Hello Kansas reflector listeners. Welcome to today's podcast on local school board races. I'm Reporter Rachel meep, wrote here today with Lauren tights Miller, a current Shawnee Heights School Board member, and also a representative of the Kansas National Education Association. I'm also here with Judith Diddy of game on for Kansas schools. Both of these are grassroots education advocacy organizations. So with board elections coming up in November, we're going to discuss some campaign issues seen across the state. So first of all, what are we sit across the state? What are you worried about?
I'm worried about a new type of school board candidate that we've seen in the last couple of elections. So these aren't our traditional candidates who come to board elections with experience of civic engagement, participation, and PTA site councils, you know, different district committees, that's what we were used to seeing. And lately, we see kind of an angry parent. And sometimes they're not even parents, but they're, they're running on wedge issues, culture war issues. They're using deceptive information. And, and we did see some of them get elected two years ago. And we've seen them have harmful impacts on their districts and into that really has us concerned.
Lord, any thoughts on what we're seeing today? I mean, your current school board member, right? So just tell us why is it important to focus on these races? What is the importance of a local school board?
So the importance of the local school board is, you know, we are responsible for establishing the goals and the vision for the district, where do we want to move our districts in what directions to be able to provide students, all students with opportunities to succeed? And you know, what we're seeing with these national groups getting involved in on some of these extreme candidates is they're hyper focused on one one thing, no matter what that one thing may be, and oftentimes, it could be student outcomes, and they want to hyper focus on one metric, which is, you know, state assessments. And what does that mean, when the reality is our school districts are looking at multiple metrics, our classroom teachers have the ability to assess where their students are on any given day, and what they need to adjust to help those students be successful. And so we're seeing a lot of this hyperpartisan extreme focus on different things within schools. And I don't think people are also really focusing on what that rhetoric is doing even to our kids, because they're hearing it from the grown ups. And so I mean, it's there. And it's a problem.
So you also worried about extremist candidates and misinformation. We are very much
worried about extremist candidates. We have three candidates right now who are being supported by a new group that I've seen pop up called Moms for America, they seem to be very similar and alignment with moms for liberty, in that they're very focused on censoring curriculum, challenging books. If you go to their website, they talk about reducing childhood vaccination requirements, teaching false history and science. But the even more concerning part is they are very strong advocates for funneling public dollars to private schools. And so I always question, why would somebody who is supposed to be an advocate for public schools to come and serve on our board when they're being supported by a group who wants to remove funding from public schools to go to these private schools? So it kind of makes me scratch my head a little bit. And, you know, I think people need to understand that, again, back to what the role of a school board is, it's to help set vision for the board or the district. It's supposed to implement policies that are in the best interest of our students and our staff and our community. And that's also to serve as advocates we are our kids is in our communities biggest advocates were elected locally for a reason.
And just to add on something you were saying about moms for America, like on their website, I went to that website myself on the slogan there is that there are a national movement of moms, to promote the principles of liberty to restore the Republic and to create a culture of quote, truth, family and freedom in our homes and communities. This is also a group known for anti LGBTQ attacks and a long list of book ban efforts. And I believe one of the chapters I think it was Indiana, they raised He took some heat because they included a quote from Hitler on one of their newsletters. So they later apologized. So you're saying again, that national groups like these come in and have a negative influence on local school boards? Judith, what are your thoughts? Yeah,
I think one is the concept of liberty, you know, or freedom. And it's, it's not for everyone, right. So parents already have a lot of rights, they already have access to their children's curriculum, they already can opt out. And what we're seeing now is a group, a small group, a small vocal group of parents coming in, and not just talking about what they want their children reading what they want their children learning, but they what they want all children learning. And to me, that's a problem to us. That's a problem. So. So that's the first big issue. And the other is this whole, when you put the pieces together. And they're criticizing the schools, there's criticizing current leadership, they're criticizing academic achievement using inaccurate statistics. Like, why why are they doing all of that? And, again, I think it's, as Lauren has said, it's, it's because their their bottom drive is to sow distrust, and so dissension and encourage more people to think about vouchers, and to get more community support for vouchers. And so when you have people running for their local school board, and that you realize their intent really isn't to improve their local schools, it's to pull from them, then that's a fundamental problem.
And with groups like, oh, you had a thought there? Well,
I was just going to add, you know, I think it's important to note that nobody is saying they don't want parents involved. We, every school district, every educator out there, welcomes parents in their into the buildings with open arms, there are a host of volunteer opportunities at any given time in school districts to come in, be involved in their students classroom, be involved in all kinds of activities that are hosted on a regular basis. It doesn't matter, you know, parents, grandparents, family members, whoever wants to get involved from their family, in their child's education, there's bodies of research that show it is very instrumental in the success of the kid. And so nobody here is saying we don't want parents involved. We absolutely want them involved. But we want them involved in a way that's not destructive to our public schools.
That actually dovetails really nicely into what I was going to ask about, which is this idea of parents will rights, you know, the same thing over and over, which is that parents see more of a say, in their local schools, and that teachers are sort of conspiring against them. I mean, have you seen that pop up in your own experience?
Well, yes, I mean, it's it. Really it goes back to that we are involved. If you don't know what your child is studying that's on you, because there's canvass, there's skyward. There's parent teacher conferences, average parent gets the phone number and email address for their child's teachers, for their child's administrators. We are welcome and encouraged to be involved in our children. And so this insinuation that's not the status quo is really troublesome. And but you see, they claim I don't co parent with the government, but I don't co parent with book banners, you know, I mean, I want my child's education, to be driven by educators, not by angry parents who are not educators. And that's, I think, where the problem is like, I do not cede control of curriculum to a subset of angry parents who I think are misinformed
in this anger is like a new thing, or is has been increasing over the past few years.
I think it's a new thing. I think that some of it is part of the national press and that, you know, increasing divisiveness, I think that is feeding down into the local level. And and I think that's, that's where it's coming from. And and we don't want it here. You know, I mean, that last election, we had involvement from the 1776. Pack, and that was a group organized out of New York, and we don't want their politics in Kansas. And, you know, it was it was not welcome. And it was not accurate. And
I would also add that I think, I think a lot of this has come from the fact that
there's not a lot of conversation with each other. When I've had when we as a board, in my experience, have had the opportunity to actually have some one on one conversations with parents and welcome you know, invite them in and come see what's going on. You And, and strip away some of the national rhetoric that overshadows so much of the issues that are in schools, we can sit down and find a common ground. And I think we're losing a lot of that. And I would honestly point to social media for a lot of that. We all have our faults with relying on social media. And when we don't have the full set of facts for what's going on in our own local community, people jump to jump to a lot of conclusions that are not correct. And so I think, you know, the hardest job that I have had as a board member is making those connections with parents and hearing them out, like they may legitimately have these concerns, and they need to be heard. And it takes time to have those conversations and to provide the full context of what is actually being addressed. And some of the decisions that the boards are making, rather than just making assumptions based on a limited number of, you know, limited information that they have received, maybe through the rumor mill or on social media. And they think that if it's happening in one location, it must be happening in their schools. So like, I understand, as a parent, you really want your child to have a quality education, you want them to be safe, you want that and want all of that. And so I understand the concerns that are there. But we have to learn how to talk to each other again and find these common ground solutions to address these issues that are really happening in our in our classrooms. Not what's not not what's being pushed at the national level,
it feels like the misinformation is coming first. And so you're not starting with a blank slate, you're starting with someone coming towards you with misinformation. And it's hard to keep up with that misinformation or try to get ahead of it. And so I think that is part of the problem, too.
And what sort of misinformation What do you say is the biggest issue right now?
Right? Well, I attended one school board meeting recently where during public comment, the speakers were talking about our children being taught Marxism and communism, I mean, that's just not accurate. Or on test scores, they're being told that kids are achieving at lower levels than they actually are. So it's, it's that kind of just blatant misinformation. And you're kind of where did this come from? And try to decipher what they're talking about first, and then try to figure out how do you address it. So it's like, they're getting information from outside sources before they're getting it from their local school board.
And speaking of outside sources, I know we've discussed before moms for liberty, they have a couple of candidates they're supporting in the local races. Just tell me about that.
Right. So they, you know, have a national organization and national agenda. And, and they are supporting multiple candidates across the state. In multiple districts, they have candidates, right. So far, it's kind of hard to see this time around. Most of the candidates don't have a lot of information out right now, there's not a lot of websites, they're not doing a lot of engagements. We haven't seen forums yet. It's kind of early in the election cycle. But they're definitely involved. And they definitely talk about wanting to take over school boards. And I think that's not the right way to go.
And moms for liberty, as we just discussed, the platform against LGBTQ and racially inclusive school material, and curriculum. As we've talked about, they've advocated for book bans. And it was started originally by Florida women who were against pandemic era school closures and mask mandates. But now we've seen their spread into sort of different states like ours. I think this local chapter is not too old, it's about probably a year I would want to say maybe a bit older. But if you go to their website, they have about 21 books listed as problematic. We're seeing novels like Fun Home and gender queer on the list of books they'd like to, I guess just advocate against, you know, and you said in your district, which is like the Johnson County area, you've seen flyers on cars by that group,
right? They've been dropping postcards on windshields and parking lots around Johnson County. And you know, and they're inaccurate too. So they mention that for books. There's no age limitation on them. But that's not true. Not all of the books on their list that they're concerned about. I mean, some of them are limited to high school libraries. So that's just not accurate. And they also have that test score information, where they are just taking the scores in the top two categories levels three and four and and they are not including in their percentages that students who are in level two. And the Kansas assessment is a difficult assessment. It is an aspirational assessment. And it is different from the assessment that we used to have. And so they made him step away from grade level. But if you were to sort of correlate to grade level, you would end up in level two, level two includes college ready benchmark for the AC T. And so to exclude level two, when they say, you know, 50% of Blue Valley kids are not I forget exactly which word they use, but that the implication is that, you know, only about half of Blue Valley kids are functionally proficient. And that is just not accurate.
Yeah, cuz we keep hearing, or at least in my experience, I keep hearing people say that Kansas kids can't read, write or do any of the three R's, basically reading, writing and arithmetic. I mean, what do you make of that? Why do we keep hearing that sort of thing being tossed around? Right, I
think, again, it's to discredit our schools, and to encourage people to look to vouchers. And, and it's not accurate. And, you know, also, when you're looking at the 10th grade Kansas assessment, it's not balancing your checkbook. I mean, there's all kinds of geometry, trigonometry, statistics, those are not simple concepts. And same for the reading it is it is not a basic test. And especially as I think you get to the older grades, they don't prep for the exam. So you're talking about a cumulative exam before the year's final exam that they're not preparing for. And I think people should ask themselves how they think they would do on it, end of year assessment, covering trig geometry, algebra, statistics, and and then say that maybe if you're not acing the Kansas assessment, you can still do functional life skills sort of math.
Right. And, you know, to add to that, I think I touched on this a little bit earlier in my opening statement, the assessment isn't going to capture critical thinking skills, it's not going to capture some of the high quality application skills that our students are developing through project based learning. It's not going to measure the social emotional skills or the soft skills that KSDE when they went on their tour around the state, and we're asking parents and community members and business leaders, what they're looking for in their future employees. And it's communication skills, it's time management skills, it's problem solving, it's all of those skills that aren't necessarily going to be captured in a state assessment score. And you know, and that's the thing, I think, if going back to what I was saying, if we stay hyper focused on just level three, and four, I feel for the kids who are level one or two, because they're hearing, oh, my can't read, I'm not going to be successful. And that's ultimately going to be damaging. And so we need to be champions for all of those kids, and be working and identifying that this is just one metric. It's not the end all be all of what these kids are going to be capable of when they get out of high school.
Right. And that point is so important, because the Kansas schools are responding to what the state what the community's what the business leaders asked. They said, we need more of these employability skills. So our schools have responded to that. And now they're getting, you know, not getting credit for being responsive. It also, you know, some of the social emotional learning was because we were experiencing a suicide crisis and, and communities were saying, Hey, wait, I guess it doesn't really matter if a kid can do calculus, if they don't manage to graduate high school because they've committed suicide, and that that's real. And and, again, important, our schools aren't just for filling kids with knowledge about algebra, but for creating lifelong citizens, and and that's that just can't be underestimated.
So we've talked a bit about this, but what are the issues our schools facing right now? What are the real issues we should all be looking at as a state?
Well, there are a host of them. And I want to go back to the the introduction you gave is that I do work for Kansas NEA. I'm a Director of Government Relations. And we are a member driven organization. And so all of the decisions made as to what we're going to advocate for are determined by Kansas educators. Those who voluntarily have memberships in our organization. And so oftentimes, in my role professionally, we do get involved in policies like restrictions to food assistance, because our educators are seeing kids come to the classroom hungry, and that impacts their ability to learn. And, you know, poverty is not not getting any better. And so we're seeing more and more students who rely solely on their schools, for their meals. We're also seeing violence in the classrooms, our educators are frequently talking about the being assaulted by students. And again, it kind of goes back to that social emotional learning and learning how to regulate their emotions and, and know how to calm down. And so there is that and a lot of times, it's because what happens at home, ends up coming back into the classroom. And so when we have students who can't get a good night's sleep, because maybe they don't have a mattress at home, that's going to come with them into the classroom. So they may be a little extra sleepy and that our educators are having to accommodate that. We have students who are coming to kindergarten who aren't completely potty trained. Another issue that our educators are having to overcome without with minimizing disruption to the rest of the class. We're also seeing a Fentanyl crisis. We have a number of districts across the state are starting to have Narcan on hand. And I know just recently, the policy recommendations sent down from K ASB Kansas Association of School Boards included a policy for how to utilize Narcan during the school day or or not, during the school day, during school activities, things like that. So like, these are a lot of the issues that our educators are having to overcome, in addition to doing their regular day to day activities, then you also factor in special education funding. I know specifically at my school district, we're facing a three to $4 million shortfall that we're going to have to cover with funds out of our general fund, which makes us shift things around. And there may be things that we're not able to provide to all students because rightfully so we have to cover these special education expenses. So we meet those are the those are the issues that we're we're having to overcome. But on a positive note, we're also having to work to over or to address overcrowding in our school buildings, because we are experiencing phenomenal growth in our district speaking personally. And so, you know, we've got to look into what it would what it would take to build another attendance center and accommodate those student needs, because we are literally using every space we can find to provide the classrooms supports the interventionist, all of that. So those are the real issues that I would love to be focusing on and addressing. And not necessarily on these other issues that aren't keep getting dragged in from the national level.
Right in the context of student achievement. I mean, we have been court ordered to increase funding, you'll hear a critics talk about oh, we've we've increased school funding so much. And you're like yes, because you were ordered to do so by the Kansas Supreme Court. And you've taken six years to phase that funding in. So we are finally at the point where the Ganon funding has been completely rolled in. So we're looking forward to seeing the benefits of that. And we are moving past the COVID pandemic. So that's another thing if you just take a snapshot, and look at student achievement. Those scores are from immediately post COVID. So I think a lot of us who've been in this for a long time are optimistic about moving forward at this point. And yes, it would be very important and very good to get the special education funding now because that hole has been getting bigger and kind of undoing some of the increases from again and litigation. But we feel optimistic about moving forward at this point and getting to focus on the programs, the staffing that will help our students moving forward.
So what are we expecting to see in the school board races as things get closer to the actual elections? I know we're in early days yet but what are you expecting to see?
I'm hoping to see people get involved and get educated. We always talked about being informed voters and that's two aspects that's being informed and being a voter. And so we are hoping that people will will pay attention And we'll take advantage of forums or other ways to get educated about candidates, and to look beyond the talking points into the policy and, and ask the secondary question, not just stop at the talking point, but follow up and get the, what do you mean by that? And what would your solution be to this problem? Instead of just listening to people talk about problems, and make sure that they have experience ideas of their own, that would actually be helpful.
I couldn't have said it better myself. But yeah, I mean, going back again, it's having conversations with each other. Get informed, talk to the candidates, ask them questions, find out why they're running, you'll find that a number of the candidates who are running have never stepped foot in a in a boardroom, they've never attended a school board meeting. They may not know what really is happening in those school buildings, talk to educators, talk to students even, and just get informed and have those conversations and be open to finding solutions, instead of being rigid in an only one line of thinking.
So this would lead into my next question, which is what should we be looking for in a good school board, candidate like or what makes a good school board candidate?
I think one thing that makes a good school board candidate is engagement in their district before two months ago. So they have been on PTA or PTO they have been a volunteer in the classroom, they have been on a site council or they have volunteered as a member of a committee, the district may have. I mean, that that's a major piece, that they have some understanding about the proper role of the school board, you know, that you're not a micromanager, that you're kind of more that higher level thinking. And that you understand that a very important aspect of any school district is making all of its students feel welcome. I mean, if you if you don't understand that, a child needs to be welcome in their school community, in order to be a thriving student in person. That's a problem.
I would say somebody who can remain fair and impartial, someone who is not going to be motivated solely by a national groups agenda, or even a party agenda, somebody who is aware of what's going on in their own district, and some of the issues that are really being faced in the classrooms. And again, somebody who's not going to come in and try to single out our students or families, we have a wide range. And I know this is the case for all school districts across Kansas as their population is diverse, in a number of different ways. And so we need to recognize and provide a safe and welcoming learning environment for all of our students and their families.
And I'm gonna just for anyone who's in the Johnson County area, you can go to the vote JOCO website. And then they have a bunch of candidate surveys up for local school board races, I would recommend anyone going to check that out. There's like a bunch of questions like Is this candidate interested in school vouchers into di that sort of thing. So people interested in that go look at that for resource for more information.
I would also warn too, that a newer trend that we see is candidates just refusing to participate in surveys or forums. And that that should be a significant red flag if you're if a candidate will not appear publicly, and speak, you know, things hosted by newspapers or PTAs, or local news organizations as Johnson County Chamber of Commerce type events, then you should really be concerned.
Well, I think we better wrap this up here. Thank you both so much for joining us today.
