The Star’s endorsements for Johnson County school district elections in Nov. 7 election | Opinion
Blue Valley school board candidates have divided themselves into two slates that sound indistinguishable but are dramatically different.
One, “The A+ Team” of mostly incumbents, believes that the district is on the right track already, in part through their own hard work.
This more moderate slate of two Democrats and two Republicans includes three incumbents: former Republican state Rep. Jan Kessinger, attorney Patrick Hurley and former probation officer Jodie Dietz, currently the coordinator of Johnson County Community College’s student collaboration center, which focuses on experiential learning.
The fourth member of the slate, Clay Norkey, an attorney who chairs the Blue Valley Recreation Commission, summed up the A+ team’s position in his opening statement at a recent candidate forum: “The Blue Valley School District is the No. 1 school district here in the state of Kansas. We are top 1% in the nation. We have excellent teachers, we have excellent students and we have great outcomes. So the four of us on the A+ team recognize that that does not happen by accident. The other three, I wanted to run with them because they are serious leaders that understand how the school district works, what can be done, what cannot be done.”
The other slate, “Blue Valley Excellence,” thinks the schools are slipping and will continue to do without a major course correction. Blue Valley schools are no longer so excellent, as these candidates see it, in large part as the result of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
One of their mottos is, “Our kids deserve better.” They support a “back to basics” agenda so basic that it would cut the mental health supports put in place after an increase in suicides.
They are Christine Vasquez, a former home-schooler who started a design and renovations company; Trisha Hamilton, director of business administration for Lenexa Baptist Church; Rachel Faagutu, who co-owns a small business, and Michael Huebner, who is an accountant.
Hamilton explained her position on DEI in the Shawnee Mission Post forum: “You cannot control where you’re born, the color of your skin. Those are things that are just not controllable, so I don’t think we should be focusing on those things.”
The slate that wants to make Blue Valley excellent again believes that mental health concerns are important but should be addressed by parents rather than schools.
“When you allow our schools to provide social workers and psychologists, we may not agree,” Hamilton said at the forum. “We may not agree with our social workers and our psychologists.”
Unfortunately, not all young people can look to family for help, and even when they can, social workers and school psychologists can be important partners in keeping students safe and healthy.
Because we do see these public schools as already excellent and DEI as crucial for all students in our diverse world, we endorse the A+ slate.
As Kessinger has said, “The sky is not falling in Blue Valley. There shouldn’t be any panic, no wringing of hands over what’s being learned. Critical race theory has never been taught in Blue Valley. There’s no plans for it. We don’t teach gender ideology. What we do is accept every student as a human being to grow and learn as a contributing member of society.”
Shawnee Mission District
Candidates for the Shawnee Mission School District are divided along similar lines, with middle school science teacher Ronald Occhiogrosso and Lynn McLarty, who is retired from the Navy and from Sprint, strongly opposing diversity efforts.
McClarty said in a Shawnee Mission Post forum that while no child should be discriminated against, “We’re spending a lot of money on a program that I’ve read there’s no proven record that has changed anything or done any good, whether in schools or in industry. … I think this material is very racist.”
Occhiogrosso, who has a doctorate in chemical engineering, said “I would have to ditto” McClarty’s comments on DEI programs that in his view are “only helping a small percentage of the student body.” New York City, where he grew up, he said, is very diverse and yet no one on his high school football team needed DEI to help them get along.
The team, he said, included “some of my best friends in high school — Black, Hispanic, Oriental, and plenty of Italians, Irish and Germans, too.” Then he started talking about teams today with “boys swimming against girls” because “one guy thinks he’s a girl.”
We endorse Mario Garcia III over Occhiogrosso. Garcia is a former Shawnee Mission North student body president who has a background in nonprofits, briefly worked for Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and is now the philanthropic giving manager for Children’s Mercy Hospital. Garcia wants to make sure that taxpayer dollars for education actually “go to public schools.”
And we endorse incumbent Jamie Borgman, regional business director for an oncology company, who previously volunteered with abused and neglected children as a Court Appointed Special Advocate, over McClarty.
Borgman said in a forum that she disagrees with the view that diversity efforts help only a small percentage of students, for one thing because 40% of the district’s students are nonwhite, and for another because all students will need to work well with all kinds of people.
We also support David H. Westbrook over recent UMKC graduate Logan Austin.
Westbrook wants to prioritize recruiting and retaining teachers who communicate a “joy for learning.” Asked about DEI at a forum, he said, “The ecosystem is strengthened by diversity, and so are we. … That’s not the whole focus, but to ignore it or act like that’s an issue we shouldn’t address would not be right for public schools.”
And we endorse incumbent Jessica Hembree, who runs a small business focused on nonprofit advocacy and strategic planning, over Mark Tallent, a Republican who has previously run for both Congress and the Kansas House.
Tallent has described his work life as including experience as “a life insurance agent, real estate agent, house flipper, vending machine owner, podcaster, YouTuber and blogger, among other professions.”
Hembree strongly supports diversity efforts. “I will never be made to feel bad about creating welcoming, belonging environments for students,” she said at a forum. “That means we do invest in things like student mental health and social and emotional learning and we do invest in social workers and we make sure every student can thrive and survive. I’m proud of that about our district.”
Olathe School District
In the Olathe School District, we endorse incumbent Stacey Yurkovich, a retired teacher and administrator, over Dan Adera-Odhiambo, who works in aviation product support, and Mark Wingren, who owns a heating and air conditioning business.
In answering a Star survey, Yurkovich said her top goals are “to provide a quality education for all students in a safe environment, physically, emotionally and instructionally” and “to attain and retain a quality and diverse staff, provide them a voice and listen to them by involving them in decision-making.”
Wingren said to The Kansas City Beacon, “Today’s woke ideology has our teachers worried about being fired if they call a student by the wrong pronoun.”
We endorse incumbent Brad Boyd, a Democratic member of the Kansas House of Representatives, who is committed to defending public schools and public school teachers, and to boosting funding for special education.
He’s running against Jesse Gillam, who has said he’s running to keep politics out of schools, to work with law enforcement to address student substance abuse, and to prevent sexual abuse in schools by improving staff screening.
We’re endorsing Claire Reagan over Holly Palacio, who is running on a “back to basics” platform.
Reagan said in a Star survey that “I’ve seen public education from many angles: former high school English teacher, current substitute, coach, parent, PTO president, volunteer and advocate. … In this time of hostility toward public education, I have spoken publicly about my values. I’ve addressed our school board, city council and county commission, always conducting myself in a respectful and civil manner.”
And we support Will Babbit, a technology director and Army veteran who served two tours of duty in Iraq, over Jennifer Gilmore, who also ran two years ago against mask mandates and so-called “critical race theory,” which isn’t taught in Kansas public schools.
Gilmore has said that she sees the censure of her fellow conservative Brian Connell for repeatedly yelling and storming out of meetings as an undemocratic overreach.
After she was ejected from a meeting for violating board policy against personal attacks in her comments, she sued the district for restricting her speech. On Thursday, a jury ruled that the board had discriminated against her based on her point of view. She was awarded $1 in damages.
“I agree that liars lie, but the only liar that lied in this election was Jim Randall,” she said before being asked to leave a meeting. Randall, a former Olathe City Council member, is the father of Julie Steele, who narrowly beat Gilmore in 2021. Randall is also the father-in-law of school board president Joe Beveridge.
Babbit, who is adamantly opposed to book-banning, believes that schools have been too quick to pull books from library shelves, while Gilmore has said schools have not done enough in that regard.
Editor’s note:
Our local elections are Tuesday, Nov. 7, and average voter turnout across the greater Kansas City area has been low. We have endorsed several hotly contested elections across the metropolitan area on these pages throughout the past week, including the Wyandotte County Board of Commissioners, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority sales tax and these Johnson County school district races.
The Kansas City Star has published a Voter Guide for several areas in our metro to help voters keep informed. Before you cast your vote, use the guide at kansascity.com/election to research what’s on the ballot. Stay tuned this week for more on the elections in these Opinion pages.
Your Johnson County voter guide for city council & mayor candidates
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Who’s running for school boards in Johnson County?