MASA Legislative Priorities and Platform
MASA Legislative Priorities
2024-2025
The Missouri Association of School Administrators (MASA) represents the vast majority of school superintendents and central office administrators serving public school districts in Missouri. The MASA Legislative Platform covers a multitude of issues that our members support or oppose. While the subsequent pages detail these positions, the following three provisions represent MASA’s essential priorities for the 2025 Legislative Session.
Prioritizing Funding for Public Education: For the first time in five years, Missouri schools are set to see an increase in funding from our state’s foundation formula, an increase of approximately $120 million. The foundation formula is scheduled to increase yet again during the 2025-26 school year by approximately $300 million. During the 2024 Legislative Session, the Missouri Legislature debated and passed a sweeping bill (Senate Bill 727) that made numerous changes to education policy and to school funding (e.g., transitioning to a blended attendance/enrollment funding model, doubling the Small Schools Grant, doubling early childhood funding, etc.). Combined with the aforementioned increases to the state’s foundation formula, the financial commitments promised in SB 727 stand to provide public schools with vital resources necessary to increase teacher pay, adequately staff schools, and decrease the burden that has been placed on local taxpayers to fund public education. As a result, we support the full funding of the foundation formula, transportation categorical, and the funding commitments included with the passage of SB 727.
Supporting the Profession of Public Education and Seeking to Recruit and Retain Teachers and Support Staff: To ensure that the institution of public education endures, it is vitally important that the narrative surrounding public education shift. For years now, Missouri educators and support staff have felt attacked due to a constant barrage of negative social media posts, media coverage and legislative action/rhetoric. While recognizing that public education can and should continue to improve, the vast majority of our state’s educators and support staff are good, hardworking individuals who have dedicated themselves to the education and support of children. This negative environment has resulted in fewer individuals seeking to become teachers or serve in other education-related roles. As such, we urge the Legislature to partner with local school districts and education stakeholders to “build up” the profession of public education and support our teachers and support staff.
Further, last session, the Legislature mandated that teacher pay increase to a minimum of $40,000 for first year teachers and to $46,000 for teachers who have a Masters’ Degree and ten years of experience or more. These statutory minimums will, over time, increase due to inflationary measures. As many know, school districts already, on average, spend between 70-80% of their district’s budget on salaries/wages and benefits. In an effort to assist school districts with recruiting and retaining quality teachers and support staff and meeting these new pay requirements, we urge the Legislature to continue their funding of the increased salaries and benefits and look for additional opportunities to provide financial backing for support staff increases.
Refocusing Priorities on Quality of Public Education: Continued access to a quality public education for all of Missouri’s children is critical to the future of our state. Over the past decade, efforts have increased to privatize public education via vouchers, voucher tax credits, virtual privatization and privately run charter schools. Open enrollment and other choice measures have also been advanced. These initiatives erode the foundation of a quality public education by diverting funding from local public schools. We believe the Legislature should prioritize the quality of public education and work with public school leaders to meet this challenge as opposed to the aforementioned school choice initiatives which have proven to be ineffective, inefficient and unsustainable.
MASA Legislative Platform
2024-2025
Education Policy
Continuous improvement of the public education system being necessary to student success,
MASA Supports:
- Limiting charter school expansion until additional and effective accountability and transparency measures are placed on existing charter schools;
- Replicating programs that have been proven effective in meeting the needs of students, specifically students that live in poverty or are considered “at-risk”;
- Providing specialized training for administrators, teachers and staff who work in high poverty areas or with diverse student populations that focus on the unique situations children face in their communities and culture;
- Offering incentives and policy changes to assist the recruitment of talented individuals into the education profession and retain them once they are in the profession;
- Defining the parameters by which employees may collectively bargain including (1) ensuring the Board of Education as the decision-making body on any issue that may reach an impasse between administration and a bargaining group; (2) identifying issues and topics which may be the subject of bargaining negotiations; (3) clarification to the definition of labor organization; (4) setting stringent and significant penalties for anyone participating in a school strike; and (5) defining “good faith bargaining”;
- Continuing the independent governing structure of the PSRS/PEERS retirement systems;
- Ensuring changes to work after retirement rules do not place a financial burden on school districts and provides maximum flexibility to allow school districts to fill positions where few quality applicants may exist;
- Ensuring students who graduate from a Missouri high school be eligible for all state financial aid made available by the state of Missouri;
- Ensuring the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has the resources needed to intervene and assist low performing school districts; and
- Continuing the current independence, structure, and governance of the Missouri High School Activities Association (MSHSAA);
- Working to close the technological divide by increasing access to broadband internet across Missouri;
- Allowing schools to choose the curriculum that meets the needs of their community while adhering to state standards;
- Expanding approved pilot programs that would exempt districts from the state school improvement program in exchange for a continuous improvement effort that promotes financial and organizational efficiency while focusing on the unique needs of their communities;
- Providing schools the opportunity to choose between various accrediting entities for state-level accreditation purposes; and
- Providing schools the opportunity to select local-level assessment tools they deem appropriate for their students, staff and community to measure student achievement within the state’s accountability system and in adherence with federal regulation.
MASA Opposes:
- Basing a teacher’s pay, a district’s salary schedule, layoffs, or tenure solely on teacher evaluations;
- Establishing an arbitrary percentage of student performance that must be used in employee evaluations;
- Reducing the probationary period for teachers; and
- Using outside arbitrators to resolve employment disputes.
Finance
Resources being necessary to carry out the charge of public education in the state of Missouri,
MASA Supports:
- Ensuring the foundation formula and the transportation categorical are fully funded;
- Ensuring that a long-term plan is developed to fund Parents as Teachers and early childhood education programs in all school districts;
- Funding the Small School appropriation for the formula;
- Increasing the bonding capacity for school districts;
- Funding to further enhance school safety (e.g., mental health programming, facility upgrades, staff onboarding and training, etc.) so as to prevent/reduce inappropriate and/or dangerous behavior;
- Creating a comprehensive state plan to address improvement of educator salaries;
- Reforming Missouri’s tax credit programs by:
- Placing a sunset clause on all current and future tax credit programs;
- Making all new tax credit programs subject to the appropriations process;
- Prohibiting the use of multiple tax credit programs on the same project, particularly the stacking of the low-income tax credit with the historic preservation tax credit;
- Conducting a standardized, annual review of tax credit programs to monitor and report on each tax credit’s return on investment;
- Tying the caps of tax credit programs to funding of categorical education spending;
- Modifying the Circuit Breaker Tax Credit to increase the number of eligible participants; and
- Placing a portion of the savings from tax credit reform in a dedicated fund for the improvement of school facilities and infrastructure;
- Requiring the unanimous support of all taxing jurisdictions for any tax abatement project. If unanimous support cannot be achieved, the issue should either be put to a vote of the people in the affected taxing jurisdictions or schools should be given the ability to opt out of the abatement;
- Providing resources to provide targeted professional development to school districts and their administrators so they may utilize the unique resources in their community to better address the mental healthcare of their students;
- Ensuring flexibility of professional development funds to allow for alignment with district needs;
- Consideration of revenue enhancements such as tobacco taxes, alcohol taxes or a general sales tax to provide long-term funding for Missouri public schools;
- Ensuring county assessors conduct accurate assessments to ensure true market value is obtained and penalizing assessors that fail to meet that task;
- Allowing voters to approve bond issues with a simple majority;
- Creating state funding for school facility replacement and/or improvement;
- Restoring districts’ ability to maintain discretion in evaluating the quality of virtual education offerings and providing flexibility to make enrollment decisions that are in the best interest of students; and
MASA Opposes:
- Diverting state funds from the public schools by any means including tuition tax credits/vouchers;
- Revenue reductions that impact the state’s ability to fund public education;
- Mandating open enrollment of students to attend schools in districts in which their parents do not pay property taxes;
- Any effort to reduce the amount of funding available to districts for summer school;
- Mandating programs without appropriating the necessary funds to implement and sustain the programs;
- Imposing property tax reductions, freezes or limits;
- Transforming the early childhood special education program from a required to a voluntary program;
- Replacing the Missouri income tax with a sales tax;
- Forcing consolidation of school districts;
- Limiting the ability of school districts to seek civil, equitable and other legal remedies; and
- Any effort to nullify election determinations based upon an arbitrary threshold of voter turnout.