The school transfer case has placed education at the center of attention in Saint Louis. Many are eagerly watching the events unfold as students begin school. As far as I know, there haven’t been many problems. Nevertheless, this issue has created numerous frustrations in the community. This has led many to start looking for solutions to the school transfer problem.
Today, the St. Louis Beacon published my op-ed that provides a potential fix — private school scholarships. There are some clear advantages to giving students access to private schools:
First, a scholarship program maximizes individual choice; it allows students and their parents to pick the school they want, whether public or private.
Second, in providing access to a greater number of schools, a scholarship program lessens the outsized impact on a few suburban schools, which attract unusually large numbers of transfer students.
Third, a scholarship program would eliminate the financial trauma that school districts like Normandy and Riverview Gardens now are feeling from having to pay tuition and transportation costs between $10,000 and $20,000 for each transferring student.
Creating a private school scholarship program certainly wouldn’t solve the problems overnight, but it would begin putting the system in place for improvement to occur.
