Missouri governor’s school funding task force assembles slowly

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe vowed during his annual State of the State address in January to rewrite the foundation formula, the equation that determines how the state funds public schools.

Almost three months later, he has yet to announce his selections for a task force charged with reviewing public school funding and recommending changes.

The School Funding Modernization Task Force is his solution to what he sees as a stagnant, dysfunctional formula. The task force aims to rewrite the formula which has not been substantively revised in 20 years.

Gabby Picard, spokesperson for the governor, told the Missourian that Kehoe’s appointees will be announced in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, the legislature has nominated four members to serve on the committee that will reengineer how schools receive state funding.

In late February, House Speaker Jon Patterson appointed Reps. Marlene Terry, a Democrat from St. Louis, and Ed Lewis, a Republican from Moberly.

Terry was the first Black member of the Riverview Gardens School Board, where she served in various leadership positions for nine years, including school board president.

Lewis worked as a high school educator for 32 years prior to being elected to the House in 2020. He is vice chair of the House subcommittee for education appropriations.

Lewis said he has yet to receive communication from Kehoe about his fellow appointees and the task force’s timeline. He forecasts the team will be set in motion in a few weeks, near the end of the legislative session.

“It’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of time,” Lewis said. “I don’t think you’re going to make everybody happy because of the nature of this beast.”

Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin appointed Sens. Rusty Black, a Republican from Chillicothe, and Travis Fitzwater, a Republican from Holts Summit.

Black spent 33 years as an agriculture educator before being elected to the Senate in 2022.

Fitzwater has a background in local politics, small businesses and youth ministry. He and his wife homeschool their three children.

O’Laughlin expressed her support for the task force, telling the Missourian an update to the school funding formula was “long overdue.”

According to his executive order creating the task force, Kehoe will appoint a superintendent from a large urban school and one from a small rural school, a teacher, a representative for charter schools, an advocate for school choice and representatives from the business and agricultural sectors.

The Missouri State Board of Education will appoint its own representative.

Missouri educators

The spot reserved for a teacher is not further outlined. The executive order does not detail if the educator is to be from a public, private or charter school, their level of experience or the grades they teach.

Todd Fuller, spokesman for the Missouri State Teacher’s Association, said he feels the appointed teacher should come from a public school.

“School teachers and public school teachers find themselves underrepresented in these situations,” Fuller said. “I don’t think that’s ultimately beneficial to the formula that’s created or to the makeup of teachers in our state.”

Public school teachers make up the majority of the state’s education workforce: 72,000 teachers serve more than 870,000 students in Missouri’s public schools.

“If we’re not representing public school teachers then we’re not representing the largest part of the workforce in our state for education and for public education,” Fuller said.

Per state law, funds received through the formula must be used primarily to pay teachers’ salaries.

Urban and rural representation

The executive order mandates representatives from the business and agriculture sectors be included in the task force.

Fuller explained the inclusion of these representatives may be an effort to align the formula with the interests of Missouri’s rural and urban districts.

Seventy percent of school districts in the state are categorized as rural, but combined, these districts serve just 21% of the state’s students, according to a study from St. Louis University.

The foundation formula aims to factor in cost of living in school districts. In the equation, this is referred to as the dollar value modifier.

This modifier provides additional funds to school districts located in areas with a higher cost of living without restricting funds to districts with lower costs of living.

To do so, cost of living is determined by dividing the average wage per job of the district’s area by the state’s median wage. Wages act as a proxy to determine an individual purchasing power in the area.

The formula also considers the amount of funds contributed by the district’s local community, primarily through property tax.

Districts that are located in areas with higher home values, thus generating more property tax, typically receive less state funding.

Rural districts usually receive more state funding due to their smaller tax base than populous, urban districts.

The current property tax model is frozen at 2005 levels — an attempt to hold the amount of funding a district receives steady as tax rates fluctuate yearly.

The freeze is a part of the formula’s “hold-harmless” provision. Since 2007, roughly 200 of the state’s 518 districts are ensured to receive at least the amount of funding they did in the 2005-06 school year.

Limited funding

Over the past 20 years, Missouri’s spending on public education has increased as a dollar amount, but it has shrunk in proportion to total spending.

Kehoe proposed a $200 million increase in funding for the foundation formula, bringing the total to more than $4 billion for fiscal year 2026.

The proposed increase falls short of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s suggested increase of $500 million.

The legislature is in the final stages of settling on fiscal year 2026 funding for the state. Senate leaders last week announced plans to fully fund the foundation formula, despite Kehoe’s decision, endorsed by the House, to leave $300 million out of the proposed budget for public schools. A final resolution on the spending will be made by May 9.

David Luther, spokesman for the Missouri Association of School Administrators, said his team is in a “wait-and-see pattern” as the task force is put together.

“To see any kind of major changes would be certainly cause for us to face some different challenges, so we’re hopeful that the folks over at the Capitol building can take a look at this and find alternative means to make sure that the foundation formula is fully funded,” he said.

The state education department is requesting the money in part to level the state adequacy target — a key multiplier in the foundation formula. The state adequacy target is the minimum amount of funding a student needs to meet basic state requirements.

“The target is kind of the heart of the foundation formula,” Lewis said. “Having an outside entity or department being able to, by rules they promulgate, change that drastically by one year is definitely one issue about the foundation formula that needs to be addressed.

The target is set at $7,145 by the formula for the 2026 fiscal year, but the House adjusted the figure to $6,760.

House Democrats’ attempts to raise the target were voted down. The Senate decision to add the money means a compromise will need to be worked out between the two chambers.

The task force must submit its final report with recommendations for the new funding model to Kehoe by Dec. 1, 2026.

This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian. It can be republished in print or online.