INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — The Independence School District Board of Education has called a special meeting Thursday morning to discuss ballot language for a possible vote on the future of the district’s four-day school week.
Independence moved to a four-day school week two years ago. The Independence School District, or ISD’s, third school year with a Tuesday-to-Friday schedule started this week, but it may be the last depending on the fallout from a pending court case.
If no injunction is granted, ISD plans to put the four-day school week on the ballot in the November 2025 election.
The legal maneuvers come after the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature targeted Independence with a new law in May 2024, which requires districts that represent 30,000 people or more to put any calendar change from a five-day to a four-day school week on the ballot.
Rural school districts, nearly half of which have moved to a four-day school week, are exempt from the requirement, which meant Independence was the only district among more than 180 in the state with a four-day school week required to seek voter approval to keep its schedule.
“The reason we did it is to attract and retain high-quality staff,” Independence Interim Superintendent Dr. Cindy Grant said Wednesday during the Independence Chamber of Commerce’s annual State of Schools luncheon. “The No. 1 predictor for a child's academic career is the quality of the teacher in front of them, and we want to provide the best quality education we can for our kids we're here to serve.”
She believes the four-day school week is achieving ISD’s goals.
“Based upon the data, it's going really well with our teacher-retention rate,” Grant said. “We were able to retain 90.8% of our teachers going into this year.”
The average years of experience for new teachers joining the district has climbed from 4.41 years in the classroom in 2021-22 to 8.55 years.
“That makes a big difference, so we are happy with that,” Grant added.
Also in May 2024, Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick announced an audit of the ISDs finances and overall performance, a curious move given the timing.
Fitzpatrick’s office gave the district an overall rating of “good” in releasing the results Monday.
“I think they (taxpayers) can be confident the Independence School District is operationally sound and well run,” he said.
But Fitzpatrick, a Republican, also used the release of the audit’s findings as a forum for criticizing ISD’s lawsuit.
"I am disappointed by leadership's decision to spend taxpayer money in an effort to prevent those same taxpayers from weighing in on the four-day school week,” Fitzpatrick said. “This decision has massive implications for families who rely on the district to provide an education for their children. Attempting to deny them an opportunity to have their voices heard at the ballot box is a concerning decision by the district. While the lawsuit has not been resolved, it is noted in our audit."
All Independence school board members are publicly elected officials.
Grant said the district didn’t have any response to Fitzpatrick's political rhetoric.
“We're just excited that it (the audit) came back as it did,” she said. “He has a job to do, and he did it. We thank them for everything, their feedback, and 're just going to move forward and improve what we do.”
The district filed a lawsuit on Nov. 27, 2024, in Cole County Circuit Court, challenging the law that would require a public vote as unconstitutional.
ISD, according to the petition filed in circuit court, sought an injunction because the law only applies to 87 of the state’s 518 districts, which the district argues makes it an impermissible “special law” under the Missouri Constitution.
The school district and the state filed briefs in late July and are awaiting a decision from Judge Christopher Limbaugh, whose decision is expected as soon as next week.
“We're just waiting to see what's gonna happen,” Grant said, “and we're going to keep doing what we do to serve kids in our community, because we believe in what we do.”
While the audit didn’t find any significant financial discrepancies, it did find numerous Sunshine Law violations, including meetings that were illegally closed to the public and a failure to develop a records management and retention policy for electronic communications.
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