ST. LOUIS (AP) – The Missouri Board of Education will wait until June to decide whether to upgrade the accreditation status of the Riverview Gardens School District in suburban St. Louis.

Riverview Gardens and the nearby Normandy School District, both in St. Louis County, are the only unaccredited districts in Missouri. As a result, students in those districts are free to transfer – at the districts’ expense – to better-performing schools. Hundreds do, costing the districts millions of dollars.

At a meeting Tuesday in Jefferson City, Riverview Gardens Superintendent Scott Spurgeon said test scores are up, finances are stabilizing and other factors suggest accreditation should be upgraded to provisional.

But state officials plan further evaluation in the coming months before a June vote.