In vote along racial lines, school board rejects leadership role for Black member
Was the Lee’s Summit School Board sending a message about equity and inclusion to the district Thursday night when it voted along racial lines to keep a Black member out of a board leadership role?
It sure looked that way.
If so, the two Black members on the seven-member board could end up getting shut down on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion that the district has been wrestling with for three years.
Here and across the country, school boards have become polarized over these issues, fighting over how to address race in the classroom and over false charges that schools are trying to indoctrinate students with divisive racial ideology.
After the Lee’s Summit board swore in newly elected members Jennifer Foley and Heather Eslick, who have been critical of the district’s equity efforts, the board voted in its new leadership.
Rodrick Sparks, who last year became the second Black person elected to the board, nominated himself to serve as vice president. But the only vote he received besides his own came from Megan Marshall, the first Black board member, who served a year as the board vice president in 2021.
Kathy Campbell won a vote along racial lines to become president of the board in one of the largest districts in the Kansas City area. About 12% of its approximately 18,000 students are Black. Campbell and last year’s board president, Ryan Murdock, won their seats on the board running on an equity platform. But their votes have not always reflected that position.
Equity efforts began in Lee’s Summit under former Superintendent Dennis Carpenter, the schools’ first and only Black superintendent. Carpenter won a fight to get equity work started in the predominantly white suburban district.
Before the board’s leadership vote, the Rev. Darron Edwards pleaded for members to “stay the course.” Edwards, whose four children went to school in Lee’s Summit, urged them “to continue strengthening policies that enable equitable opportunity for all students.”
Lee’s Summit North senior Jade Davis, who is Black, asked the board to do a better job hiring teachers and staff “who look like me. This is for everyone,” she said.
Diversity efforts — including hiring and training — were “made a formal priority,” for the board in 2019, district spokeswoman Katy Bergen said. Teams are developing plans to promote diversity and inclusion in schools and efforts toward hiring a more diverse workforce “is ongoing.”
But will this year’s board, including newly elected members critical of recent diversity efforts, interfere with that work?
“These are those times where we must encourage the unappreciated, resource the underserved, and listen with intent to the unheard in our beloved community,” said Edwards, pastor of United Believers Community Church in Kansas City.
“These are those times where we either run the plays from our political camps or stay the course with our mission which is to prepare every student for success in life.”
This story was originally published April 16, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "In vote along racial lines, school board rejects leadership role for Black member."
