientific significance, those distinctions are inherently subjective.

Perhaps most frighteningly, a librarian or educator violating the law —simply by including an “explicit” book within their catalog — may face up to a year in prison.

Since the law was enacted, some Missouri school districts have reported receiving lists of books to remove from district administrators and attorneys. Other districts have received no guidance, leaving librarians to search their stacks themselves to determine which books might be considered “explicit” under the law. 

Librarians who get it wrong because, for example, they refuse to pull an art book whose merits are deemed not “significant” or a comic book with depictions that could be interpreted as sexual puts their liberty at risk, along with their job.

PEN America has tracked how hundreds of books have been banned in school districts across Missouri, as a result of the measure. Among the books: The graphic novel adaptations of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and The Handmaid’s Tale, Batman comics, and books about famous women.

One major theme of these banned books is that they often feature or are written by LGBTQ+ people.

To understand just how damaging this law has been read PEN America’s list of banned books.

As a result of the law, some librarians now live in fear. A recent story from the media outlet Coda profiled a Missouri high school librarian who has been visited twice by a police officer, who told her she had been accused of giving pornography to children. At no point did the librarian find out which book was the culprit.

The librarian, who asked to be identified with the pseudonym “Amy,” has begun reviewing her entire library’s collection in order to comply with the new law—but she has decided not to ask any of her colleagues for help. Why? So that they don’t face potential prison charges as well if they decide to include a book that police officers decide is “explicit.”

Amy told the news outlet: “Never would I have ever thought that the library could land me in jail.”

It’s no wonder that Missouri’s librarians, with the support of the Missouri chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, have sued to find the law unconstitutional. But apparently that has hurt a senior Republican legislator’s feelings: Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith reportedly said he was upset by the suit and as a result proposed the budgetary removal of state library funding.

Apparently Smith considers it unfair for Missouri state employees to fight for their rights in court. And while he has argued the state shouldn’t have to “subsidize” the libraries’ lawsuit, it’s unclear what subsidies he is talking about. The Missouri ACLU is representing the libraries for free.

This new budget proposal — library cuts included — has already passed the Missouri House. The Senate appears unlikely to approve these cuts. But if they do, libraries will lose all state funding.

If that happens, it will disproportionately hurt economically disadvantaged and rural Missourians. Libraries typically provide other essential services, including free access to wi-fi and computers. Local libraries in rural areas are particularly dependent on state funding. Librarians have already stated that, if this budget passes, they will have to cut back on services, including those that have helped Missouri communities get access to life-saving health information

This newest budget proposal needs to be opposed — by all readers, writers, community advocates, and yes, parents. But further, the book banning amendment within SB 775 needs to be repealed. It hurts Missouri’s librarians. It hurts their communities.

And it hurts their kids.

James Tager is research director at PEN America, the literary and free expression organization.

It’s time for Missouri lawmakers to respect local control of public schools

By Duane Martin

for the Missouri Independent

The State of Missouri is responsible for educating our children.

To educate Missouri’s kids, the state created a system that allows citizens to form school districts through an election process, each of which is governed by a locally elected board. This system is designed to honor our history of ensuring that control of public schools remains in the hands of elected representatives closest to the people they serve.

As our courts have recognized: “Local control over the public school, after all, is one of this nation’s most deeply rooted and cherished traditions.”

Public school districts are not agencies of the state governed by unelected appointees. They are separate, special purpose political subdivisions of the state with their own elected governing bodies. The state delegates to each locally elected school board broad governance authority to “make all needful rules and regulations for the organization, grading and government in the school district.”

Legally, school boards have general supervisory control and management of the public schools.

With each passing year, the state is attempting to take more and more control away from the locally elected school boards.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) routinely tries to intervene in local school district matters. For example, DESE regularly attempts to effectively make rules for local school districts.

DESE has no legal authority to make any rules for public schools. In the absence of the State Board of Education making such rules pursuant to the appropriate rule-making process, only the locally elected school board has the legal authority to make rules for the public school.

Moreover, DESE often attempts to intervene in local matters in which it has no authority. For example, DESE recently contacted a local school district I represent requesting detailed information regarding an individual student discipline matter. Even though DESE has no authority to obtain this information, and the fact that the local school board had yet to hear the appeal from the parents, DESE sought to intervene in what is purely a matter for a locally elected school board.

By contrast, the General Assembly does have legal authority to make rules for public schools, but when it does so, it takes decision-making power away from people elected locally to govern their schools.

Each year the General Assembly considers hundreds of new ways to effectively reduce the decision-making authority of locally elected boards. With each new school law passed, the increased regulation at the state level creates bureaucratic red tape and compliance checks from DESE. In shifting authority from local school boards to DESE, the state is transferring power from locally elected officials to unelected state officials.

Although the General Assembly has the legal authority to control public schools, it is simply creating more and more daylight between the people and their elected representatives.

The General Assembly’s promotion of charter schools is another example of the state’s assault upon local control. Unlike public school districts, charter schools have no elected board. In fact, charter schools are not accountable to any elected official. Period.

Each year, members of the General Assembly propose the expansion of charter schools, thereby attempting to displace locally elected boards of education.

Our political structure, our democratic traditions and our laws contemplate that the control of public schools should rest with the representative government elected by the local people. With each step we take towards state control of our schools, we widen the gap between the people served by local schools and the elected representatives who decide what is best for our kids. The concentration of power at the state level will only reduce our ability to respond to the needs of students and their parents.

It is time for state officials to return to our deeply rooted and cherished tradition of local control of public schools. Today’s students, parents, teachers and patrons deserve no less.

Duane Martin is the founder of EdCounsel LLC, a law firm that is exclusively dedicated to the representation of Missouri public school districts. He currently represents over 200 Missouri public schools.

Missouri state budget is bulging with $6 billion in surplus cash

By Rudi Keller

Missouri Independent

For the first time in its history, the only real limit on what Missouri can buy on a cash-and-carry basis is the imagination of the people spending the money.

The state treasury is bulging with more than $6 billion in surplus cash, the result of 28 months of double-digit revenue growth and federal payments tied to COVID-19 relief and recovery. If growth rates continue at current levels, general revenue in the current fiscal year could approach $15 billion.

(Photo- Sen. Lincoln Hough, R-Springfield, presents the Senate-passed tax cut bill to the House Budget Committee in September 2022 during a special session- Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Three years ago, the general revenue fund took in $8.9 billion.

Some foresee a slowdown starting next year, as inflation-fighting policies slow the economy and the state sees the actual impact of recent tax cuts. Lawmakers and Gov. Mike Parson’s administration are trying to account for those uncertainties as they negotiate the budget baseline for the coming legislative session, said Sen. Lincoln Hought, R-Springfield.

“It is almost kind of a wait and see game,” said Hough, who is expected to chair the Senate Appropriations Committee next year.

But the large surplus promises to smooth any downturn while also allowing for new spending initiatives.

The first priority should be state agencies at or near a crisis due to staff shortages and turnover, said state Rep. Peter Merideth, D-St. Louis.

Merideth is the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

The Independent has documented staff turnover in the Children’s Division at nearly 50%, with children in foster care missing visits with parents and rushed abuse investigations. There are hundreds of people waiting for beds in Department of Mental Health facilities due to a lack of staff.

To maintain minimum staffing, the mental health department uses expensive contract professionals. To cover the cost, the department is asking for a $22 million supplemental appropriation through June 30.

Those agencies need targeted spending to recruit staff, Merideth said. And state employees generally need a raise, he said.

“I think we need a very large investment and an increase in investment in what our state workers are paid, especially those state workers that take care of our most vulnerable,” Merideth said.

Last year, at the urging of Parson, lawmakers gave state employees the largest pay raise in decades, at least 5.5% for everyone on the state payroll, and approved a new base wage of $15 an hour for state jobs.

 

State agencies have submitted their budget requests for the coming fiscal year, and the next step in crafting the state budget is an estimate of revenues. Jim Moody, a lobbyist and former state budget director under Republican Gov. John Ashcroft, said he expects recession and tax cuts to start slowing state revenue in the second quarter of 2023.

“It is hard for me to imagine that in that quarter, it is going to keep pace with last year,” Moody said.

Revenue buoyance

From 2016 to 2019, state revenues grew at a steady, if unspectacular, rate.

Income tax and sales tax receipts mirrored inflation and grew about 6.5%. As profits increased, corporate income tax receipts rose at double the inflation rate.

In the three years since, sales tax revenue has grown 50% faster than inflation, income tax receipts at double inflation and corporate income taxes at almost five times the inflation rate.

Whether the current rush of revenue is high tide or a new base level will play out over the next couple of years.

The top income tax rate will fall to 4.95% for 2023. Triggered steps in earlier cuts will reduce taxes on many businesses.

Moody estimates the cumulative effect of those cuts will be to reduce revenue by about $680 million in 2023.

By the time those cuts are taking hold, he said, the inflation-fighting interest rate hikes engineered by the Federal Reserve will be slowing economic growth.

The economic slowdown, if one is coming, will be felt in the first half of next year, Moody predicted.

“By April through June of next year,” he said, “you could have a confluence of things that turn things pretty quickly.”

So far, the only noticeable impact of interest rate hikes on state government has been to increase the surplus. General revenue interest earnings, $50 million so far this fiscal year, are more than double the earnings for all of fiscal 2022.

Tax receipts are rising faster than inflation through a combination of factors. Sales tax has been augmented by more revenue from internet retailers, while consumers are spending from savings and taking on large amounts of new debt.

Income tax receipts reflect rising wages and investment gains. The state minimum wage, $11.15 an hour, is up 42% since 2018, or $7,000 more a year for full-time work.

When the state set $15 an hour as a floor for its employees, large private employers near state facilities in central Missouri responded by boosting their starting pay.

The Dollar General warehouse in Fulton, where the state operates a prison, a mental health hospital and the Missouri School for the Deaf, is now offering $20.50 an hour, up from $17 at the start of the year.

The decline in revenue due to tax cuts is predictable. The impact of a recession is uncertain.

In the mildest recession of the past 30 years, state revenues continued to grow. In the worst, starting in 2008, revenues declined for three consecutive years and took five more years to recover to pre-recession levels.

When lawmakers met in special session to cut taxes, Hough negotiated higher thresholds for revenue growth to trigger future cuts.

“We will see very quickly what kind of impact that really has,” Hough said. “The unknown is, where does this economy go?”

Spending demands

This year’s $49 billion state budget, passed by lawmakers in May, is the state’s largest in history.

While state budgets generally grow from year to year, two items totaling more than $5 billion were new. The largest, at $2.9 billion, was a one-time appropriation of federal COVID-19 recovery funds.

Much of the money will be used in local projects. Recipients for one big piece, $410 million in grants to improve local water systems, were announced Thursday.

The second is the continuing expense for expanding Medicaid to cover lower-income adults from 18 to 64. The program budget was set at $2.5 billion this year, with no general revenue needed to cover the state’s 10% share.

In the coming year, the Department of Social Services anticipates the cost of Medicaid expansion will increase by $373 million, again without needing general revenue for the state share.

Public education gets the biggest portion of general revenue. Funding through the foundation formula, which is the main source of state support, has been stagnant for several years.

But public schools got a boost they didn’t expect when lawmakers included $214 million to cover the full state obligation for student transportation. It was the first time since 1991 that the state had paid its full share.

The one-time extra cash has helped but the state needs to address public education’s staffing challenge, said Melissa Randol, executive director of the Missouri School Boards Association.

“We have a crisis in Missouri with our salaries impacting our teaching workforce,” Randol said. “We need more than just one-year commitments without the ability to sustain that long-term.”

Missouri ranks 47th in average teacher pay and second-to-last in the nation in starting salaries at $33,234.

 

Lawmakers also funded a program proposed by Parson to help districts boost minimum teacher pay to $38,000 and resumed state funding for the Career Ladder program, which helps districts pay more for teachers with advanced education.

In its budget request for next year, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is seeking funds to implement some recommendations of the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Blue Ribbon Commission.

The commission recommended changing state law to set the minimum at $38,000 a year, estimating the cost at $29.5 million per year. Increasing the average teacher pay by $1,000, the commission estimated, would cost $81 million.

In its budget request for 2023, the department asked for the minimum pay funding but not the money to raise average salaries.

The biggest new item in the education budget is $77 million for increasing foundation formula payments to charter schools under a law passed this year. The department has also asked for $233 million to continue fully funding transportation, up $19 million, and $31.8 million to expand the Career Ladder program.

Hough and Merideth said they expect bipartisan support for continuing full transportation funding and for the requests stemming from the task force report.

But Merideth said he’s skeptical how far lawmakers will go to put money into education or other needs.

“I am not going to take for granted we have a huge surplus until we are doing the things our state needs to do,” Merideth said.

And Randol said she’s waiting to see the money in a spending bill.

“My grandfather said, ‘don’t tell me what your priorities are, show me your checkbook and I will know what your priorities are.’”