The Casino Money Came. So Why Are We Still Fighting to Save Our Schools?

More than 30 years ago, casino gambling arrived in St. Joseph carrying more than slot machines, blackjack tables and promises of economic activity.

It also arrived with one of the most powerful selling points imaginable: education.

Missouri legalized riverboat gambling in the early 1990s, and St. Joseph’s first casino opened in 1994. State law established a Gaming Proceeds for Education Fund, creating a direct connection between gambling revenue and Missouri’s public schools.

It sounded simple. Allow casinos to operate. Tax their profits. Put a large portion of that money toward education. Our schools win.

More than three decades later, though, St. Joseph residents have every right to ask a difficult question: Did that promise turn out the way people thought it would?

To be clear, the casino money did not simply disappear.

Missouri casinos currently pay a 21% tax on adjusted gross gaming revenue. Ten percent of that gaming tax goes to the casino’s home dock city or county, while the remaining 90% goes to the state’s Gaming Proceeds for Education Fund.

According to the Missouri Gaming Commission, casinos have contributed more than $8.4 billion to education since casino gambling began in Missouri, including approximately $361.6 million during fiscal year 2025 alone.

Those numbers are real. But here is where the story gets more complicated.

Casino money eventually flows into Missouri’s Classroom Trust Fund, which is distributed among qualifying school districts based largely on average daily attendance. Districts can use those dollars for things such as teacher salaries, school construction, technology, instructional materials and school safety.

That sounds exactly like what voters were promised. Except Missouri’s school funding formula also subtracts Classroom Trust Fund payments when calculating certain state aid payments to districts.

In other words, casino money is part of the overall school funding system. It is not necessarily a giant bonus check dropped on top of whatever Missouri otherwise would have spent on education.

That is an important distinction.

If residents were told gambling would provide additional resources that would strengthen schools for generations, it would be reasonable for them to imagine better buildings, stronger programs, more teachers and financially secure districts.

Instead, look at the conversation happening in St. Joseph today.

The St. Joseph School District has reorganized from three traditional high schools to two under Plan 4BR. Lafayette has been converted from a high school into a middle school as part of a massive restructuring of schools across the city.

The initial costs associated with that reorganization were estimated at approximately $678,000, including more than half a million dollars for classroom changes at Benton High School.

The reorganization has been controversial enough to result in a lawsuit brought by a community organization against the district and Board of Education. A trial over the dispute is scheduled for November.

Meanwhile, the district reported just under 10,000 K-12 students in 2025, with nearly 77% qualifying for free or reduced-price meals.

That does not mean the district is failing at everything. In fact, there has been encouraging recent progress that deserves recognition.

SJSD’s Annual Performance Report score increased from 63.2% in 2023 to 74.7% in 2025. Its reported graduation rate also climbed from 76.8% to 91.9% during that same period.

Those improvements matter. But they do not erase the larger question.

For decades, gambling revenue has been flowing into Missouri’s education system. St. Joseph has hosted one of those casinos since the 1990s. Yet our community is still debating school closures, consolidations, building conditions, staffing, budgets and how many high schools this city can realistically support.

Maybe the problem was never the casino. Maybe the problem was the promise.

Casino gambling was presented as a way government could generate enormous amounts of revenue without simply reaching deeper into taxpayers’ pockets. Education made that argument much easier to sell. ‘Money for schools’ sounds a whole lot better than ‘money from gambling.’

But if casino dollars simply become another ingredient in an enormous state funding formula, residents are justified in questioning whether the benefit matched the expectation.

And this is not an argument that St. Jo Frontier Casino has done something wrong. The casino pays taxes under Missouri law. It employs local residents. It has contributed to community organizations and generates revenue for the city and state.

The question is bigger than one business. The question is whether Missouri allowed people to believe casino gambling would fundamentally strengthen public education while eventually treating much of that revenue as simply another component of the system.

There is an especially interesting piece of history here. When Missouri voters considered major gambling changes again in 2008, the measure was actually called the ‘Schools First Elementary and Secondary Education Funding Initiative.’

The language specifically said certain additional gaming revenue should represent new and additional funding for schools rather than replacing existing education funding.

Why was language like that necessary? Because people understand the difference between giving schools more money and simply changing which pocket existing school funding comes from.

Thirty years after gambling arrived in St. Joseph, perhaps it is time for a full accounting.

How much money has the St. Jo Frontier Casino generated in gaming taxes since opening? How much of that ultimately benefited the St. Joseph School District? How much represented genuinely additional education spending? And most importantly, what does St. Joseph have to show for it?

Those are not anti-casino questions. They are accountability questions.

If government asks a community to accept something because it will benefit its children, then decades later that community should be able to clearly see and understand the benefit.

Missouri can accurately say casino gambling has generated billions of dollars for education. But St. Joseph residents can also look around at everything our school district has endured and reasonably ask: After more than 30 years, is this what we thought ‘casino money for schools’ was going to look like? EDITORIAL/OPINION