STL Public Schools seeks to recover $42M from charter schools

St. Louis Public Schools wants its sales taxes back.

The district filed a motion asking for enforcement of a desegregation settlement agreement on April 11 in U.S. District Court, seeking to recover more than $42 million in local sales tax revenue paid to charter schools over the past decade.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports the federal litigation filed by the district's special administrative board, the NAACP and others against the Missouri Board of Education centers around the millions of dollars that charter schools receive from the 2/3-cent sales tax that funds court-ordered desegregation programs in St. Louis Public Schools.

The city originally passed the measure in 1999 to replace state funding that had paid for court-mandated desegregation programs, such as full-day kindergarten, transportation to magnet schools, and buses that take thousands of African American students to predominately white schools in St. Louis, the Dispatch reports.

The legal battle centers on whether charter schools — which are tax-funded but independent public schools — are entitled to a share of the desegregation funds.

Read more from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.