Gardner Edgerton changes its school board, with one race too close to call
With their school district enmeshed in culture war issues in recent years, voters in the Johnson and Miami county communities of Gardner and Edgerton on Tuesday voted in possibly two more liberal-leaning voices to the Gardner Edgerton School Board.
One race, however, may still be too close to call.
Four of the seven positions on the board were up for election, with 3,369 combined votes cast, according to unofficial final results from both counties. One contest, by Tuesday night’s end, was separated by only four votes. Official final results must await certification on Nov. 13.
Of the four races:
- Tom Reddin, an incumbent and current president of the school board, ran unopposed and thus was reelected to position 5 on the board. Reddin is a retired officer with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office who was first elected in 2021 as one of four candidates that then shifted the board to majority conservative.
- First-time candidate Keith Davenport, a local entrepreneur and small business owner, appears to have defeated incumbent Greg Chapman, a former security officer who has served two four-year terms on the board. Only four votes separate the two candidates for position 6 in unofficial final results, with Davenport receiving 1,604 votes to Chapman’s 1,600 votes. Chapman was generally considered a conservative voice on the board. Final official results will await certification on Nov. 13.
- In a three-way race between first-time candidates, Julie Aldridge, a substitute teacher in Olathe who was endorsed by the pro-choice Greater Kansas City Women’s Political Caucus, defeated her main rival, Melissa Hershey, a registered nurse and paraprofessional who was endorsed by Kansans for Life. Aldridge, in unofficial final results for position 1 received 1,464 combined votes to Hershey’s 1,348. Candidate Matthew Harlow, an attorney with five children in the district, also ran, although he did not participate in campaign forums or interviews regarding his candidacy. He received 397 votes. The candidates ran to fulfill the last two years of an unexpired, four-year term.
- Incumbent Lana Sutton, a manager of administration and corporate events for Commerce Bank, who’s the spouse of Kansas State Rep. Bill Sutton, defeated first-time candidate Sam Dominguez, a data analyst, who had sought to be elected as the school board’s first Latina member. Sutton defeated Dominguez by 39 votes in unofficial final results for position 4 with Sutton receiving 1,649 votes to Dominguez’s 1,610. Sutton, who was also endorsed by the anti-abortion group, Kansans for Life, has served two terms on the board, in the roles of president and vice president.
Located in southern Johnson County, USD 231 serves students in the small communities of Edgerton, population 1,700, and the larger community of Gardner, one of Kansas’s fastest growing suburbs, having boomed from a population of 9,200 in the year 2000 to more than 25,000 today.
As the community has grown, so has the district, with some 6,100 students in 11 schools.
From 2020 on, with the onset of COVID-19, Gardner Edgerton, like many districts around the country, found itself making headlines over hot button cultural issues. In 2021, the seven-member board became majority conservative following the election of four new members who were critical of the use of mask mandates and the leadership under the then-superintendent, Pam Strangathan.
Strangathan resigned one day before the new members were to take office. Two board members would subsequently resign over mask arguments. Two additional board members would resign, as they were convinced that the new board could not work together. In April 2022, the new board hired the district’s current superintendent, Brian Huff.
Other controversies arose. In 2022, following intense public and student protests, the board in a 5-2 vote approved a policy prohibiting transgender students from participating in sports teams or using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity. In 2024, amid criticism of book banning, the district removed the book “Lily and Dunkin,” which includes a transgender character, from its library shelves, after seven books were removed the year prior.
In July, a new state law that requires all districts in Kansas to show a three-minute video of human development in the womb in courses dealing with “human growth, human development or human sexuality,” split school board candidates, with those endorsed by Kansans for Life supporting the use of a video promoted by the anti-abortion group.
While all the candidates spoke of improving the academic achievement in the district, both Davenport and Aldridge ran campaigns against what has become the board’s largely conservative bent. Both Aldridge and Davenport spoke out against the district’s policies regarding transgender students and against the recent removal of the books from the library. “‘Lily and Dunkin’ should not have been removed from any of our schools,” Aldridge said prior to the election.
Davenport also ran against what he saw as the board’s ideologically driven agenda.
“The board has tried to censor the school newspaper, has spouted scientifically inaccuracies about the LGBTQ community, have attempted the throw out agendas at the beginning of meetings in order to place their own without notifying the public,” Davenport had written on his campaign Facebook page, also saying the board “has shared confidential information from inside executive meetings, banned a book against the recommendations of experts, have relied on political information on issues instead of experts.”
With four votes separating him and Chapman, Davenport on Tuesday said on Facebook, “Regardless of the final results, I look forward to serving the community in whatever way it will have me. I am proud to call this place home.”
