No Student Transfers into the Hazelwood School District, So Now What?

Some parents and teachers have expressed on Hazelwood Patch and its Facebook page agreement with in the school transfers case formally known as Turner v. Clayton. 

Judge David Lee Vincent III on student transfers, and said students living in unaccredited school districts can't attend schools in accredited districts for free.

Still, parents are wondering what that really means for , which has more than 300 students from the Riverview Gardens School District (RGSD) and St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS)—both of which are unaccredited—on a wait list to attend district schools.

The answer is: there is no longer a wait list.

"Basically we no longer have to accept those students," Diana Gulotta, Assistant Superintendent for Communications, said, while also explaining HSD never accepted students from unaccredited districts. "We just had them on the wait list."

From the school districts considered the best to those considered not-so-great, the concern was about local control.

"We took this issue and talked about this issue at length with our ," Gulotta said. "The district never really came out against (open enrollment); it was just if we accept transfers can we have local control so there wouldn't be any hiring issues or facility issues."

The case had been in court for years and for most district's it has been the elephant in the room.

"It's been one of those issues pending out there that we've been watching a long time." Gulotta said. "Our issue was the "What If?"'

"What if they all decided to go to West (for example) and you live in the West zone and you don't get a class or get to go there because it's overcrowded.

Impact on SLPS and RSD

Beyond the Hazelwood School District, or any school district that would accept students from unaccredited schools, what would the implications be on SLPS and RGSD, which need all of its funds to get back to an accredited state?

If the school systems had to pay other districts for every student that left, would it be able to function and work towards accreditation?

Gulotta said it would be a major setback.

"What we talked about as well was how that will obliterate St. Louis Public," she said. "We are all rooting for them. From what I hear, there are some positive trends taking place in St. Louis Public and that would have been a real setback for them which would have been a negative for the whole region."