State Issues
Raising Education Professional Salaries
Missouri’s inadequately paid education professionals are expected to deliver student performance results that are above average. While states surrounding Missouri continue to increase teacher pay, Missouri continues to fall behind national trends in teacher compensation even with recent legislative changes.
MSTA supports comprehensive public education funding that will increase public education employees’ salaries, including additional funds to help districts with salary compression.
MSTA supports full funding of all statutory required funds and additional obligations that were passed by the legislature in SB727 (2024).
MSTA supports continued state funding of the Career Ladder program and increased award amounts to program participants, allowing educators to earn an additional stipend for engaging students in activities that enrich the student, school, and community. MSTA supports the expansion of eligible criteria to earn Career Ladder hours.
Educator Safety and Student Accountability
Missouri teacher surveys conducted by MSTA consistently show that the leading reasons teachers consider leaving the profession are disrespect, student behavior, and the lack of classroom support. These issues go beyond classroom management and impact not only education staff, but other students in classrooms as well. According to the MSTA Educator survey, the leading factor for educator stress was student behavior.
MSTA supports students being held accountable for behavior that disrupts the learning environment, including clear consequences for repeated disruptions to ensure a safe and productive learning environment.
MSTA supports clear and consistently applied discipline policies for student behavior that prioritize safe and productive learning environments for all students and education employees. Students and parents should be held responsible and accountable for maintaining a safe school environment.
Foundation Formula and Transportation Funding
In 2024, the state legislature fully funded the school foundation formula, as well as the transportation reimbursement. The legislature is legally obligated to fully fund Missouri’s students, including full payments for reimbursable transportation costs, to allow the best possible public schools in communities across the state.
MSTA supports maintaining consistent and adequate funding for public education, even during periods of reduced state revenue, to ensure stability for schools and uninterrupted support for students and educators.
Assessment and Evaluation Reform
MSTA believes that teacher input is vital to the continued success of our students. Local districts must have the freedom to meet the needs of their communities without being controlled by state or federal education departments.
MSTA supports the use of locally-developed assessments to improve instruction.
MSTA supports local control of public education by the district board of education and autonomy of the local school district to develop and adopt curriculum, assessments, evaluations, and other programs to meet educational goals.
MSTA opposes any plan that would use student grades, student class performance, or student performance on standardized tests as the single criteria to measure the merit of the teacher.
Vouchers/Tax Credits
The Missouri legislature has created and expanded a tax credit voucher system that is proposed to cost over $82 million each year in state general revenue, without even a summary report being completed by the state treasurer. Further, states surrounding Missouri overwhelmingly rejected voucher programs that would harm public education, including Kentucky.
MSTA Opposes school vouchers, education tax credits, or education savings accounts that would divert public money to pay for homeschooling or private school tuition.
Federal Issues
Retirement and Social Security
MSTA opposes any state or federal proposal to group the teachers’ retirement system funds with Social Security. In addition, the association opposes provisions that deprive teachers of their earned Social Security benefits.
MSTA opposes the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision.
Federal Influence in Education
MSTA supports requiring existing funding and future increases in federal dollars be delivered directly to the local school district whenever possible and increased focus on distributing federal dollars back to the classroom.
Local Control
MSTA opposes legislative actions involving inter-district choice. Open enrollment fails to serve the needs of all students in the community to receive a quality education, increasing student mobility while creating further funding inequities.
MSTA supports school districts developing a written policy for transfer and assignment of students within a district and to any other school district.
MSTA supports public charter school expansion when charters are granted by the local school board within an existing accredited Missouri public school district and requires all members of a public charter school board to be residents of the district in which the charter school serves. Charter school expansion should include requirements that charter schools have the same certification and compensation standards of other schools in the district, and tenure status should not be reduced or lost as a result of teaching in the public charter school.
Teacher Retirement
A secure and stable defined-benefit retirement program is vital to recruiting and retaining highly qualified and effective educators. Actuarially sound improvements to the system continue to strengthen the Missouri public educators’ financial futures. Transitioning work after retirement from a limit on the number of hours worked to an earnings limit for the Public School Retirement System (PSRS) will further simplify burdensome requirements on employees and districts.
MSTA supports establishing a new 2.6 benefit factor for 33 or more years of service, incentivizing experienced educators to remain in the classroom.
MSTA Opposes
MSTA opposes federal supersession over state and local responsibility for public education, including assessments that set standards and drive curriculum.
MSTA opposes any proposal to eliminate or weaken the teacher tenure law.
MSTA opposes limiting the ability of employees to discuss working conditions with their employer.
MSTA opposes merit pay, including the use of standardized test scores or other subjective criteria as a measurement of teacher performance or to determine further salary increases.
MSTA opposes undefined liquidated damage clauses in teacher contracts.
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