Missouri enjoys strong public schools. Southern Missouri may be even more fortunate.
Our small rural schools have identities deeply connected to their communities, while larger districts — including Springfield, the largest in the state — have overcome many challenges sometimes associated with larger or urban school systems.
That success isn't accidental. It comes from strong communities, Missouri values, great teachers, effective school boards and school leaders, and generations of Missourians who have supported their public schools.
I spent my career in those schools as a teacher, coach, administrator and eventually a superintendent. Over those years, one frustration became increasingly familiar: the state would place expectations on public schools without
always providing the resources to meet them.
For years, Missouri's school funding problem could be explained pretty simply.
Imagine the state has a formula that calculates it will take $100 to adequately fund its public schools. The state acknowledges the $100 calculation, but lawmakers provide only $90.
At least everyone knew what the numbers were: what was calculated by the state's own formula and what was appropriated by the legislature, which often was not the same amount.
At the most recent State Board of Education meeting, something different happened.
It is worth noting that this is a substantially new State Board of Education. Seven of its eight voting members have been appointed by Gov. Mike Kehoe since April 2025.
Missouri's own Department of Elementary and Secondary Education calculated that roughly $300 million more would be needed to fully fund the state's foundation formula next year. This newly constituted State Board declined to request it, directing the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) instead to ask for essentially the same foundation-formula funding schools are receiving this year.
That changes the analogy.
Now the state is calculating that same $100 need, but the State Board is choosing to request only $90.
Surely our State Board of Education should at least tell lawmakers what Missouri law says it costs to fund our schools.
That expectation seems especially reasonable considering the Board's own 2026 legislative priorities call on the General Assembly to “fully fund the foundation formula.”
The State Board's decision is difficult to square with that priority.
It is difficult for me to view this decision entirely in isolation. Missouri is moving toward an additional new accountability system — the A-F grading system — which risks further confusing citizens about how their schools are doing. At the same time Missouri has repeatedly struggled to fully fund its public-school formula, the state has expanded MOScholars, using state tax credits to support educational alternatives, including private-school tuition.
Further, the legislature has increasingly inserted itself into decisions once left to locally elected school boards, including whether certain districts may adopt a four-day school week and the fundamental decision of when the school year may begin.
With these policy changes, taken together with a State Board now declining even to request what DESE calculates is needed to fully fund the formula, I worry about the cumulative effect: Are we strengthening confidence in Missouri's public schools, or steadily eroding it?
Missouri's public schools aren't asking the State Board to write the check. They should be able to expect the State Board to accurately present the need.
Let the legislature do its job and decide where public education stands among its priorities and those of the constituents its members represent.
Chris Berger is a retired Missouri public school superintendent and educator.
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Missouri education board fudges the math on funding formula | Opinion
