This article was originally published in Missouri Independent.
Missouri interim Commissioner of Education Stacey Preis resigned Tuesday after just four months on the job amid speculation she was about to be fired.
Speaking to reporters while the State Board of Education met in a closed session, Preis didn’t deny her situation but said no one had “directly” told her to resign to avoid being removed.
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Preis said she resigned “after much consideration” because she thinks “the board’s agenda is better served by a different commissioner.”
Her departure comes amid weeks of speculation that Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican, could be named the state’s next education commissioner. O’Laughlin, whose legislative career has focused heavily on education policy, has expressed interest in working with the state’s education establishment.
The possibility of O’Laughlin taking over the department was a topic of conversation among school administrators attending Tuesday’s meeting, though the board has not publicly identified her as a candidate.
Preis’ resignation comes a month after she and officials from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recommended delaying the release of A-F grades for public schools during the board’s September meeting. Gov. Mike Kehoe’s executive order requesting the grade cards had called for a public rollout by Sept. 30.
The delay responded to school administrators’ appeals to the board to withhold the grades until districts had an opportunity to review their preliminary ratings and the methods used to calculate them.
Preis emphasized at the time that the board was committed to ensuring the grading system accurately reflected schools’ performance.
“A lot of people have been putting a lot of time and effort into this,” Preis said. “And we just are really trying hard to do it right.”
On Tuesday, Preis questioned the value of adding another grading system to the state’s existing measures of school performance, calling it “one additional system laid on top of another and another.”
“It was something that we were given, and we will make the best of it,” she said. “Or they will make the best of it.”
After the board concluded its closed session, board President Brooks Miller of Sunrise Beach said he could not address why Preis chose to resign. He said he had not intended to fire her.
“I wouldn’t say I know that much about it,” Miller said.
Preis took over as interim commissioner after the sudden retirement of Karla Eslinger in May. She said in June she was not interested in seeking the permanent position but wanted to help “continue advancing department priorities,” including implementing an A-F grade card system for public schools.
The grade cards, which were requested by Kehoe in January, have faced financial and staffing constraints that have prevented full implementation this year, along with resistance from school officials who question whether the ratings will accurately reflect student performance.
After announcing her resignation, Preis told reporters the primary challenge facing Missouri schools is a lack of support, “both financial and otherwise.”
“We do the best that we can to support them,” Preis said. “Schools need resources. They need to know that people care about them, that they’re looking at them, that they’re not just judging them and grading them.”
Asked whether her resignation was prompted by the possibility of being fired, Preis said no one on the board had suggested that she would be voted out of her position during the closed session if she didn’t resign.
Asked if anyone else had suggested that to her, Preis responded, “No, not directly.”
O’Laughlin speculation
O’Laughlin has not publicly announced that she is seeking the commissioner position, but she addressed speculation about her future in June during an event in Macon endorsing Chris Stigall for Congress.
“I know that some of you, maybe several of you, thought we would be talking about education, which has always been my primary passion,” she told a gathering of supporters. “And I’m always available if the education establishment wants to take advantage of my willingness to work with them to make education better.”
O’Laughlin did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
The Independent asked Kehoe for his assessment of Preis’s performance and whether he supported O’Laughlin becoming commissioner.
Kehoe did not directly answer either question. Instead, his communications director, Gabby Picard, pointed to the state board’s authority to hire a commissioner.
Kehoe has appointed a majority of the board’s members and “has confidence in their judgment,” Gabby Picard, the governor’s spokeswoman, said in a statement. The governor wants a commissioner focused on improving reading and math performance who also understands Missouri’s budget constraints, she said.
State law requires the commissioner to “possess an educational attainment and breadth of experience in the administration of public education.”
O’Laughlin’s Senate biography says she has experience “as a school bus driver, an administrator at a local Christian school and as a member of her local school board.” She chaired the Senate Education Committee from 2020 to 2022, advocating for policies that shifted public funding toward private education.
Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, an Affton Democrat, has questioned whether that background is sufficient. Last month, he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch she is “completely unqualified.”
In 1970, the State Board of Education sought an attorney general’s opinion on a candidate “who is not a certified teacher” but had led the House Education Committee and worked as a part-time professor at Missouri Valley College.
Then-Attorney General John Danforth wrote that the candidate was not qualified, since he lacked experience in administration.
“Executive experience in the field of public education would be invaluable, if not essential, in the performance of (the commissioner’s) duties,” Danforth wrote.
Miller, the board president, declined to address whether O’Laughlin was being considered for commissioner.
“That’s personnel issues,” he said.
Commissioner search
The board took no action Tuesday to name a new commissioner. Instead, it unanimously adopted the recommendation of its commissioner search committee to hire The K12 Search Group to lead its nationwide search.
The firm was one of two options the board was considering during a meeting that was inadvertently livestreamed for a few minutes on Sept. 22. Subsequent commissioner search committee meetings have been closed from the public.
During the meeting, Kerry Casey, who chairs the search committee, said that while the firm hadn’t conducted a commissioner-level search, it had recently “worked in states that were going in the direction that we in Missouri are wanting to go also.”
They are “strong in our, let’s call it reform, approach,” she said.
According to its website, The K12 Search Group has “focused almost exclusively on CEO and senior leadership searches for charter schools and mission-driven K-12 education organizations.”
In September, the board signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Association of State Boards of Education to assist in its search.
The search is being funded by outside organizations. On Tuesday, the department identified the donors as the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, Regional Business Council, The DeBruce Foundation and Town Branch Foundation.
A-F grade cards
During the public portion of the meeting, board members discussed adjustments to the grading framework and gave the department the go-ahead to share a technical guide reflecting the changes and preliminary scores with school districts.
Mark Penny, executive director of the Missouri Association of School Administrators, told The Independent that districts should have received the guidance sooner.
“It’s disappointing that the state board has seen the technical guide and 555 LEAs haven’t seen the document,” Penny said.
Discussion of grade cards at times gave way to expressions of discontentment from school administrators and others in the audience.
Board member Vince Schoemehl of St. Louis expressed skepticism about grade cards more broadly, saying some schools could see public grades as a threat.
“(The department)’s got a whole lot of sticks,” Schoemehl said. “We don’t have a lot of carrots. This whole thing strikes me as another stick…. I believe, as a matter of reference to this board, people respond better to inspiration than threats.”
Casey said the framework is not intended as a punishment.
“The action that will come of this is support, is good things, is resources,” she said.
Several audience members, including school administrators from across Missouri, responded with a loud “No!” Others laughed when Casey suggested the ratings could help direct more funding to public schools.
“Now, I will be the first to acknowledge the action on our budget makes it a little bit harder, Casey said.
The skepticism comes as the state faces budget constraints that could limit its ability to provide additional support to schools receiving low grades.
The board in its September meeting declined to request the roughly $300 million increase needed to fully fund the state’s public school formula next year. It instead requested the same amount of funding allotted to schools in the current state budget.
Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.