Know your Hickman Mills School Board Candidates
By Don Bradley
Six brave candidates will try next week for three spots on the Hickman Mills school board.
In the past year, members angrily walked out of a meeting. Unable to agree on a president, the board elected two. In June, the district’s teachers’ union called on board member Carol Graves to resign after she allegedly hurled a racial slur at one colleague and told another to “Shut the f*** up”.
Not a good look for a school district trying to regain full state accreditation.
Graves apologized at the time of the incident, but last week denied the tirade despite some of it being recorded.
She is running to stay on the board.
Her opponent for the one-year open seat is longtime community activist Alvin Brooks, who said he had no intention of ever appearing on another ballot until people asked him to run again because of perceived dysfunction.
Four other candidates, including incumbent co-president Ann Coleman, are vying for two 3-year terms. Others are former board members Bonnaye Mims, Clifford Ragan III and newcomer Ron Pearson. Five brave candidates will try next week for three spots on the Hickman Mills school board.
The name of Clifford Ragan III will appear on the ballot, but the Kansas City Election Board has determined he is disqualified from the race and his votes will not count.
Cynthia Corn-Wattree will appear on the ballot, but said she is no longer seeking the office.
At a candidate forum last week, the whole slate agreed the district’s biggest issue and challenge remains getting full accreditation by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).
They agreed, too, that the district needs more guidance from state officials on how to make that happen.
They also said truancy is a big problem, too many families are leaving the district and that the district should return to town-hall meetings as a means to improve parental involvement.
—
Running for 3-year term (elect two):
Bonnaye Mims
She previously served four terms on the school board and later won election to the Missouri House of Representatives. She served two terms before losing to a primary challenger in 2016.
She is now retired from the Missouri Department of Mental Health.
She was on the school board when the district lost state accreditation, but she said the board was caught off guard by the demotion.
“The state had given the district extensions, but we board members were not informed of that,” she said.
Had members been aware of the urgency, perhaps something could have been done, she said.
She said that when she was board president, the district worked closely with a DESE supervisor.
“That doesn’t happen anymore and now we have an embarrassing mess,” Mims said. “We seem to have money now but that doesn’t mean the money gets to the classrooms. We have an absentee problem and we need to find out why those kids aren’t in school.”
“The board is dysfunctional. It has two presidents. Why? The United States doesn’t have two presidents.
“There is stuff happening now that never happened before. We have to get this school district back in order. For the kids and their parents.”
Clifford Ragan III
He served on the board from 2014 to 2020 before losing a reelection bid. Part of last year’s fighting reportedly stemmed from efforts to appoint Ragan to fill an empty board slot.
He agrees with Mims that having two board presidents is not the way to go.
“You’re already divided right at the start,” Ragan said.
He’s worked as a security officer and a fraud investigator. He thinks the district needs to take a stronger hand in student disruptive behavior and truancy. The school board, he says, should lead the way.
“There’s too much fighting, too much about who’s got the power, too much about who gets to be president,” Ragan said. “Right now, it’s dysfunctional. So much of what they’re doing is not working.”
He likes a return to town-hall meetings and also called for “phone blasts” on board meeting nights to get more parents involved, something he said is necessary for accreditation.
“Not being fully accredited is hard on our kids when they try to go to college,” he said.
(NOTE: Ragan has been disqualified from the election due to tax misrepresentation.)
Ron Pearson
While talking about the district’s lack of full accreditation, Pearson asked: “Would you go to a dentist who wasn’t fully accredited?
“Carpenter maybe; not a dentist.”
He spent 21 years in the Army and now works as a regulator for the Food and Drug Administration, a bureaucracy ruled by a process to ensure food is safe to eat.
He sees a similarity to a school board. It must have a structure; rules in place to ensure students are getting the best possible opportunities, and he sees the board’s ongoing squabbling as an impairment to accreditation.
“I’ve seen the discord,” said Pearson, who fell short in 2021 to win a board seat. “There has to be a discipline. There is a decorum that must be maintained.
“It’s time for a fresh perspective for the board to work with the superintendent and staff for corrective and preventative action.”
He thinks the district needs to look into transitional housing as a means to keep families in the district. Also, he says the district must also do more to encourage parents to become involved. And when that can’t happen, he would like to see some kind of “big brother, big sister” mentoring program to help provide guidance to students.
Ann Coleman
She is a retired educator and incumbent board member. She could not be reached for comment, but did answer questions at a recent candidate forum.
She told the audience that gaining full state accreditation must be the district’s primary focus.
“We need a plan and we need a rigorous curriculum to get it done,” she said.
She suggested moving board meetings around to different schools as a way to increase attendance by parents.
She also pushes for more administrative support for educators.
“Teachers need more help and sometimes they feel like they’re not getting it,” she said. “As a retired educator, I know what that looks and feels like.”
Running for a one-year term (elect one):
Carol Graves
In her words, she had a rough 2023.
The board was volatile. Graves, a board member for three terms, felt respected and at the meeting in June she blew up.
According to reports, she told a board member to shut up and called another a racial slur. She now denies saying either, but did apologize for the alleged outburst.
“When you are in office, people are going to say things about you and you can’t function well,” she told The Telegraph. “I was tired of two members. They walked out; they disrespected me.”
When calls came for her to resign, she said she wasn’t going anywhere. A longtime teacher in the Kansas City School District, she says she still has good things to contribute.
Like other candidates, she says the most important issue is accreditation. Unlike other candidates, she doesn’t think the board plays much role in that.
“That’s the superintendent,” she said.
She said the schools do need to begin preparing earlier for MAP testing on which schools are judged for academic achievement.
Alvin Brooks
Brooks joined the Kansas City Police Department in 1954. He helped start the city’s first Human Relations Department after the riots in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
He’s also served on Ad-Hoc Group Against Crime, the Kansas City Council and as president of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners.
When he left the Hickman Mills school board in 2021, he had no intention of ever running again.
Then he started paying attention. Enrollment was falling, the board was fighting, accreditation seemed to be moving further away.
“People came to me and said it’s a mess and told me I should get back on,” Brooks said.
He disagreed with Graves that the board’s role in accreditation is minimal.
“There is a disconnect there,” he said. “The board plays a vital role in accreditation.”
He chose to stay clear of the feuding.
“I think the least amount of conflict probably serves you better,” he said.
But he did say the disrespectful interactions by board members has led to a lack of effective governance.
“I will take colleagues to task,” he said.
Discover more from Martin City Telegraph
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.