State Rep. Courtney Allen Curtis this week promoted his proposed law and two resolutions aimed at improving state funding for Missouri's two historically black colleges.
Curtis, D-Ferguson, filed his "Equity in Higher Education Funding Program" bill and both resolutions Feb. 14 - but none have been assigned to a committee yet.
The proposed law would provide supplemental funding assistance to Lincoln University and Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis - the state's two four-year schools with a history of serving black students.
Curtis said in a news release his bill requires "changes (that) are needed to solve inequities in how these historically black institutions have been treated financially in the state of Missouri."
Lincoln Institute was founded in 1866 with a special mission to help educate freed slaves who had been denied the right to an education by an 1847 state law.
It began receiving state aid for teacher training in 1870 and became a state institution in 1879. It became a university in 1921 - and served as the statewide school for black students during the nation's period of segregated, "separate-but-equal" policies.
Harris-Stowe began in 1857, when the St. Louis Public Schools founded a "normal school" to train teachers that later was named for William Torrey Harris - who had been a St. Louis Schools superintendent of instruction and also was a U.S. commissioner of education.
In the early 1900s, Harris Teachers College began offering in-service education for white St. Louis teachers.
Meanwhile, the St. Louis Public Schools in 1890 founded a normal school for future black teachers, which was named for abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1929.
After the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 ruled segregated schools were unconstitutional, the Harris and Stowe Teachers Colleges were merged under the Harris name. Later, the Stowe name was restored.
In 1979, the state took over Harris-Stowe operations.
In recent years, the two schools have had the smallest student populations among Missouri's 13 four-year university campuses.
Curtis said his proposed law, House Bill 2464, would provide supplemental funding to Lincoln and Harris-Stowe to ensure they are funded at the same level as the University of Missouri on a per-student basis.
The additional funding also would compensate the two schools for historical disparities in their funding, he said.
One of Curtis' two House resolutions seeks a legislative commitment to ensuring adequate and equitable funding of public elementary and secondary schools, and the other mirrors the proposed law.
That resolution seeks the General Assembly's commitment to ensure Missouri's historically black higher education institutions "are comparable to and competitive with the Columbia campus of the University of Missouri in all facets of their operations and programs, and that such institutions are funded at the same level as the University of Missouri in Columbia, on a per-student basis."
The resolution argues better funding is needed because the nation's historically black colleges and universities "too often struggle financially due to having smaller endowments, less money from alumni giving, and lower levels of federal and state investment."
The resolution on elementary and secondary public schools urges a legislative commitment to rectifying past education funding mistakes and seeks to abolish any continuing inadequate funding which, Curtis' resolution says, "has perpetuated a system of separate but equal in fact, if not in law, by underfunding schools with large minority populations."
"Our historically black institutions have often taken a back seat when it comes to public funding," Curtis said in his news release. "Many times students from these districts are not receiving a proper 21st century education and are continuing their education in historic black institutions that are also not as properly funded. We need to take a serious look at creating a better system that makes it an even playing field for everyone."
Curtis also pointed to decade-long litigation in Maryland, where a federal judge last November ordered the state "to correct the lack of investment in funding their historically black institutions."
He said Maryland is trying to reach a $100 million settlement.