‘Never seen this kind of money’: Big spending raises concern in KC school board races
A newly formed nonprofit has already pumped tens of thousands of dollars into two contested races for the Kansas City Public Schools board, raising suspicions about the group and the candidates vying for seats in Tuesday’s election.
Blaque KC, short for Black Leaders Advancing Quality Urban Education, has spent more than $100,000 on political consultants, mailed advertisements, radio spots, digital advertising and newspaper ads, according to reports filed this week with the Missouri Ethics Commission. That eclipses the combined fundraising haul of about $42,400 reported by campaign committees for the four candidates — including the two candidates backed by Blaque — running for contested seats on the board.
While campaign committees regularly report individual donors and expenses, Blaque KC is spending independently of the candidates. And its leader won’t say where the money originated — leading to questions about Blaque KC’s motives. Some believe its ultimate goal is to disrupt the district’s center of power and usher in even more charter schools in Kansas City.
Blaque KC is backing Tanesha Ford, who is vying for the at-large seat of incumbent board chair Pattie Mansur, as well as Kandace Buckner, who is running against Bruce Beatty for an open seat representing Sub-district 5.
Blaque KC was formed last year by Cokethea Hill, who has worked for years in the nonprofit and educational space. She said the group’s aim is simple: to improve the academic performance of Black public school students who have long lagged behind their white peers.
Student performance is a constant battle for Kansas City’s school district, which lost its state accreditation a decade ago. Since then, officials have been working to rid the district of the perception that it is a troubled school system, by improving attendance rates and overall student achievement to regain full accreditation.
Blaque KC is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that is allowed to make direct campaign expenditures. But it has not disclosed its source of funds. And its recent foray into school board politics has many wondering about its true aim and accusing the group of pushing for the expansion of charter schools.
Hill says the backlash has been overblown and even racist — a smear campaign targeting an unapologetically Black organization and two Black school board candidates. And the candidates she is backing both say it’s distracting from their primary goals of improving the academic performance of students.
Still, the race is proving to be one of the most expensive and contentious in recent history.
“I don’t know where the money is coming from and why. So I have questions about the intent of this level of investment in a school board race unlike any we’ve ever seen in Kansas City,” Mansur told The Star. “This doesn’t now feel like a race between two individuals. It feels like I’m running a race against big money efforts to influence the school board.”
Mansur said she isn’t sure of the motivations of the group, but it looks to be an attempt to disrupt the school system, which has been slowly improving academic performance after years of instability and conflict. And she worries that this unprecedented infusion of outside money will make it harder for ordinary people to run for school board in the future.
“I am concerned now that there’s a concerted effort to influence the composition of the school board for some unstated purpose,” Mansur said. “And I fear this will disrupt the school board for years to come.”
Ford, her opponent, views the race in different terms. She said she’s running to advocate for more urgent change and to put a “laserlike” focus on improving student performance. She told The Star she isn’t interested in destabilizing the district, but does want to see more focus on academic growth.
While much focus has been put on the independent expenditures, Ford described herself as the “underdog” in the race, taking on a well-known incumbent.
“I’m not sure why there is aggression and divisiveness during this election season,” she told The Star. “I am focused on running a clean campaign that is centered on our students and why I am the candidate Kansas City should elect.”
Also fueling suspicions are two candidates’ ties to the Kauffman Foundation.
Ford is currently the executive director of Kauffman Scholars, which provides college support and scholarships to local high school students. The program, an offshoot of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, sunsets in 2023.
Buckner is an educator and coach for Kansas City Teacher Residency, a program originally incubated at the Kauffman Foundation before spinning out into a separate entity.
While Kauffman has invested millions of dollars into local public education programs, it has also been at odds with the district in the past, even unsuccessfully attempting to restructure the school system in 2013. And as a sponsor of its own charter school, many fear that Kauffman is aiming to further expand charter schools.
“It’s at least unsettling,” said KCPS board member Manny Abarca, who is running for reelection uncontested. “There’s some motivation here that we need to know.”
Abarca previously worked for Kauffman Scholars. Likewise, Mansur, a longtime nonprofit professional, worked for the Kauffman foundation more than 15 years ago.
For weeks, Abarca has been pointing to the outside money pouring into the two school board races. On March 12, he tweeted that the board was “under attack” by special interests.
While Kauffman and even charters have been a mainstay of the district for years, he said this election marks a turning point.
“What is new is this idea that these organizations would take the next step and try to design and create school board candidates that are designed as community advocates when they’re really just carrying water for these organizations,” he said.
Pushing for systemic change
Hill is a veteran of local education organizations, including Kauffman Scholars and SchoolSmart Kansas City. She was recently a researcher at the University of Kansas, where she earned a doctorate degree in educational leadership and policy.
She said local charter and traditional public schools, whether in Kansas City or Blue Springs, are not making enough progress on improving academic performance for Black students, who have long faced systemic barriers to education.
Hill was previously appointed to fill vacancies on the school board and the Kansas City Council. She said Blaque KC wasn’t formed to be overtly political. For that, she could have just formed a political action committee to dump money into elections, she said.
But it became clear that to create meaningful change, Blaque KC needed to push for systemic policy changes, she said. And that’s what led the group to identify and back its own school board candidates.
“In the last couple elections no one wanted to run for school board,” Hill said.
On Blaque KC’s website, the group promises to be a force of change in the community: “It is our job to disrupt systems that create barriers to Black children realizing their fullest potential.”
Like in most urban districts, Black students underperform their white peers in KCPS. In 2019, the state report card showed that about 18% of Black students were proficient or advanced in English — compared to nearly 50% of white students who scored proficient or advanced on state assessments.
Hill said she believes the candidates backed by Blaque KC — both Black women — are being targeted because of their race.
“Any time Black people advocate for their kids we get sidetracked with all this other boogeyman stuff,” she said. “And I think it’s a way to weaponize white fragility and to scare Kansas City.”
While her organization has not disclosed the source of its funding, she balked at the use of the term “dark money” by critics.
“Never before have I seen such an attack,” she said. “These narratives don’t follow white folks. What follows Black folks is you are either co-opted, you can not make any of your own decisions and some white person is putting you up to doing their bidding.”
Neither Buckner nor Ford would comment on the outside spending from Blaque KC. Both characterized that discussion as a distraction from issues that really matter.
“From my perspective, you have candidates in this race that want to talk about everything but student achievement,” Buckner said. “And I have tried to remain 100% laser-focused on student achievement.”
Buckner said that the school board needs to build better relationships in the community. Her main focus, she said, is improving the quality of education, especially for the district’s Black and brown students. They comprise the majority of the district’s student body but are “performing miserably against state standards,” she said.
“We have accepted less than mediocrity in this district for far too long,” she said. “I talk to far too many parents who feel that their concerns are ignored by the school board and they are left with nowhere to turn. We need an overhaul (of) parent and family engagement efforts.”
Roughly 90% of KCPS’ student body is made up of students of color, with Black students the majority. All of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
And their academic success has been lagging behind the rest of the state for years. Nearly 80% of students were behind grade-level in science and math, according to 2019 state education department data.
Ford also wants to turn the focus back on the students, particularly Black students who are statistically more likely to be suspended than their white counterparts, and have lower odds of meeting academic standards.
“These data metrics are not a reflection of the students, however they serve as a clear indicator that more work needs to be done to address the systemic racism that is pervasive within the institution of education,” she said.
Questions about Kauffman role
Ford and Buckner argue that the debate over the money Blaque KC is pouring into this year’s election is only a distraction.
But that hasn’t quelled suspicions of Blaque KC and the locally based Kauffman Foundation.
While it has become a major theme of the race, the nonprofit foundation says it is not involved in this — or any — election.
Larry Jacob, vice president of public affairs at Kauffman, said Ford made the decision on her own to run and has campaigned outside of her work hours.
“We don’t and cannot legally engage in any electoral politics as a private foundation,” he said.
A main pillar of the Kauffman Foundation’s mission is education research and programming, leading to the creation of its own charter school in 2011.
KCPS has seen dwindling enrollment over several decades, as more students have left for the growing number of charter schools, private and parochial schools and suburban districts. That’s posed challenges as fewer students means less money from the state.
In 1999, the district served roughly 32,000 students. A decade later, enrollment was down to fewer than 18,000 as the district shuttered nearly half of its schools. Now, it hovers around 14,000.
Nearly half of the students living in the boundaries of KCPS have moved to publicly funded charters.
In 2013, Kauffman and the Hall Family Foundation funded a report examining a complete overhaul and state takeover of Kansas City schools. Indianapolis-based CEE-Trust led the effort, and in the report, argued that the district’s school system was ineffective.
The report encouraged a new way of managing schools. In general, parents could choose what school to enroll their children in. Schools would have autonomy over many decisions, including what and how they teach, and would be held accountable for student performance and test scores. And if they are successful, schools would be encouraged to grow.
Cities that have adopted this model, such as Denver and Indianapolis, have seen notable growth in their charter school sectors.
But the idea drew strong pushback, with some community members concerned by the state’s role in the process, as well as the outside funding from the Kauffman and Hall foundations.
The plan eventually failed.
But the idea hasn’t gone away. In 2017, a new group, SchoolSmart KC, was started with Kauffman and Hall funding. It proposes a similar plan, where families would have the choice among schools, which would be evaluated based on performance.
Hill has said SchoolSmart, where she previously worked, has helped fund Blaque KC.
And the money behind this year’s elections has resurfaced the long-fought battle over future control of Kansas City’s public school system.
Both Buckner and Ford are batting down claims that they are trying to expand charter schools. Buckner said she has discussed the topic “ad nauseum” during her campaign.
“The Kansas City public school system has too many schools for the student population we have. I am not advocating for any new schools,” she said.
Her opponent, Beatty, said he does not agree with overhauling Kansas City’s public school system to implement the model proposed by groups like SchoolSmart KC.
“I do not support giving up local, elected control of our school district in Kansas City or anywhere else,” said Beatty, a retired financial analyst who worked for the city for 33 years. “I support strong public schools controlled by elected, tax paying residents. This is essential to our democracy.”
He said what the district needs now is stability.
“Our district did not become a bad district overnight. We cannot expect to become a good one overnight either,” he said. “We have had a carousel of superintendents who (came) in and changed everything, then left. At some point, we have to stop experimenting on our urban youth.”
Officials say that the district has made steady progress to improve student outcomes, graduation rates and attendance, where low rates have hindered the accreditation process. The graduation rate is now roughly 75%, up from 68% a few years ago, for example.
Andrea Flinders, president of the Kansas City Federation of Teachers, said the district has been making academic strides in recent years.
The teachers union has endorsed Mansur and Beatty in the two contested races. Flinders said she has watched this campaign closely and is concerned about the amount of money being spent — and what the true motivations of donors might be.
“The problem is I have lots of suspicions,” she said. “But I have nothing to back it up.”
Like some sitting board members, Flinders worries that this election could usher in controversy and instability to a body that has worked relatively well together in recent years. For years, the underperforming district was rocked by controversy and constant leadership changes.
“I’ve never seen this kind of money put into a school board race,” Flinders said. “What I don’t want to see is a school board that becomes contentious again like we’ve had in the past, where the community throws their hands up in the air because the board can’t get along.”
This story was originally published April 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
