As we enter the last month of campaigning, we are seeing a lot of misdirection surrounding the issues that we feel are so important in selecting the best candidates for our Board of Education. Please take a moment to read (or re-read) one of our original posts: A Letter from the Champs. Our mission has never changed. We are, and always have been, a group of concerned citizens and parents. We want what is best for every student and every teacher in our district.
In a recent Letter to the Editor of the Leavenworth Times, a former Lansing resident opines (once again) about a “small group of overly vocal, indignant teachers and a few of their friends” who complain about the hard-working conservative board members. The letter writer can try to diminish the concerns of our educators and stakeholders by making us seem small and insignificant, but he’s wrong. We invite you to read through the last two annual Climate Surveys completed by district employees; they are published on this website here and here. For the past two years, we have had significant numbers of staff who are dissatisfied with their work environment (our schools), and our current board of education has created much of that dissatisfaction. And in the past seven months, Champions for Lansing Education has created a website, a Facebook page with hundreds of Likes & hundreds of Follows, an Instagram with dozens of Follows, and a TikTok with dozens of Follows. This is not a small group with a few friends.
Ann Andrews, a 32 year veteran of Lansing schools, had this to say: “Teachers in my district are being chastised and called indignant and underperforming by a former community member whose Facebook post is being shared to the point that I saw it. We received three raises in three years so we should feel grateful, and this most recent raise was the ‘most generous’ one since 2015. This, sadly, is true. However, the most recent raise was 2.8%! I believe the last two raises were both less than 2%. My raise this year was $1900 before taking into account the $300 increase to my health insurance premium. I am seeing about $100 per month more than I did last year in my take home pay. Forgive my laughter at the term ‘generous’.”
Mrs Andrews adds, “I attended negotiations meetings this summer, and when the amount that would bring us in line with cost of living increase was brought up by our association, an amount that was stated we weren’t even asking for due to our district’s desperate financial status, one of the board members on the team laughed out loud.”
“Retention and recruitment are stated as goals of this board. Suffice it to say that I don’t think it’s working. Neighboring districts are providing increases and retention bonuses that I have never gotten to experience. This is my 32nd and final year in our district. I am tired of waiting this out. It is not the fault of teachers that previous boards may have mismanaged funds. It is not the fault of teachers that our current board felt the need to buy out our previous superintendent, which lessened the amount of money available for increases. We just go to work and teach kids everyday, as we have been trained to do. We have expressed our concerns about students coming to school less and less prepared. We have expressed our concerns about mental health getting in the way of academics. We have expressed our concerns about extreme behaviors in some of our students and the impact that has on our classes.”
“Some people may call us underperforming, but I say that we haven’t been listened to and building staff has been left to deal with these new challenges on our own. With some new staff finally in place to help this year in my building, I’m hoping we see change.”
“I have loved working in this district for my entire career and hate seeing things get so divisive and accusatory.”
At the same time as the Letter to the Editor, a current board member, Carla Wiegers, took to Facebook to suggest that our complaints of politics are related to maintenance plans and budgets. Apparently, she hasn’t listened to a word we’ve said at the board of education meetings. No one has complained about maintenance plans and budgets: this is the actual work of a school board. Politics infiltrates our schools with board policies meant to restrict the freedoms of our teachers and our students. She asks for collaboration over condemnation, but collaboration requires compromise, and we just haven’t seen any attempts by these “conservative” board members to compromise on anything.
Politics began with the Parents’ Bill of Rights. As the state legislators failed to implement a Parents’ Bill of Rights at the state level, Lansing became ground zero for this policy that injects partisan politics into our schools. Enumerating “rights” already held by every parent in the district and publishing them in the front or our District Handbook marginalizes the professional educators who use their expertise to teach our students on a daily basis.
Politics continued with the adoption of a Classroom Displays policy that restricts visuals displayed in the classroom to subject matter content only. Any items of political, religious, or personal nature needed to be removed. This was a direct attack on our LGBTQ+ students as Safe Space stickers were the target of this policy. On a conservative political podcast, Amy Cawvey boasted of removing the Safe Space stickers, failing to mention the policy also covers religious and personal displays. Enforcement of the policy also seems to omit personal and religious displays.
A curriculum challenge was the next opportunity to inject political ideology into our education system. When a senior ELA teacher chose “social justice” as the theme for an expository writing project to help students understand and recognize bias, a parent challenged the literary works used: works related to feminism, racial prejudice, and sexual identity. Following district policy, the curriculum was sent to a review committee who examined the works used and the state standards. After determining the curriculum was appropriate and met state standards, the board overturned their findings and removed the works. Amy Cawvey added the theme of social justice to the ban.
Politics was invited to Lansing schools when Carla Wiegers invited Dave Trabert of Kansas School Board Resource Center/ Kansas Policy Institute to participate in a Town Hall intended to inform stakeholders about our Building Needs Assessment. It gave Trabert an opportunity to mischaracterize our standardized test scores. Trabert works for entities that seek to defund public education for the purpose of reducing taxes paid by his wealthy employer. We blogged about the Town Hall here.
Another board action that is politically motivated is the removal of two highly-regarded women from the district’s Substitute Teacher pool. Vera Daniels (a retired Lansing Middle School educator and Teacher of the Year) and Celeste Hoins were frequently requested as substitutes by Lansing teachers due to their professionalism in the classroom. Vera and Celeste also express their support for our students and teachers by speaking out against radical school board members and their radical policies. When the Substitute List was sent to the board for approval during executive session, their names were stricken from the list with no explanation given.
As we get down to the final days before the November 7th election, you will hear voices attempt to shift attention from the problems we face with the current board. We ask you to look at the issues we’ve been talking about for the past two years: teacher morale, student support, and comprehensive educational opportunities. We ask you to vote for candidates who want to focus on our Strategic Plan and Board Goals to move our district forward. High student achievement, exceptional educators, and graduates who are prepared for our modern world is what we should all expect our Board of Education to focus on.