Tag: colleges

House panel seeks success in creating higher ed performance-based funding plan

      A House effort to arrive at a successful performance-based model for funding the state’s colleges and universities launched on Tuesday.

Representative Brenda Shields (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      The House Special Interim Committee on Higher Education Performance Funding held an introductory hearing, in which it heard several presentations about the past attempts at performance-based funding. 

      Committee Chair Brenda Shields (R-St. Joseph) said it’s important to know what’s come before.

      “This has been attempted several times.  We haven’t been successful,” Shields said.

      She said if there is to be a chance for a better result this time, everyone must have a seat at the table.

      “It’s going to require us to engage all the stakeholders.  That’s all of our universities and our community colleges, all of our institutes of higher education along with the [Department of Higher Education] to be able for us to be successful in developing a formula that actually has a measurement model to it.  How do we know how we’re performing if we don’t have measurements?  So that’s what we’re really looking for, is how can we measure our fixed costs, the variable costs, and then our performance funding on top of that, so that our universities actually know what they’re working towards.”

Representative Kevin Windham (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      Shields said if not all of the state’s institutions have buy-in, any new formula will be doomed. 

      “If [a legislator] doesn’t feel as if their individual university that they represent is happy, they will vote against it, or I believe I will vote against it if my university felt as if they were not receiving fair funding.  I would vote against it and it would bring the people of my region against it, and it’s really hard to pass a formula unless you feel as if everyone is a winner somewhere in that formula.”

      What the legislature is using now in setting higher education funding is a “base plus” model, but Shields said no one has been able to tell her where that base came from.

      “Every year, if the legislature thinks that we can afford a three-percent increase, we use the current base and we add three percent to it.  First of all, nobody can explain how the base was created.  Secondly, it doesn’t take into account that things have changed, so we give everybody a three percent increase based on their base and maybe their student enrollment has increased dramatically.  Maybe it’s decreased dramatically.  Maybe they’ve taken on teaching some degrees that are more expensive to offer … and we haven’t taken any of that into account.  We just continue to add a percent to this base number that no one can remember how it was created.”

MU System President Mun Choi addresses the House Special Interim Committee on Higher Education Performance Funding (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      Tuesday’s hearing set the Department of Higher Education to the task of creating a work group with representation from all the institutions of higher education in the state. 

      “They will begin to sit down and break down what’s the fixed cost.  Let’s define ‘fixed costs,’ what are your fixed costs, what are the variable costs of running an institution, and then of course, what should be our measurements for a performance funding model?  They will agree upon what those measurements are and then we’ll move from there.”

      Shields said the goal is not to pass a new funding mechanism in the 2025 legislative session.

      “What our hope is for the ’25 session is that we have a system in place which we can test and simulate and make tweaks to, and so we will spend the entire ’25 session making tweaks.  I do not believe that we’ll pass legislation in ’25.  I think the soonest that we’ll pass legislation will be in ’26 for use in ’27.”

      The committee will meet three more times this year.

House votes to bar hair-based discrimination with passage of ‘CROWN Act’

The House has voted to bar discrimination based on how people style their hair, specifically natural hair textures and cultural styles.

Representatives Raychel Proudie, LaKeySha Bosley, and Ashley Bland Manlove (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

For several years now, legislators have been asked to pass the “Missouri Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” or “Missouri CROWN Act.” House Bills 1900, 1591, & 2515 would specify that no person may be discriminated against based on hair texture or protective hairstyle if that style or texture is commonly associated with a particular race or origin. The measure applies to any educational institution that receives state funding.

It was carried on the House Floor by Representative Raychel Proudie (D-Ferguson), whose bill was combined with those from Representatives LaKeySha Bosley (D-St. Louis City) and Ashley Bland Manlove (D-Kansas City).

“Every freedom- and liberty-loving patriot in Missouri should be in favor of this bill, especially those of us who believe that children should be able to exist the way in which God created them,” Proudie said. “Simply put, that’s what this does. Any constitutional, tax-paying citizen of Missouri should agree to this bill because all students and their parents should have access to the things which their tax dollars go to sustain.”

Proudie is a teacher as well as a school counselor certified in three states. “Students can’t learn when they’re not in class learning. As a teacher, I can say, and have said, we must be much more interested in what we are putting in a student’s head than what’s going out of it. If we’re distracted by someone’s hair, then maybe that’s something we need to take up with a physician, but it’s not the child’s problem,” Proudie told her colleagues.

Each year that the legislation has been considered, legislators have heard testimony, especially from people of color, who said they have faced discrimination based on their hairstyles. Again this year, Missourians told the House Committee on Urban Issues that their hairstyles have been politicized; they have been discriminated against in job interviews and classrooms; and they have been made to feel like they cannot style their hair how they choose.

“We have a lot of conversation about bullying, and we think of it as peer bullying. Sometimes the big bad bear is the adult that is charged with the protection. Sometimes the classroom bully is the teacher, the classroom bully is the institution itself, and we have to make sure that we’re paying attention to that, and often times we don’t hear that enough, that sometimes we, as the adults, as the practitioners, are the problem, and in this case, we absolutely are,” Proudie said.

Representative Raychel Proudie (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The proposal has evolved over the years. The version passed on Wednesday by the House includes exceptions for the use of things like hairnets or coverings for safety purposes. This was a change pursued by Representative Scott Cupps (R-Shell Knob), whose background includes time as an agricultural education teacher.

He says in that curriculum, in particular, students need protection.

“You work with rotating equipment, you work with flammable equipment, and so there was a concern of mine that if this could be used to say, ‘No, you can’t ask me to do something with my hair to protect my own safety,’ and so that was not only addressed but addressed in the correct manner, in my opinion,” Cupps said.

He said changes like that could very well lead other states to mirror versions of this legislation off of this.

“I want everyone to know this is a bipartisan effort, has been a bipartisan effort, and so this is something that I think everybody should feel comfortable in voting for,” Cupps said.

More bipartisan support came from Imperial Republican Renee Reuter, who said, “I do have naturally curly hair, and I promised people in my district before I came back from the interim that I was going to represent the curly-haired girls when I was here, and I’m so proud that this bill is here and I support it.”

Echoing Proudie, Reuter added, “Women and men need to be able to just be who they are and express their hair the way that they are given it from God.”

“I’m really happy, I was very surprised, not surprised [that they liked it] but surprised that some of my colleagues from across the aisle were compelled to stand up and speak to the importance and what it meant to them. It was very endearing to hear, and I’m glad that it would cover and touch their children, too,” Proudie said.

“It’s not just something that impacts African American students or students of color. It impacts anybody who deserves to go to their public spaces, their public school, and learn and to not get bullied, picked on, singled out, or made to feel less than what God blessed them with.”

The House voted 144-0 to send the legislation to the Senate, where a similar bill was recently passed out of a committee.

House budget plan would restore FY ’18 funding levels to colleges, universities

The Missouri House has perfected a budget proposal for the next fiscal year including an agreement to hold down college tuition, while restoring $68-million that Governor Eric Greitens (R) proposed cutting from colleges and universities.

House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications – click for larger version)

The House is proposing putting that money back into the core funding for those institutions, putting them back at the level of state support they are receiving in the current fiscal year.  In exchange, the state’s institutions will increase tuition by no more than one-percent in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (R-Shell Knob) proposed an amendment that completed the restoration of that $68-million dollars.

“I think that this is the appropriate thing to do,” said Fitzpatrick.  “I think a one-percent tuition increase is manageable for the folks in this state.”

Under the agreement between Fitzpatrick and the institutions, the schools must receive the money the House has proposed appropriating.  If the appropriations are withheld by the governor or otherwise do not reach them, they can increase tuition based on the Consumer Price Index.

The agreement is supported by Democrats, including the top Democrat on the budget committee, Kip Kendrick (D-Columbia), whose district includes the University of Missouri’s flagship campus.

“I appreciate this and the whole conversation we’ve had in budget committee and working with the chair on reaching an agreement.  I think everyone in here has the intent of … wants to hold tuition increases to a minimum to make sure college remains affordable and accessible for all,” said Kendrick.  “Higher education institutions have taken it on the head in the last few years with some major budget cuts, so glad that we can do all that we can this year.”

Representative Kip Kendrick, the top Democrat on the Missouri House Budget Committee (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications – click for larger version)

Until the agreement was reached, Fitzpatrick had proposed putting $30-million of the money that is now going to core funding into the Access Missouri scholarship program, which would have fully funded it.  Kendrick is glad to see that money going back to the core, but he hopes Access Missouri receives additional funding in future years.

“I love Access Missouri.  It is a fantastic, needs-based scholarship program in the State of Missouri.  It is our only needs-based aid program in the state and for a brief moment of time it had 30-million new dollars in it, and I hope that we can do what we can in the future also to make sure that we appropriately fund that line as well,” said Kendrick.

Budget committee member Crystal Quade (D-Springfield) agreed.

“While I wish that we could be funding Access Missouri and I hope that we try to do so in the future, representing Missouri State, one of the institutions who is a big part of this agreement, I was thankful for the budget chair to have the discussion and have everybody at the table and come up with this solution,” said Quade.

The tuition agreement does not extend to Missouri Southern in Joplin.  Fitzpatrick said their financial situation is dire enough that he agreed to let them opt out of the one-percent tuition cap requirement.

The funding for higher education is found in House Bill 2003, which itself appropriates more than $1.17-billion.  The House is expected to vote on that and the rest of the budget bills on Thursday.

If passed, they will go to the Senate, which will spend the coming weeks developing its own budget proposal based on the House’s plan.  The two chambers will then attempt to compromise on a final spending plan to send to the governor in May.

House budget leader has plan to restore higher ed funding, but wants agreement on tuition first

The Missouri House budget committee has a plan to continue funding of Missouri’s colleges and universities at the amount budgeted last year, but in exchange lawmakers want those institutions to freeze tuition.

Representative Scott Fitzpatrick (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (R-Shell Knob) said the solution comes from money the state set aside for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).  Because federal funding for the program was uncertain, the state set aside funds for CHIP.  Now that federal funding has come through, Fitzpatrick has said the state could restore all $68-million that Governor Eric Greitens (R) proposed cutting from higher education.

Fitzpatrick said full restoration is his goal, but he is seeking agreement from the state’s institutions that they will hold down tuition.

“I want to make sure that if we’re putting that money back it’s going to result in holding down the cost of college for Missouri students, so I’m in the process of trying to seek a deal on holding down tuition with the institutions in the state in exchange for making a full restoration,” said Fitzpatrick.  “So far that deal has not been agreed to and so what we did was we put, out of the $68-million we took $30-million of that, which is the amount that it takes to fully fund the Access Missouri Scholarship, which is the state’s need-based scholarship program, and we fully funded that scholarship because if tuition is going to go up I want to make sure that we are putting some of that money into a place where it’ll help the people that are having to pay that tuition offset it.”

Fitzpatrick told the rest of the committee that if the institutions agree to his plan he will put that $30-million back toward their state support.  If they don’t agree, he will leave that $30-million where it is and might move some of the remaining $38-million to other things.

“My goal is to help the institutions out but I also want that to translate into the cost of college being held down, and I don’t plan to seek an agreement that tuition won’t be raised every single year but I do think if we’re going to be spending close to $70-million on just going back into institutional budgets that there should be some consideration for that,” said Fitzpatrick.

Representative Kip Kendrick (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The leading Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Kip Kendrick (Columbia), said he’s still undecided on whether he supports the chairman’s proposed agreement, but he thinks the committee’s members all want to see tuition as level as possible and keep higher education affordable for Missourians.

“It’s hard to make an argument against fully funding the only needs-based scholarship program we have in the state of Missouri,” said Kendrick. “Access Missouri provides access, as it says – it’s in the name. It provides access to many Missourians – middle-class and lower-income individuals – to higher education. It’s an important program, it’s been underfunded for a number of years, so it’s hard to necessarily argue with where it currently stands.”

Kendrick said he hopes before the budget is final money could be found to both restore core funding to colleges and universities and to fully fund Access Missouri.

The budget committee will go through it’s “mark up” process next week.  Individual members of the committee will propose changes they want to make – to increase funding where they think it should be increased and propose where that funding could be pulled from.  From there, the committee will vote on whether to send each budget bill to debate by the full House, which is expected to happen after the legislature’s spring break.