When asked why they want school choice, families often cite safety as their number one reason, which makes sense. How is a child supposed to learn if they鈥檙e afraid to be at school?
Under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), students trapped in persistently dangerous schools are supposed to have a way out. It鈥檚 called the Unsafe School Choice Option (USCO). Unfortunately, Missouri has all but ignored this protection 鈥 and that needs to change.
ESSA requires every state to identify persistently dangerous schools and offer students the right to transfer to a safer public school. This is not a suggestion; it is federal law.
Yet in Missouri, no school has ever been labeled as 鈥減ersistently dangerous,鈥 and no families have ever been notified of this option. Either all Missouri schools are perfectly safe 鈥 which is unlikely 鈥 or the state鈥檚 criteria are so vague and restrictive that no school could ever qualify.
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But let鈥檚 look at that more closely.
Consider Poplar Bluff High School. According to data from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), there were 12 violent incidents at the school in 2022, 19 in 2023, and 10 in 2024. In that same three-year period, there were 266 out-of-school suspensions. A 鈥渧iolent incident鈥 in a Missouri school is one in which 鈥渁 student uses physical force with the intent to cause serious bodily harm to another person.鈥
It seems hard to believe that a school with these levels of violence would feel safe to students.
And then there鈥檚 University City Senior High School. From 2022 to 2024, according to DESE, there were 51 violent incidents and 21 weapons violations at the school. That is a lot of weapons being brought to school, and it certainly doesn鈥檛 sound like a safe environment to me.
Last year in 最新杏吧原创 Public Schools, teachers at Vashon High School sent a petition to the district claiming that they were teaching in a dangerous situation. In fact, one teacher had to use pepper spray on a crowd of students to get them under control.
There is no substitute for giving families an immediate exit from a dangerous situation. Additional funding, new programs or behavior contracts might help improve school safety in the long run, but they do nothing for the student being bullied today, or for the child afraid to walk the halls because of fights, weapons, or harassment.
For these families and students facing these problems, the only meaningful solution is the freedom to exercise their current legal right to transfer to a safer school.
In Missouri, for a school to be considered persistently dangerous it must have experienced at least one violent incident or one weapons violation in two out of the past three years. At least 30 schools in the state meet that criterion.
However, the school must also have expelled at least five students (10 if the school enrolls more than 250 students) in each of the past three years. No school has met that criterion since the law was enacted.
What if the Missouri definition were changed from violence/weapons and expulsions to violence/weapons or expulsions?
In that case, thousands of Missouri students could move to a safe learning environment 鈥 which should be the minimum standard.
Parents deserve honesty. It鈥檚 absurd to suggest that there are no unsafe schools in Missouri. If a school is unsafe, the state must acknowledge it and provide families with options 鈥 not pretend the problem doesn鈥檛 exist.
If the state refuses to define what 鈥減ersistently dangerous鈥 means 鈥 or sets the bar so high that no school ever qualifies 鈥 then the federal requirement becomes meaningless in practice.
It鈥檚 time for Missouri to adopt clear, reasonable criteria that reflect real risks to students and activate the USCO in schools that meet those criteria. Every Missouri child deserves to attend a safe school, no matter where they live. Families in struggling districts should not be forced to wait years for conditions to improve 鈥 or worse, accept that their child鈥檚 school is unsafe with no way out.
The Unsafe School Choice Option was designed to give families an emergency exit from these situations. Missouri leaders must stop ignoring this law and start empowering parents to protect their children.
