Your Shawnee Mission school board general election primer - Shawnee Mission Post

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Advance in-person voting for the upcoming general election began Saturday, Oct. 23, in Johnson County, and Election Day is less than a week away on Nov. 2

As residents head to the polls to cast their ballots Shawnee Mission school board, we’ve put together an election primer to give you an easy way to find out where the candidates stand on the issues.

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Who’s on the ballot

Six candidates are vying for three seats on the Shawnee Mission Board of Education. They are:

At-Large Area 

SM East Area

SM West Area 

All voters living within the Shawnee Mission School District’s boundaries will be able to vote in the at-large race. Only voters living in the designated East and West areas will be able to cast ballots in those races.

Candidate questionnaires

Earlier this month, the Post published the candidates’ responses to a five-item questionnaire we developed with readers’ input. The five questionnaire items and the candidates’ responses are linked below:

Question #1What’s your assessment of how the district has handled managing COVID-19 risk at the start of this school year? Do you believe masks are effective at slowing the spread of the virus? Do you support the masking requirement for students? Read candidates’ answers here.

Questions #2: Diversity, equity and inclusion programs have been under scrutiny in recent months as national media personalities and politicians raise alarms about the teaching of “critical race theory” or ideas linked to it. Do you support the district’s current approach to diversity, equity and inclusion? Why or why not? What does the term “critical race theory” mean to you? Read candidates’ answers here.

Question #3: There’s been increased attention in recent years to the need to provide alternative paths for students who are not interested in or able to attend college. What should the district be doing for non-college bound students? Read candidates’ answers here.

Question #4: The district fell short on its projected enrollment in 2020 and 2021 — specifically in its youngest grades, including kindergarten. These drops will likely impact the amount of state funding the district receives in the future and thereby influence future budgets you will be asked to vote on. How can the district prepare for these potential budget impacts? What are your ideas on how to increase student enrollment? Read candidates’ answers here.

Question #5: What are your views about the role of technology in the classroom? Are you comfortable with the amount of time students spend on screens during the school day? Why or why not? Read candidates’ answers here.

Candidate forum

The Post hosted an in-person forum for Shawnee Mission school board candidates on Oct. 7. All six candidates participated.

Video of the event can be watched at the Post’s Facebook page and is also embedded below, followed by a summary of the topics that were discussed and their corresponding time stamps to help readers find the candidates’ answers more quickly:

The questions are below, with corresponding timestamps if you would like to fast-forward to a particular issue:

1. Fair to say that the most discussed topic in Shawnee Mission over the past year, as in many school districts, has been its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. School board members here and elsewhere have been confronted with an unprecedented crisis, and had to make critical decisions that involve complex science and passionate emotions. What do you see as the school board’s proper role in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic in setting policies that affect student health and the learning environment? [13:48]
2. Currently, Shawnee Mission — like most other public school districts in Johnson County — requires masking for all students, staff and visitors inside its facilities. Families can request exemptions based on certain medical conditions. There are also situations, like eating lunch or playing sports indoors, where students can take their masks off. There is no specified end date to this mask policy. First part to this question is a simple YES or NO, and then I’ll ask a follow up of each of you. But first: do you support the district’s current universal mask policy? [26:05]
   1. If elected (or re-elected), you may very well face a vote in relatively short order on whether the district’s mask rule should continue. How will you decide whether the universal mask policy should stay in place or be loosened or rolled back? What evidence or data will you use in deciding for yourself whether this policy exists going forward and in what form?
3. Teacher morale was a major issue in SMSD before the pandemic. Lengthy negotiations over a new teacher contract in the winter of 2019 and 2020 left some hard feelings. Then, the pandemic happened. SMSD saw an unprecedented wave of early retirements and teachers quitting last fall. And the district began this year with some 20 open teaching positions, and has contracted with several outside agencies to try and fill dozens of staff vacancies, that is teachers and also for jobs like custodians and classroom aides. As a member of the next school board, what steps would you want to see the district take to help support teachers and staff and boost morale? [38:50]
4. Maybe now more than ever, parents, families and students are aware of the impact technology can have on learning — both good and bad — after the pandemic last school year forced many kids to spend big chunks of time learning at home. In Shawnee Mission, use of one-to-one digital technology was a hot topic long before the pandemic… with some concerned parents raising alarms about the potentially damaging effects of extended screen time and kids’ access to inappropriate material at school. In general, do you think the district’s use of one-to-one technology has advanced student learning or hurt it? What, if anything, could be improved about its implementation in classrooms? [47:07]
5. We have had some readers raise concerns about student achievement, expressing worries that state assessment data suggest that too many SMSD students are either behind or not on track to be college and career ready. For instance, some readers have cited state testing data from 2019, the last year of state assessment data, which showed about 35% of SMSD 10th graders landed in the lowest quartile when it came to math, and 26% of 10th graders fell in the lowest quartile when it came to English Language Arts. For some readers, those percentages seemed too high. What do you state assessment benchmarks say about where SMSD students are at in terms of being college and career ready? And what can the school board do to push more students towards higher achievement? [57:15]
6. In the 99-00 school year, about 88% of SMSD students were white, according to district data. By the 18-19 year, the proportion of White students in SMSD had dropped to 63%. Now, Black students make up 9% of the district’s population, Latino students 19% and Asian-American’s nearly 3%. In the context of those demographic shifts, two years ago SMSD hired its first-ever diversity, equity and inclusion coordinator and also launched a three-year cycle of teacher training known as Corwin ‘Deep Equity’ aimed at training staff members on “culturally responsive teaching practices.” These steps were recommended to the board by a parent-led committee that included several Black parents who said the district at that time needed to improve on how it served an increasingly diverse student body, especially students of color. Given that history, do you support the district’s current approach to diversity, equity and inclusion? If so, can you give examples of how it supports student learning? If not, explain what you would want to see done differently and how that would impact student learning? [1:07:04]

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