New state laws should aid military students transferring between schools

By Darrell Todd Maurina

Waynesville Daily Guide

Thu May 29, 2008, 03:31 PM CDT

Speaking to members of the Waynesville-St. Robert Chamber of Commerce attending Wednesday’s Eggs and Issues lunch, State Rep. David Day said he’s proud of his role sponsoring House Bill 1678, intended to help children of military service members attending school in Missouri.  Passed by the Missouri Legislature in the session that ended earlier this month, the bill worked its way through the House Veterans Affairs Committee which Day chairs.

Military personnel frequently transfer between school districts and that can cause serious disruptions to education, Day noted, and his bill should reduce those disruptions by allowing Missouri to enter an interstate compact on how to transfer credits and recognize classes that had been taken in other states.  Passing the bill was simply the right thing to do, Day said.

“We can’t help whenever some young man has to leave the love of his life to switch schools, we can’t help if some young lady who had the lead in the school play has to switch schools because their parents are moving, or they have to leave their friend,” Day said. “We can’t do anything about that, and we know it. But we need to be helping in the areas we can, and this compact will do it.”

Day said he’s talked “millions of times” to Waynesville Superintendent Judene Blackburn about issues related to students whose parents are stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, but noted that students from that installation attend schools all over Pulaski County and surrounding counties. The legislation will also help school districts around Whiteman Air Force Base in northern Missouri, recruiters stationed around various locations in Missouri, and others in different school districts.

“For those that don’t know, an interstate compact is simply an agreement between states without federal government involvement,” Day said. “What this bill is designed to do is Missouri will join with other states and help the transition of military dependent children from one state to the next.”

Items in the compact include requiring that records transfers be done in a set amount of time, granting leeway on immunization requirements, allowing students who have completed kindergarten in other states to begin first grade in Missouri even if they’re too young by Missouri standards, and allowing students who have passed a state constitution or state history class in another state to receive credit for that class in Missouri rather than re-taking a specific class for Missouri.

In some cases, there’s no way for a student to graduate from Missouri schools and the new rules will allow Missouri schools to work with the school district from which they came to provide classes that can be used to graduate from that district instead.

“If a young man or woman comes to the Waynesville school district three months before they’re to graduate from high school, they probably don’t meet Missouri’s requirements because every state has their own requirements,” Day said. “This allows the Waynesville school district, to work with, for example, Houston, Texas, to get their diploma from the school in Houston, Texas while they go to school here and stay with their families.”

Day served in the Army before he had children in school, but said he’s heard nightmares from military children about problems they’ve experienced with their education.  “One young lady said it took 60 days for her records to get from one state to the next; that meant for 60 days she was probably in the wrong classes,” Day said.

Two college students who were legislative interns told Day that his bill would have greatly helped.  “(One intern) said, ‘Between kindergarten and 12th grade, I moved 14 times,’” Day said. “She said this would have made a huge difference. She said she’d read it through three times, which means she probably knew my bill better than I did.”

One of Day’s own legislative interns several years ago had three state constitution classes during his time in high school and that prevented him from taking more valuable classes that would have helped his preparation for college, Day said.  “I always thought that was a no-brainer,” Day said.