Kansas City school board race will require write-in candidates

The April 5 election to fill four seats on Kansas City Public Schools’ board is shaping up to be all about write-in candidates.

That’s because two of the three people who filed to run didn’t obtain enough valid signatures to be placed on the ballot for the school board race.

Neither Bryan Dial, who filed for the Subdistrict 5 seat, nor Jessica Piedra, who filed for the Subdistrict 3 seat, collected the 250 qualified signatures, a district official said Thursday.

No one filed to fill a third seat in Subdistrict 1, which is the third largest by population in the school district.

“It is a little disappointing,” said board chairman Jon Hile.

Hile’s term on the board expires this year, and he is not running for re-election to fill the Subdistrict 1 slot.

“This surprises me,” Hile said. “There are a lot of people in the community who have worked very hard to make a difference in the lives of our kids.”

This is the second time in the last three election cycles where school board seats ended up filled by write-in candidates, Hile said. In 2012, Airick Leonard West got on the board for a second term as a write-in candidate because no one filed to run for the at-large seat he’d held.

Jennifer Wolfsie will fill West’s at-large seat this time since he is not running again. Wolfsie, a parent leader in the district, was the only candidate to obtain enough qualified signatures.

She is unopposed, so her name will not appear on the April ballot.

Wolfsie has spearheaded a recent petition drive to halt tax incentives for a proposed BNIM architecture firm building in the Crossroads district.

The Subdistrict 5 seat is currently held by Curtis Rogers, who could not be reached for comment Thursday. The Subdistrict 3 seat is held by Marisol Montero, who also could not be reached. Neither filed for re-election.

Dial, a young East Side activist, and Piedra, a Kansas City immigration rights attorney, could end up as write-in candidates. In the school board election, the Kansas City election board will allow only one write-in for each race per ballot. That means it could take days to count votes and determine winners.

“I wouldn’t say this is a bad thing, but this is an elected office and it’s always better if you have candidates on the ballot,” said Shawn Kieffer, election director in Kansas City.

Whoever ends up on the board this year will be working with a new superintendent. On Wednesday, the board picked Mark Bedell, an assistant superintendent of high schools for Baltimore County schools in Maryland, as its preferred candidate for the job.

This story was originally published January 21, 2016 at 5:58 PM.