2026 RSD Legislative Platform

2026 EducationPlus Legislative Platform

As the bedrock of strong local communities, public schools continue to serve our students’ educational and emotional well-being. Through a strong partnership between our legislature and locally elected officials, our school communities meet the challenge of student needs through accountability and innovation to ensure the future success of our state through the next generation.

Funding Now for Missouri’s Future

Sufficient funding is required to meet continued unfunded mandates and diverse needs of our students. It is critical that Missouri public schools are fully and adequately funded to serve and invest in the future of more than 860,000 Missouri public school children. We support:

• Full funding of all legislative mandates.
• Protecting the use of local property tax for public schools.
• Continued full funding of the Foundation Formula and transportation.
• Continued funding sources of general revenue, Proposition C and tax revenues from gaming.
• Dedicated funding for community safeguards to ensure the safety of our schools.
• Funding the necessary services to address the mental health needs of our students and community to benefit their academic, life and future-ready skills.

Dedicated State Programs to Meet the Needs of our Students and Communities

Our success depends greatly on public schools’ ability to meet the academic, social and emotional needs of all children. Ensuring that our kids feel connected and supported is important to our school and community safety. We support:

• Combating teacher shortage by implementing the recommendations outlined by the Blue Ribbon Commission.
• Removing barriers to provide access to early childhood education programming by lowering the compulsory age from 7 to 4 years and increasing opportunities for all Missouri children.

Ensuring Accountability and Innovation

The current assessment system needs an overhaul and the implementation of a student-centered assessment model that provides timely, accurate data to drive instruction that aids student growth is long overdue. We support:

• Utilizing school districts’ best practices around assessment and the work of the Success-Ready Students Network to develop instructional models and assessment practices that meet the needs of a 21st century learner.
• Innovative practices that will improve and enhance student learning and employability skills.

Supporting Local Control

Local communities are best suited to make decisions about their public schools. We support:

• Keeping local dollars and school policy decisions under the direction of locally elected school boards.
• School districts’ ability to recognize and respond to the unique characteristics of their community stakeholders when making educational decisions.
• Continued use of current residency requirements of enrollment to avoid the redistribution of local school district resources to other Missouri communities.