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the problems with SB 727 are many
SB 727 is an education omnibus bill that has already passed out of the senate and is now in the I've already written about SB 727 and expressed a few thoughts on the reasons I oppose it. Today, I recorded a deep dive into SB 727 and my thoughts about it. Please listen to the podcast below. I gave a shorter overview in the beginning of the podcast, so you can listen to the first section then hop off if you're not interested in the details.
Please see previous blog posts on SB 727 for additional information, as well.
Download this flyer to share with friends & family. The QR code on the bottom links to the website where you can lookup the contact information for your legislator. SB 727 Poster (1).pdf
Letter from Schneider Law, P.C.
take a stand & don't. sit. down.
1. Please use the QR code on the image above to find the contact information for your legislator.
2. Call your House representative once a week from now until May 15th. Ask for a NO vote on SB 727.
3. Email your House representative once a week from now until May 15th. Ask for a NO vote on SB 727 and give your personal reasons why you are requesting that vote.
4. SHARE this blog, the podcast & all the information with everyone you know!
Today's podcast is much longer than usual, but it's a wonderfully informative conversation with Missouri's gold & silver guru, Patrick Holland. If you are interested in learning more about having a private, safe form of currency I hope you'll take time to listen even if you have to break it up into smaller sessions. It's worth your time!
Missouri Freedom Initiative - Patrick's organization
Hidden Secrets of Money - YouTube documentary series by Mike Maloney
Goldback, Inc. - Gold money you can carry in your wallet
UPMA - United Precious Metals Association
take action
Call your Missouri Representative. Ask 2 things:
1. Ask him/her to request of the committee chair that HB 1955 be brought through committee. Rep O'Donnell is the committee chair and he needs to bring the bill forward ASAP.
2. Ask your representative to co-sponsor HB 1955.
3. Call and email Senate Majority Floor Leader, Cindy O'Laughlin and ask that she bring SB 735 to the floor ASAP. Her phone number is 573.751.7985 and her email is cindy.olaughlin@senate.mo.gov.
don't mess with our kids!
SB 727 is stirring a lot of discussions and controversy across Missouri. Why? Because most of us are passionate about our kids. We may not take the time and use the energy to fight for things like water rights or to protect Missouri's constitution, but most of us will stand up when we feel are kids are being directly attacked.
Our kids ARE being attacked on all fronts. The attacks on our children - the children of the United States, the children of Missouri - are relentless and range from the war on their identities & their minds, their physical safety, their spirits and all that includes their education.
A child's education now consumes the vast majority of their lives after age 5 and the influence of those hours, the curriculum, the teachers and teacher training, the counselors and their training, the culture at the schools, etc. is something that literally shapes their attitudes, beliefs and behaviors for their lifetime. It helps to mold who they are and who they become.
Missouri's schools are generally not doing well with academic performance and the struggle is overwhelming in regard to the social and cultural issues.
the system needs a big change
Everyone agrees we need a change in policy. But what and how? That is the big question that causes all the political antics. The democrats want to fund more programs for the schools and the republicans say the school system is the problem but they continue to empower DESE with even more reach and authority. DESE is the one driving the schools so where's the logic in that?
It's a real problem.
The Missouri Senate has just passed an education omnibus bill, SB 727 sponsored by Senator Andrew Koenig, that includes several changes to Missouri's education system. If you listen to the legislators talk about it, they'll say how they are proud of all the hard work they've done to get a great education bill out of the senate chamber with wonderful things for students, teacher and families alike.
More money will flow into the hands of select families through a voucher system, free books for kids, higher salaries for teachers and so much more. But, is that the whole story?
the devil's in the details
This is ALOT to unpack and it can't be done well in one blog article, but because I've received questions about SB 727, I'm going to share my thoughts without getting into the weeds too much. However, there are some very important details you need to understand in order to really grasp some of the problems with this piece of legislation.
The following is a short list of the reasons I oppose the bill.
- This bill is unconstitutional now. It started out as a 12 page bill sponsored by Senator Andrew Koenig with a title that read, "...to enact ...four new sections relating to educational scholarships." The bill is now 167 pages long with a title that reads, "...to enact...forty-four new sections relating to elementary and secondary education with penalty provisions and an effective date for certain sections." Opening up this very specific title to a very broad one and putting unrelated topics under one bill is unconstitutional. That's a no go. See the Missouri Constitution, Article 3 Section 23.
The original bill included only sections on Education Scholarship Account Programs in the four sections, shown above.
The perfected version, title seen above, that passed in the senate included 44 new sections under the subjects:
- Education Scholarship Accounts Programs
- Minimum school term
- Charter school (expansion)
- Literacy of elementary school students
- Missouri course access and virtual school program
- Family Paced Education Schools
- School board vacancies
- Weighted average daily attendance
- Early childhood education programs operated by school districts and charter schools
- Small schools grant
- Minimum teachers salary
- Compulsory school attendance
- School attendance officers
- Recovery high schools
- Teacher certification
- Hard-to-staff schools and subject areas
- Teacher education programs
- Career ladder
- Working after retirement
- Suicide prevention in grades 7-12
- Teacher recruitment scholarship program
- The ESA Program. This one point deserves an entire blog series in and of itself. I'll keep my issues with the ESA short and to the point here and only pertaining to this bill rather than the concept of ESAs and whether or not I agree with them.
- Expanded qualified students
- Free/reduced lunch kids who live in unaccredited & provisionally accredited schools would be eligible. This is a potential HUGE expansion when you consider there are approximately 150 schools that are on the verge of being provisionally accredited.
- Students whose households do not exceed 300% of the free/reduced lunch standard are eligible. This is a household income of around $110,000. These are not necessarily "impoverished" households.
- Added another Educational Assistance Organization (EAO) which totals 7. Inserting non-profits into our State law is a huge problem, one of which is an inability to sunshine the non-profit for information regarding these funds and programs. These EAOs were chosen and provided for before the original bill was passed in '21. They are choosing winners & losers.
- Participating students are required to take the MAP or a norm-referenced test that provide for "value-added assessment" which is a measure of teacher performance. This is a huge issue as it might pertain to FPEs and private schools. It was already in the statute and needs to be scrutinized, especially considering DESE is going to be able to promulgate more rules.
- DESE is now inserted multiple times and specifically charged with collaborating on rules changes. This is a HUGE problem!
- Kids who are non-English speaking, free/reduced lunch and IEP have the potential to stack increased scholarship amounts based on those criteria. There is nothing in the statute that prohibits this. This could result in a student receiving 460% of the state adequacy target. That is upwards of $20,000/year or more, which would be a huge incentive for families with non-English speaking kids to be here. Considering our souther border problem, this is a concern.
Note: Regarding the ESA program, to understand the problems fully you have to take into account the rules in addition to the statute. The State Treasurer's Office has written rules along with a parent handbook that outlines and details how the program functions. For example, those rules include background checks for anyone over 18 living in the home of a homeschool family who participates. Now DESE will be collaborating on those rules and policies as well. This is an open door to so many more problems and it makes no sense. Why would you want DESE to have ANY influence in a program designed to get kids out of public school?
- Expanded charter schools to Boone County. Boone County (Caleb Rowden's district) got charter schools but they don't have to follow all the same rules as the rest.
Note: There are significant issues and reasons as to why I feel charters are NOT what Missouri needs. Charter in Missouri are not really fairing any better than our public schools and they are not required to follow all the same rules as public. Many, if not all, in Missouri are woke leftist schools funded by our tax dollars.
- Elementary Literacy Fund. Original language sponsored by Senator Karla May (Democrat)
- The State will now be mailing student selected books into the homes of K-5 graders. Again, this program will be administered by a non-profit and there will be no sunshining of the details of the program, the books we are providing or how it is operating. There is data being collected from these homes and weekly contact being made. The selection of the administering non-profit will be an integral part of the program.
- Homeschool definition changed to include enrollment. The Family Paced Education school was created and the homeschool definition changed to exclude FPEs. The enrollment language was also slightly changed. Although the term enrollment had been used in previous language, it was located in a different paragraph that had to do with attendance - not enrollment. The addition of the word "homeschool" to the enrollment paragraph is curious and makes one wonder why the change needed to be made. Maybe it's nothing. But if it's nothing, I prefer it go back to its original form.
- Removal of records review by prosecuting attorney. The following was removed from the original language, "Home school education enforcement and records pursuant to this section, and sections 210.167 and 211.031, shall be subject to review only by the local prosecuting attorney." If the definition of FPE creates two "silos" for students learning at home, there is no need to completely remove the language that says the ONLY review of homeschool records will be done by the prosecuting attorney. This could be an open door to homeschool records being reviewed by other offices. The FPE schools are subject to review at any time by administrators of the program, but this would not require a change to the homeschool records review language.
- Private school teacher certification.
- Considering that DESE will be promulgating more rules around the ESA, you can expect them to write a rule saying participating private schools will be required to hire teachers certified through their program.
- The certification will be created by another non-profit. Who will that be and what will they be training our private school teachers to do? We probably won't be able to find out due to the inability of sunshining the non-profit.
the vote & the status
This bill was perfected in the senate with the following vote and is now waiting to be referred to the education committee in the House. It's an interesting vote, because the final vote did not look exactly like this. Two of the republicans who voted No on perfection were absent for the final TRAP vote. Gannon, Justin Brown and Hough didn't come to take the final vote. That's intentional, so to get a really clear picture of who supported what it's the perfection vote you need to pay attention to in this case. No changes can be made to the bill after perfection.
Another interesting thing to note was that in this case, even though this bill had democrat language in it and multiple things the democrats supported, including Senator Karla May's book program - they didn't need to vote yes. There were enough Republican yes votes to pass what they wanted to get accomplished.
The constitutionally correct and conservative vote on this bill was NO.
YEAs
Bean
Bernskoetter
Black
Ben Brown
Carter
Cierpiot
Coleman
Crawford
Eigel
Eslinger
Fitzwater
Hoskins
Hough
Koenig
Luetkemeyer
O'Laughlin
Rowden
Schroer
Thompson Rehder
Trent
NOs (Democrats plus Gannon, Justin Brown, & Moon)
Gannon
Justin Brown
Moon
Arthur
Beck
May
McCreery
Mosley
Razer
Rizzo
Roberts
Washington
Williams
Absent With Leave - Rick Brattin who was attending his daughter's wedding.
take action
1. Pray and add the Call to the Capitol on April 13th to your calendar! Consider yourself personally invited to come pray, worship and gather with other like minded believers who are fed up with the attacks on our children.
We know the only true answers and strategies to push back darkness come from the Lord, so please consider coming and joining with hundreds of other Missouri parents to pray & hold the line for the next generation. I'll be there & I'd love to see you!
2. Call your Missouri representative and ask that he/she vote NO on SB 727 when given the opportunity. The bill isn't clean and I can't imagine the House will clean it up entirely. Even if they do, it's unconstitutional and for that reason alone the correct vote is NO.
God is good all the time!
The democrats are filibustering the Constitution Ratification (aka I.P.) bill, which is holding up all action in the senate. They started yesterday around 4:00pm or so and have continued on through the night. So far as I can tell, they are still going strong.
I pray that bill passes, but I also welcome the opportunity for other conversations to be had in order to flesh out the junk from other bills that would otherwise be passing. Great conversations are being had both in public and in private to bring awareness and light to potential problems with the education legislation that is "on deck" in the Senate.
the battle must be won at the ballot box
Like I said, I pray this bill passes but REGARDLESS whether it does or does not, the specific battle to protect our Missouri Constitution from not only abortion but also the transitioning of our kids - possibly even without parental consent - MUST be won at the ballot box! The legislature cannot and will not be able to galvanize the constitution in order to keep those changes from occurring.
Followers of Jesus MUST do it. I'll be sharing more & more information - so please stay tuned & be preparing to share it with your circle of influence.
The solution is in 3 words: PRAY. FAST. STAND.
eSA & charter school bill - sb 727
This school choice bill is a big problem and it's on the Senate calendar for perfection. That means it could come up for debate at any moment and you need to know about it. I'm explaining more on the podcast - so be sure to listen!
Here's a few quick bullet points:
- The ESAs in Missouri are set up for the money to flow through a digital system called Class Wallet. This program uses block chain technology and is a data mining problem. This feeds into the digital finance goals of the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, through initiatives such as the 2030 Agenda.
- Funneling government money to parents does NOT come without strings. Period. If you think it does... you might be interested to know that even the private schools who take the federal milk money are required to comply with Title 9 requirements.
- School Choice money you might receive is NOT your property tax money. It's the government's dollars the moment you give it to them.
- The ESA Missouri already has actually requires homeschool PARENTS to do a background check and give their kiddo the MAP test in order to take those funds. The funds can be spent only on approved vendors through the Class Wallet system. Do you think you will always have faith-based options on that approved vendor list? The state giving you a select choice of curriculum vendors to use is NOT free choice.
- Charters have NO elected school board. Is this what you want the state to be paying for? Taxation without representation? No, thank you!
- This bill has other problems that includes the incentivizing of educating illegal immigrants.
- SB 727 is Senator Andrew Koenig's bill. I've been part of conversations with Senator Koenig that started a couple of years ago. Although he's a homeschool dad and part of the Freedom Caucus, which I love, he has been unwilling to budge on these issues. What I find with the conservatives is that they are so frustrated with the state of public schools they want to do something to help. I commend that and I agree that public schools are in big trouble. But I don't believe school choice is the answer.
- Bill Gates is a big fan of school choice. Big red flag there!
Check out what the homeschool curriculum company Classical Conversation has to say:
Shout out to James Holderman for finding these Gates-related resources. I'm thankful to have friends who have come alongside us and help us find the details - the needles in the haystacks, so to speak. Thanks, James!
it's on the floor... but what is it?
Senator Cindy O'Laughlin, Senate Majority Floor Leader, brought the constitution ratification bill, SJR 74, up to the senate floor for debate this evening.
Senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman, the bill handler, created a senate substitute and "dropped it" as soon as the bill was brought up. This is a new version of the bill that had not been seen with several added elements that were not discussed in the committee hearing.
There are a couple major changes to the bill.
1. Concurrent majority ratification changed from being based on Missouri House districts in the senate committee substitute to being based on Missouri Congressional districts. There are 163 house districts and 8 congressional districts. There are arguments for both scenarios, but my personal preference is to use house districts. I believe this is the most principled option in order to get a truly fair representation of the entire state.
Missouri Right to Life prefers congressional districts which is likely the reason for this preference from several of our republican senators.
2. More "ballot candy" was added. No amendments shall be added to the constitution that would:
- Permit a public official to receive gifts from lobbyists
- Raise sales tax on food
- Reduce the appropriation of money dedicated to any law enforcement agency, the Missouri department of the national guard, or first responders;
- Raise, expand, or impose any taxes or fees on real estate, real estate transactions, or real or personal property; or
- Prohibit the use of public moneys or personnel in assisting the defense of the national borders
3. More "ballot candy" ..... The general assembly shall ensure that legal voters who are disabled, including but not limited to those voters who are hearing impaired, speech impaired, or visually impaired, can review, comment on, sign, or decline to sign initiative petitions proposing constitutional amendments.
It's up...but for how long?
Senator Cindy O'Laughlin, Senate Majority Floor Leader, and Senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman, the bill handler for SJR 74, brought up the ratification reform bill to the senate floor for debate.
This is what the Freedom Caucus started filibustering for a few weeks ago. We had hoped to see it on the floor last week, but that did not happen. Today was the day.
I was at the Capitol all afternoon and I didn't expect it to be on the floor but I'm happy to be wrong.
The question is.... How long will it be on the floor?
is This theater?
They all knew the democrats would filibuster and they did...they are. At the time I'm writing this, at 8:45pm Monday evening, the democrats are still holding the floor in the senate with a filibuster.
Rumor has it that leadership decided before dinner time that they would allow the dems to hold the floor a few hours then adjourn so everyone can sleep then adjust the schedule tomorrow and Wednesday so that everyone can go to the Chief's parade if they'd like.
Interesting... so the question is are they just play acting to make us think they are serious about passing it when they know full well they won't make the democrats truly filibuster and they might not even be in the building much for the rest of the week.
It'll be interesting to see if football is more important to our Missouri republican leadership than our constitution.
NOTE: Before I could publish this blog, they adjourned. They'll return to the chamber around 10:00am. Looks to me like the rumors were right. What a show!
Not Enough Votes?
Another little rumor I've heard is that apparently there may not be enough votes to get this bill across the senate finish line this week.
24 republican senators. 10 democrat senators.
34 total senators.
We need 18 votes to pass a bill.
How hard can this be? Common sense says let the dems filibuster all night long until they give out. If they hold the floor for 48 hours - great! Who cares??
When they give up - whenever that would be - SJR 74 should pass easily.
We don't have 18 votes? Interesting. Who might the hold outs be?
Based on my time in the Capitol and the situation this evening, I believe these 9 would definitely be a yes vote:
1. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, bill sponsor
2. Bill Eigel, Freedom Caucus
3. Denny Hoskins, Freedom Caucus
4. Andrew Koenig, Freedom Caucus
5. Jill Carter, Freedom Caucus
6. Rick Brattin, Freedom Caucus
7. Nick Schroer, Freedom Caucus
8. Mike Moon, Constitutional Conservative
9. Ben Brown, Not FC or as constitutional as Senator Moon, but generally a conservative voter
Definitely 10 no votes from the democrats:
1. Lauren Arthur
2. Doug Beck
3. Karla May
4. Tracy McCreery
5. Angela Mosley
6. Barbara Washington
7. Greg Razer
8. John Rizzo
9. Steven Roberts
10. Brian Williams
Republican Toss Ups:
IF we had a clean CMR bill, I think the highlighted senators listed below would likely vote in favor. Because of the political situation and with the ballot candy - I'm just not sure how they would vote if they were voting tonight.
The unhighlighted names below are ones that I truly do not trust not to cross over and vote with the democrats. I debated about which group to put Trent & Rowden in, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.
These 6 plus the 9 above equal 16 and that means we'd be 2 votes short if I'm correct.
1. Jason Bean - jason.bean@senate.mo.gov
2. Mike Bernskoetter - mike.bernskoetter@senate.mo.gov
3. Rusty Black - rusty.black@senate.mo.gov
4. Justin Brown - justin.brown@senate.mo.gov
5. Mike Cierpiot - mike.cierpiot@senate.mo.gov
6. Sandy Crawford - sandy.crawford@senate.mo.gov
7. Karla Eslinger - karla.eslinger@senate.mo.gov
8. Travis Fitzwater - travis.fitzwater@senate.mo.gov
9. Elaine Gannon - elaine.gannon@senate.mo.gov
10. Lincoln Hough - lincoln.hough@senate.mo.gov
11. Tony Luetkemeyer - tony.luetkemeyer@senate.mo.gov
12. Cindy O'Laughlin, Majority Floor Leader - cindy.olaughlin@senate.mo.gov
13. Caleb Rowden, President Pro Tem - caleb.rowden@senate.mo.gov
14. Holly Thompson-Rehder - holly.rehder@senate.mo.gov
15. Curtis Trent - curtis.trent@senate.mo.gov
what can you do?
1. Remember this. Grab a journal. Write things down so you can go back and look then tell your friends at election time!
2. Call & email those 15 republican senators listed above plus Senator Coleman. Ask them to do what it takes to get SJR 74 across the finish line.
