Suburban Opposition to District Reorganization: The 1968 Spainhower Commission and Metropolitan Kansas City and St. Louis

Abstract

The 1968 Spainhower Commission planned extensive changes in the organization of public education in Missouri, proposing larger, comprehensive districts throughout the state. Intended to increase efficiency and reduce inequities, its reform proposals spurred widespread opposition from both rural and suburban communities. In the suburbs hostility was particularly vehement and often was expressed in racial terms, revealing fault lines that came to divide large metropolitan regions in the 1960s. There were differences in the response of suburbanites in Kansas City and St. Louis, however, as resistance was expressed more adamantly in greater Kansas City. In St. Louis, a local tradition of holding meetings to discuss educational problems and inter-district cooperation appears to have helped mediate opposition to the suggestion of change. Eventually districts in greater St. Louis participated in an extensive transfer plan for urban students, while districts in metro Kansas City did not. Despite these differences, suburban residents’ antagonism in both areas toward plans for sending significant numbers of urban students to their schools remains quite high today, suggesting that patterns of conflict revealed in the Spainhower era continue to exist.