USE THIS INFORMATION
Data doesn’t advocate for itself
Every map and number on this site is a starting point, not an ending one. This page is about what comes next: specific questions worth bringing to a school board meeting, a plain read on what your legislator can and can’t change, and how to share a fact so it holds up when someone checks it.
SCHOOL BOARD MEETINGS
Questions worth bringing to a school board meeting
Your local school board sets policy within the limits the state and federal government leave open — staffing, spending priorities, the calendar, and how the district spends within the funding formula it’s handed. Board members generally respond better to a specific, sourced question than to general concern. Every question below ties back to a number already on this site, so you can walk in with more than an impression.
“What would a one-cent increase in our levy actually raise per student — and how does that compare to a similar-sized suburban district?”
This is the exact question the dime-test calculator answers. A 10¢ levy raises about $39 per student in Missouri’s property-poorest district and $716 in its wealthiest — an 18-fold gap from the identical tax rate. Run your own district against a comparable suburb before the meeting, and you walk in with the actual dollar figure rather than a guess.
“How many of our teachers are here on the Baseline Salary Grant, and what happens to their pay if that grant isn’t renewed?”
274 of Missouri’s 518 districts rely on the state’s Teacher Baseline Salary Grant to reach the $40,000 statutory minimum teacher salary — and that grant is a yearly appropriation, not a permanent guarantee. If your district is one of them, it’s worth knowing before a budget conversation rather than during one.
“How many teachers have we hired from another Missouri district in the last two years, and do we know why they left their last one?”
Statewide, 82% of first-year teachers stay in the teaching profession, but only 73% stay in the same district — the gap is teachers moving district to district, not leaving the field. The Rural vs. Suburban page has the mobility and retirement numbers behind that pattern. A district that knows why it’s losing teachers to a neighbor is in a much better position to do something about it than one that only knows its vacancy count.
TALKING WITH A LEGISLATOR
What Jefferson City controls, and what’s local
State and local government split responsibility for a Missouri public school’s budget. Knowing which is which keeps a conversation with a legislator aimed at something they can actually change, instead of a decision your own school board already made.
Decided in Jefferson City
- The foundation formula — the state aid every district receives
- The $40,000 starting-teacher salary floor set by Senate Bill 727
- Career Ladder funding
- The Teacher Baseline Salary Grant — the annual appropriation that props up the $40,000 floor in districts that can’t reach it locally
Decided locally
- The district’s own operating and debt-service levy rates, set by local voters
- How a district spends within what the formula provides — staffing, programs, facilities, and the calendar
Worth checking before that conversation: Missouri’s House and Senate districts are drawn from population, not school-district lines. A single legislative seat often covers parts of several school districts, and a single school district can span more than one legislative seat. Look up your district on the
Find Your District page — every district profile now lists which House, Senate and U.S. congressional districts overlap it. That tells you which seats to watch, but not which legislator represents a specific address, since one school district can straddle several of them; confirm the individual representative or senator with the state’s own address-based lookups (
House ·
Senate) rather than assuming your own representative or senator is the right audience for every number on this site.
Two asks grounded in this site’s data: could Career Ladder and National Board funding be structured so smaller rural schedules can actually use them? Statewide, only
260 of 518 districts participate in Career Ladder and just 76 pay for National Board certification — the tools meant to reward experience and credentials aren’t reaching most rural schedules in the first place. And: is the Baseline Salary Grant secure enough, budget cycle to budget cycle, that a district can build a multi-year staffing plan around it — or does it need to be a standing floor rather than an annual appropriation?
SHARING A FACT RESPONSIBLY
How to share one fact so it lands
The most convincing version of a fact from this site usually isn’t a screenshot of a statewide map — it’s your own district’s number, in your own words, with a link back to where it came from. Two tools on this site already build that for you.
The dime-test calculator
Pick your district (and a second one to compare), and it hands you ready-to-post text with your own numbers already in it, plus a link that carries your comparison along.
Try it on the Funding page →
The retirement comparison
Pick any two Missouri districts and see the lifetime pension gap between them, in dollars — with the same kind of ready-made, shareable result.
Try it on the Rural vs. Suburban page →
A few habits worth keeping, wherever the fact comes from:
- Include the year and the source — DESE, MNEA, the State Auditor, PSRS, the Census, whichever applies. A number without a vintage is easy to wave off.
- State what the number does and doesn’t show. This site’s own corrections and caveats sections are written for exactly this — borrow the wording rather than leave it out.
- Link back to the specific page or tool, not just a screenshot. Anyone checking your claim should be able to see the same thing you saw, in context.
- When you can, share your own district’s number rather than a statewide average. It’s harder to dismiss, and easier for a neighbor to check against what they already know.