Quarterly Message

January 2024

Happy New Year to our community of public school supporters. If you make a New Year’s Resolution list, we hope it’s not too late to add one more. It will be an easy one.

The Missouri legislature began its work the first week of January, and they will be in session through mid-May. If the local television news lead story on day one of the session was accurate, many elected officials plan to continue their fight for school choice in the form of vouchers, tax credits, open enrollment, and charter schools in St. Charles County. No matter how they message it, the result is that all school choice plans take critical funding from public schools and transfer it to private and mostly religious schools. Additionally, they are planning to continue their divisive and distracting culture war conversations regarding censorship and curriculum mandates.

For these reasons, during the fall we continued our search for Board of Education candidates who would support inclusive environments where all students and families would feel welcome and believe that public tax dollars belong in public schools. Filing for Board of Education seats opened in early December 2023, and filing has now closed. SCCFFPS is pleased to announce that we have endorsed two candidates in each of our five St. Charles County school districts who we believe will serve all the students and families in their communities.

The biggest threat to our students, teachers, and communities is a lack of voter participation. So, we want to ask that each of you add one additional resolution to your New Year’s list – please VOTE! We kindly ask that you commit to voting on April 2, 2024, for your local Board of Education candidates. Shockingly, because of low voter turnout, many school board races have been decided by less than fifty votes. To help with your voting decisions, additional voter and candidate information follows in the newsletter.

Thank you for your continued support of our work with your time and money. It is greatly appreciated. Our local schools can’t win in April without you.