At first, the feared fall of Kansas City Public Schools came blowing at parents like a storm.

Loss of accreditation. The prospect of the district being carved to pieces. Ephemeral lifeboats promising transfers, appearing and disappearing.

"Oh, my God ... were we going to be sucked away?" 38-year-old district parent Demonte Rochester said. "We were looking for answers. 'Is everything going to be OK? Is my child going to be safe?' "

Today, parents, like the district itself, find themselves still standing, no less uncomfortable -- no longer in a storm as much as peering through a fog that won't lift.

But some realities are coming into focus.

For instance, busing students across communities wasn't popular in the 1970s and it's not popular now.

Even if the courts or lawmakers were to quickly resolve disputes over Missouri's student transfer law, busing large numbers of students out of the unaccredited district's neighborhoods would do more harm than good, many observers say.

That's why ideas for neighboring districts to annex Kansas City's boundaries or contract to operate Kansas City's schools have gained serious momentum.

But most school and community leaders interested in annexation prefer a voter-driven process over a state or legislative mandate. Even if petition drives were launched, they could not expect to put boundary changes into effect before the 2013-2014 school year.

And Missouri Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro is maintaining her position that dividing up the district is not the answer.

What does that leave?

A school district that still has a chance to save itself.

This is where a look at the possible outcomes for Kansas City schoolchildren begins -- with the campaign already on the ground.

Not the status quo

Plenty of people have no patience for what Kansas City Interim Superintendent Steve Green is about to say.

He knows it.

In a public report Thursday, work between the district and the state to turn around the district will go back on display at an intensified pitch.

For 3½ years, the state has worked with the district. When the latest turmoil came to a head last fall, the state put the process on hold.

But after the first of the year, Nicastro gave the state team and the district the go-ahead to renew the process. They are adding more monitoring, involving more stakeholders and planning reports each month rather than every three months.

Green acknowledges some people's minds are made up -- that any plan engaged by the school district, regardless of its content, represents a "status quo."

But to anyone who will listen, he says: "This is not the same old way."

The district transformation plan created under former Superintendent John Covington will carry on with higher scrutiny. And under the law as it now stands, Kansas City has two years to get its accreditation back.

Green's neighboring superintendents say they are rooting for him, even as they work with state Sen. Victor Callahan and others on possible annexation plans.

"Some will argue they've had a chance for 30 years," Raytown Superintendent Allan Markley said. "But their feet haven't been held to the fire the way they are now. If everyone is ready to rally behind them, they should be given the chance."

Schools can't sit back and wait for court or legislative resolutions that may never come, said the state's regional supervisor Tony Stansberry.

Whether the elected board stays in place or a state-appointed board comes in, this kind of heavy review would carry on, he said.

Administrators will have to convince monitors they know what's going on in the classroom, he said. Parents, teachers and community groups will play bigger roles.

"We want the entire school community to pull behind the school system and do it with good faith," Stansberry said. "We owe it to them to work with them the best we can. There is a valid opportunity for the school system to pull itself up."

Carving up the district

"Don't underestimate Victor Callahan."

Former Kansas City school board member Bill Eddy was quoting any of a number of people gauging the future of Kansas City's schools.

Callahan was the driving force behind a campaign that finally succeeded in 2008 to move west Independence schools from the Kansas City district to the Independence School District.

Now he and others are talking about enabling four neighboring districts -- North Kansas City, Independence, Raytown and Center -- to take in shares of Kansas City's schools. It could be by annexation or by management contracts.

A watchdog organization Eddy founded -- Do the Right Thing For Kids -- is watching what emerges from Jefferson City. But the group is backing the kind of dramatic change Callahan is working on.

"The current situation can't go on," Eddy said. "It's time to quit pretending."

How Callahan will try to make it work is still in play. (He did not return calls for this story.) He's tinkering with his bill and is just as likely to toss its language into other bills as action heats up on the Senate floor.

Callahan's been clear on one point, however. He wants to keep annexation decisions in the hands of voters.

Callahan's working within a process already in place, used in western Independence, that allows communities to petition for a school boundary change and secure elections.

State Sen. Jane Cunningham also is pressing legislation that includes a plan to divide Kansas City among neighboring districts.

Her bill would mandate it. She says moving children out of an unaccredited school system should not be left to debate.

Children's access to education "is a right," she said. "It's not up for a vote."

The superintendents and their boards, however, seem generally unified that they want their communities to be able to decide.

If a consensus built for annexation, Center Superintendent Bob Bartman said, it should happen collaboratively. A commission representing affected neighborhoods might be needed to ponder potential boundaries and other issues.

"There is no desire to let people sit in Jefferson City and carve things up," he said.

No petition drives have started. The soonest any measure could get on a ballot would be in June, which superintendents say would not give them time to make dramatic changes for the 2012-2013 school year.

The area superintendents want to help, they say. They've opened the annexation door. But they recognize its many complications.

"I'm not chomping at the bit to go through another annexation," Independence Superintendent Jim Hinson said.

Even with Callahan at work, the odds in this case are long.

Open enrollment

Perhaps the biggest fear for school districts -- because there is no process in place to deal with it -- lies in Missouri's transfer law.

The law, upheld by the state Supreme Court, dictates that children can transfer out of an unaccredited district, with tuition and transportation costs paid by the unaccredited district.

Various school districts in at least four pending cases hope to get courts to allow districts to limit the number and timing of transfers, or to allow claims that the law creates an unconstitutional unfunded mandate.

The Turner v. Clayton School District case in the St. Louis area is scheduled for trial March 5, but because it is now taking on some of these new issues, it probably will return to the Supreme Court, however the circuit court rules.

A Kansas City area case, still in its early stages, also promises no hasty resolution.

"There are so many ins and outs in this," said Duane Martin, who is representing districts that have sued Kansas City Public Schools and the state. "And the ground is always shifting, and that doesn't help."

It would be unlikely to get any final clarity from the courts before the end of the legislative session, he said.

Lawmakers, attempting to revise the law, worry that legislators pushing for more controversial reform ideas will keep any bills from succeeding.

School districts don't know how many families would press for transfers. They know that dozens have asked about it. Some districts have compiled potential waiting lists of close to 100 students while they wait for guidance from the courts or lawmakers.

Uncontrolled transfers would make it hard for receiving districts to plan, and would potentially bankrupt Kansas City, they said. Families need good school options in their neighborhoods, instead of trying to support their children in schools miles away.

"Do we want to close more schools?" Hinson said. "It does not benefit the kids. It does not benefit the communities they live in."

It's not clear how many families would want to leave their neighborhood schools. Earlier this year, the American Civil Liberties Union declared its position that school districts have to follow the law and allow transfers immediately, even if financial issues had to be settled later.

The ACLU was eager to press the issue in court. It just needed a family to be a plaintiff. But none stepped forward.

In the state's hands

Nicastro wants to cut a clean course through the legislature.

Rep. Mike Lair and Sen. David Pearce, both Republicans, are carrying bills that would remove the restriction that requires the state to wait two full school years before it can take control of an unaccredited district.

This is what Nicastro wants. If the commissioner and the state school board had discretion to step in now, then the state could consider an appointed administrative board to run Kansas City. It could even dissolve the district and divide it among its neighbors, though Nicastro has not advocated such a move.

A hasty run through the legislature with an emergency clause could see the law changed before the session and the school year are done.

But the bill sponsors also expect lawmakers to try to trade in other reforms and complicate their chances of success.

"I think it'll be in good shape in the House," Lair said. "But what happens when it goes into the abyss of the Senate, I don't know. I'll fight anything that tries to attach to it."

Nicastro has offered little comment since her full-throttle effort last fall to produce a plan for Kansas City's future.

During that stretch she asked the Kansas City school board to consider stepping aside voluntarily, which it declined to do. She sought out community input on potential leaders to serve on either an administrative board or advisory board.

She raised concerns about an effort by Kansas City Mayor Sly James to seek mayoral control -- an effort that has lost traction in the legislature.

But she pulled back from proposing a plan, saying that the community was too divided and that the two-year restriction on state intervention needed to go.

Her request for flexibility may have the best chance of getting through the legislature.

What she'd do with that flexibility she's not saying, except that she'd bring the discussion back to the community.

There's plenty to talk about.