Kansas City Schools STILL not Accredited

How long has it been now? Too damn long, that's for sure.

First the KCMO school system was under the control of a federal judge for almost twenty years because they just couldn't get their desegregation act together. (Brown vs. Board of Education had settled the issue, not an hour away from here, more than twenty years before KCMO schools were brought to heel in their own landmark desegregation case.)

The schoolboard had not had control restored to them for more than a couple of minutes, and they lost accreditation. And they haven't managed to get it restored yet.

Because the schools are so bad on the Missouri side, we are losing out to Johnson County Kansas big time. (But the Kansas state BOE is doing all they can to help us out. Keep talking about evolution being a "fairy tale" Connie Morris.)

Realtors pick up newly recruited employees to Sprint, etc. and take them to JoCo automatically. Missouri isn't even on their radar.

This is a spiral that we need to pull out of. The high earners don't live in Missouri, they live in Kansas. Therefore we lose tax revenue that is vital to our schools. As a result our property values lag, and while it makes housing more affordable in Missouri, it is also 'less desirable' housing. The only professionals buying homes in Missouri are childless yuppie-types buying lofts and "soft-lofts" in midtown. This is displacing the poor and working poor, and adversely affecting the tax base further - to draw these yuppies into midtown, they are offering 25-year tax abatements on these condos for the childless. It's a viscious circle, and it needs to stop.