Lawrence Still Needs Experience on the School Board
So #LFK, please vote for Shannon Kimball
What drives people to public service is a sense of possibility. If you haven't sensed that possibility you don't get started in the same way, you don't feel you can have an impact.
I first met Shannon Kimball back in the 2010/2011 school year when we both served on the USD 497 Elementary School Vision Task Force. As we weren’t on the same subcommittee, getting to know her better would come later. Though as things turned out, it wasn’t much later. Shortly after the task force had made its final set of recommendations Shannon reached out and asked to meet for coffee. She had decided to run for school board and was hoping to get my endorsement as a fellow task force member. One of the things that convinced me to endorse her was the sense of possibility she felt for the district and our community’s students.
Having a sense of possibility that is rooted in curiosity and prosociality, feeling empathy for the struggles of students, their families and teachers as well as joy for their successes and even the process of governing itself are all important for a school board member. From our conversations, I felt that Shannon had this sense of possibility. I had already started seeing her ability to analyze data and other available information, hear the concerns of community members, teachers, and students, weigh the pros and cons, and then come to what she felt was the best conclusion to benefit all of our community’s students given the evidence provided. She seemed able to not only balance the practical and the possible, but to also creatively weave possibilities out of the constraints of the practical; while still recognizing those constraints often need changing themselves.
Over the past 12 years she’s proven that assessment correct, and them some. At least in my opinion - an opinion shaped over the years by engaging her as a parent, a consultant, a fellow board member, a fellow board officer, and at some point along the way as a friend.
As a board member Shannon has developed a wealth of experience helping lead the district. I’m not sure there’s anyone outside of the AEC industry who knows more about the design, construction, operations, and maintenance of school buildings than she does, having served on the Facilities committee 11 out of her 12 years. She’s a master of district policy (well served by her legal background), and her knowledge of district school budgets and funding (complicated to say the least) is extensive. I’m sure it far outpaces many of our existing board members (let alone any of the current candidates). In those 12 years we’ve also seen three superintendents and one interim superintendent, as well as a fair amount of turnover among school board members. Shannon offers much needed consistency and expertise as well as institutional and historical knowledge.
She has helped our district weather the Brownback years and the consistent public education attacks from our conservative controlled legislature. She’s spent a significant amount of effort as a board member following what’s going on in Topeka, trying to change the “constraints of the practical” through advocacy and education of legislative members (which can feel like banging your head against a brick wall when it comes to some of the Republicans), and sharing what’s she’s learned back to fellow board members, the district, and the community.
But Shannon didn’t stop there. She’s also been a Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB) member for 6+ years, with stints as president-elect, president, and past-president during that time. And for three of those years she was the chair of their legislative committee, leading some of their state-wide efforts to push back against anti-public education actions and bills by the legislature.
During the year Trump was elected president, with all of the social turmoil and reckoning that accompanied it, Shannon also supported efforts by the district to take a hard look at it’s equity journey and make some needed changes. As a policy committee member for all 12 years, she was a driver for the development and adoption of the district’s equity policy, gender neutral dress-code policy, and anti-bullying protections (including LGBTQ anti-discrimination provisions).
She has worked with state, county, and city leaders as a school board member, serving with them on multiple councils and committees. And let’s not forget that Shannon helped lead our district through the pandemic. As a former school board member, I can at least imagine how difficult that must have been. And as the district and our students haven’t fully recovered from the pandemic, having experienced, capable leaders in place is critical for completing the recovery as fast as possible.
On top of all that, but really core for Shannon, are the classroom visits, the school events, and regular engagements of teachers, staff, students, families, and the community. She listens to the concerns, criticisms, and new ideas born out of the lived experiences of community members. She celebrates the successes of students and teachers. The stories and the data - the qualitative and the quantitative - are both essential for Shannon to govern.
But I should also address the elephant in the room that has led to several community members running for school board this time around, including the individual running against Shannon for the 2-year seat. Many in the community are upset that the board voted (4 to 3) to close Pinkney and Broken Arrow elementary schools. And they’re certainly justified in their anger, hurt, and worry. In my opinion it’s a pretty big negative for Lawrence overall, and certainly for the communities of these neighborhood schools. But as I’ve covered elsewhere, I would have most likely cast the same vote. And Shannon has laid out in detail her reasons for voting this way. If teachers and staff were to get substantial raises, there was simply no other option (within the constraints of current school funding formulas) that didn’t entail even more cuts to programs negatively impacting student opportunities and success across the district. Nor are there sustainable alternative funding options available.
If you have questions, about these closures or other issues or about why she’s running, Shannon would be more than happy to meet with you in person, have a phone conversation, talk over zoom, or correspond through email.
There’s definitely some misunderstanding, ignorance, and outright disinformation floating out there among the community and on the interwebs about this issue, about district operations and school funding, and also Shannon’s actions. All of this has likely been fueled by some combination of anger and fear, of not engaging Shannon, and not spending enough time digging into the intricacies of district operations and funding, the constraints a district must operate within, and the history of how we’ve gotten to this point.
I’ve seen statements that make it seem as if Shannon is single-handedly responsible for closing these schools. A single board member does not have that power. As one of seven board members, she independently evaluated the data and community concerns, weighed the available options, and voted based on what she thought was the best outcome for all students across the district (and it was painful for her). It was also a vote that accounted for the constraints of the practical outside of the district’s control while maintaining a sense of the possible - potentially transitioning LMCMS to a STEAM focus, continuing work to increase teacher/staff pay while decreasing class size, implementing a solar energy pilot project (with potential expansion beyond that), to name a few.
And Shannon will continue working to push back against the constraints of the practical, to make changes at the state level, working with various local and statewide networks that have been in this arena for awhile now - Educate Lawrence, Game on for Kansas Schools, Kansas Families for Education, KASB, among others. That focus includes fully funding public education which Shannon has been advocating for since before she was on the board. And by the way, one of the intents of inadequate public school funding is to create conflict and chaos at the local level as community’s struggle to meet needs and argue over how to use what funding is available. It serves as a convenient distraction from what’s going on in Topeka.
Our school district will continue facing many challenges in the coming years - recovering from the pandemic, addressing declining enrollments and teacher/staff shortages, dealing with inadequate special education funding and attacks from the Republican controlled legislature, among others. Change, new ideas, new energy - these can be good things (and at a minimum there will be two new faces on the board). But especially now we need Shannon’s experience and expertise that spans from the local to national levels. There is no one currently on the board or among any of the candidates who come close to offering what she brings to the table. And that experience also comes in handy for mentoring new and less experienced board members, something I was fortunate enough to experience first hand.
Nor has Shannon lost any of her enthusiasm for the work. She still has the same energy and ability to sense the possibilities that I saw in her 12+ years ago. She’s still willing to serve. We should accept her offer.
With respect, I have failed to hear an explanation for "We seem to have limited options available", because the administration & board offered no options to consider and in fact HID THE REAL CONSEQUENCES OF CLOSINGS. Never heard of boundary changes? Now that's real work accept when dumping on less influential families? I accept that solutions might leave schools somewhat less resourced, but as you said - "Neighborhood schools offer significant benefits". The accounting is especially suspect if the administration contorts itself to "keep the buildings operating". Shannon Kimball supported spending millions on Pinckney before supporting repurposing to some undetermined, definitionally inappropriate new use for a just-upgraded neighborhood school facility. I also accept the fact that there might be adverse funding impacts to the most privileged schools in town but discount that for the advantage of not being overcrowded. A few specials teachers might travel between schools, but that beats forcing families with the least resources hauling their kids to someone else's crowded "factory model", over-populated schools. Their new principle most likely won't know their name and family and spends the majority of their time "at the District Office". I would apply some real "factory style" analysis and justify EVERY 497 position by starting with an applicable question - "Do you touch the product?", as in student-contact hours. This is what real classroom teachers and para's are asking. Maybe what our admirably hard-working, state and nationally-connected Shannon Kimball lacks is common sense and local classroom awareness that Ariel Minor can provide.