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A from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to the district on Thursday said the state will not be approving expenditures associated with the lawsuit. The litigation puts the school district and the education department on opposite sides of a legal battle over Normandy’s future and more broadly, the constitutionality of the transfer law that has led to the school system’s financial demise.

A Normandy School District spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The letter states that moving forward with the suit, filed Wednesday in ×îÐÂÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ County Circuit Court, requires written permission from the state education department.

The department may have the legal muscle to enforce this demand. Since February, it has had direct financial oversight of Normandy, the north ×îÐÂÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ County school system that lost state accreditation last year for poor academic performance.

And this week, the state Board of Education took the more drastic step of voting to lapse the district on June 30. An appointed board will replace the elected board, and the district will become a new entity called the “Normandy Schools Collaborative.� The state will have direct oversight of the schools.

The lawsuit filed by the district and six parents and taxpayers seeks an immediate court injunction to stop this from happening. Also named as defendants in the suit is the Missouri Board of Education, plus 20 area school districts who have collected tuition for about 1,000 Normandy school children under the transfer law.

But the education department said Normandy’s School Board lacks the authorization to spend money on such litigation, because the department hasn’t approved it.

“This action should be terminated to assure that no district funds are utilized to defray the associated costs,� states the letter to Normandy Superintendent Ty McNichols. “The district did not notify the Department of the cost to file such a suit. This action violates the terms in which the local school board would remain in place through the end of the school year.�

The lawsuit is a departure from the prior case, ultimately called Breitenfeld vs. Clayton School District, that led to the transfer situation. That suit was brought by ×îÐÂÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ parents frustrated that area districts weren’t complying with the statute.

In June, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the law, which allows children in unaccredited districts to transfer into higher performing schools at their home district’s expense. The ruling overturned a lower court ruling that it would be impossible for school districts to comply with the law. The high court ruled that such arguments were based on hypotheticals, since no transfer situation had yet played out.

Now, Normandy is weeks from insolvency. It has spent more than $8 million on tuition and transportation expenses for children attending school in 20 area districts.

The suit accuses receiving districts of charging inflated tuition amounts that far exceed the actual costs of educating children.

“As a result, Normandy School District’s funds and its taxpayers’ revenues are being diverted outside the District to excessively subsidize other school districts,� the suit argues.

The tuition charged by receiving districts was not based on a random number, said Don Senti, executive director of EducationPlus, an organization that oversaw the process last summer.

The districts followed a formula outlined in statute that takes into account operating costs and debt service. Tuition ranged from $7,927 in Mehlville to $11,034 in Francis Howell to $20,768 for Clayton High School.

The suit argues that these tuition amounts often exceed the true cost of educating transfer students by as much as $10,000 per child. It also argues the state has no authority to withhold state funds from Normandy if the district were to choose to stop making tuition payments.

And it argues that the transfer law violates sections of the Missouri and U.S. Constitutions. The law, enacted in 1993, discriminates on the basis of race, the suit charges, by depleting the educational resources of a district trying to serve about 3,000 students. The vast majority of those students are low-income and African-American.

Adolphus Pruitt, president of the ×îÐÂÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ chapter of the NAACP, said he doesn’t necessarily agree. He has long accused troubled districts such as Normandy of failing its children, and has argued the transfer law is needed to prevent African-American children from getting trapped in failing schools.

“The transfer law has done exactly what it was designed to do,� he said. “The implementation of the law by both the state, the sending districts and receiving districts have created the mess we have now.�

Even before Normandy filed suit on Wednesday, administrators in Clayton — one of the districts named — were filling a whiteboard with a timeline and possibilities for what could happen with the transfer law.

“We were already trying to identify all of the moving parts in this puzzle. This just adds another layer to figure out,� said Chris Tennill, spokesman for Clayton. “We have to figure out how this all fits together and we have to do it pretty quickly.�

Jessica Bock of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.