Voters approve transfer of schools from Kansas City to Independence
Families and property owners in west Independence, Missouri have won their long-sought freedom from the Kansas City School District. Voters in both districts overwhelmingly approved measures to move seven schools from the Kansas City district into the Independence district. Many residents who have blamed much of the area’s economic decline on the reputation of its schools have tried for more than three decades to redraw the boundary line. Because both districts supported the switch, the Independence annexation effort will be less vulnerable to threatened constitutional legal challenges. Under state statute, if Kansas City district voters had rejected the proposal, the issue could be turned over to a state-appointed arbitration panel. A change in state statute, passed this year, would force the panel to allow the change because the Kansas City district, which is provisionally accredited, scored at an unaccredited level in its latest annual performance report by the state. If Kansas City had voted against the change, civil rights attorney Arthur Benson II had promised to file a federal lawsuit. He argued the change in the law would force a boundary shift that would significantly reduce the number of white students in the majority black Kansas City district. The Kansas City school board had likewise raised constitutional concerns, saying its voters would be disenfranchised. But Mr. Benson had said that he likely would not file a challenge if Kansas City voted for the change.
Instead, Kansas City School District leaders are faced with the fact that a majority of its voters approved a boundary change despite a unified campaign by the school board, Superintendent Anthony Amato, and Kansas City’s teachers against the switch. "I don’t think citizens really understood the impact (of a boundary change)," Kansas City school board president David Smith said. "A lot of facts were misrepresented … but that’s politics." Mr. Smith did not know if the board would want to continue any legal fights. "I don’t want to do anything else to disrupt any of the kids’ education," he said. "My focus is going to be on the plans we’ve had to try and improve the district." Certainly the school board has a lot of work to do to repair a long-standing credibility gap, he said. But the district could also use a little more help—rather than attacks—from its partners and neighbors, he said. He referred to the district’s inability to resolve a contract dispute with the Local Investment Commission, or LINC, which turned into a public squabble and then a $1.5 million lawsuit against the district.
Some community leaders, like Gwen Grant of the Urban League, previously said that the district needs new leadership at superintendent and the school board. The fact that a majority of Kansas City voters joined the astonishingly high support in Independence for the boundary change "indicates a lack of public confidence," she said. "The Kansas City school board and superintendent should be extremely concerned." Broken down ward by ward, the Kansas City district divided over the annexation question. To the east of Troost Avenue, roughly 70% of the voters in a low turnout opposed yielding the schools to Independence. Those wards are predominantly black and have a higher percentage of families with children in the district. To the west of Troost, support for the annexation ran from 57% to nearly 70% in favor. Many of those wards are predominantly white and many have relatively few families that enroll children in the Kansas City district. Those who voted in mostly African-American wards supported the district’s position despite a racially tinged campaign mailing from the annexation campaign the weekend before the election. The mailer accused Mr. Amato of having a plan "to destroy the African-American community," threatened more school closings, and stated that the boundary change would allow a reshuffled school board to become majority black. It quoted a previous published statement by Ms. Grant supporting the chance for a shift in the school board—although Ms. Grant said she did not want to be part of the mailing and had asked the annexation campaign not to use her picture or statement.
Kansas City Star By Joe Robertson & Mike Sherry
Kansas City Star By Joe Robertson
[Editor’s Note: Details on the breach of contract suit by LINC, a nonprofit provider of before- and after-school care, are reported below.]
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