Election Inspection: In the upcoming school board election, candidates are strongly divided on diversity training and financial planning

*Story written by Journalism 1 student Michael Yi

Candidates running for the four seats in the Nov. 7 SMSD school board election are split on topics such as counseling and special education funding and diversity, equity and inclusion training.

Voters in the East area will be able to vote for only the “at-large” or overall board member seat between candidates David Westbrook and Logan Austin and not in the North, Northwest and South elections.

Advanced voting is on Oct. 31 through mail and voters can check their local polling location at myvoteinfo.voteks.org.

According to smsd.org, the school board is responsible for hiring and evaluating the superintendent, approving the district’s budget and creating school policies, ranging from dress codes, books that can be in the libraries and graduation requirements.

Westbrook wants to work on securing funding for social workers and special education to replace Elementary & Secondary School Emergency Relief funding, which will run out later this year according to the board’s notes. 

According to Westbrook, ESSER was used to hire social workers and school counselors in every school building to work with families and students who were particularly distressed during COVID-19.

“Those psychologists [and] social workers have been proven to be very valuable to the community and they’re very, very well appreciated,” Westbrook said.

$944,000 of ESSER’s yearly $11 million has already been moved towards sustaining social workers and high school counselors through 2024.

ESSER was also used in the general fund to cover 32% or $8 million of special education expenses, according to the board’s notes. 

Westbrook – who has been blind since 17 – is passionate about supporting SMSD’s special education program after being part of the program in high school.

“For anybody that’s personally experienced being a minority of sorts, I see that,” Westbrook said. “And when people don’t judge me because I’m blind but judge me instead because I’m a human being with talents and dreams, it’s a far more rewarding life.”

His opponent Austin believes that the ESSER funding is important but the board will always be able to plan enough funding.

“Usually in those scenarios [the school board] will just come up with something new,” Austin said. “Just because an old program ends doesn’t mean that another one’s not going to begin.”

Austin wants to cut funds in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, which provide training sessions like panels and lectures educating students and staff to be more culturally tolerant. SMSD spent over $300,000 on these services and hired a diversity administrator to oversee the program in 2019, according to smsd.org.

Austin thinks that while DEI’s have good intentions, student-led organizations like the Latin Americans Club at UMKC are a more effective way to promote diversity.

“Student-led organizations [give] a sense of pride, a sense of local community,” Austin said. “It’s more of a win for me when I can see students be prideful about what they’re doing.”

English teacher Samantha Feinberg is one of two DEI coordinators at East, along with social studies teacher Jacob Penner. Together, they lead training sessions for staff, from lessons on subconscious biases to minority student panels.

“[On Oct. 12] when the students were gone, we talked about ableism, mostly, how we should talk to each other,” Feinberg said. “I got a lot of really good feedback that people really enjoyed it and found it beneficial.”

When it comes to classwork, while both Westbrook and Austin stress the importance of curriculum preparing students for the real world, Westbrook’s stance is that the district is moving in the right direction in career education with auto shop, technology and restaurant management classes offered at the Center of Academic Achievement.

“I’m impressed with the real-world assets the school board has directed the administration to make a greater connection between what kids learn and how they’ll apply what they’re learning in real-world examples,” Westbrook said.

Austin is focused primarily on raising the average scores in the district. According to Austin, the school is falling in standardized test scores and GPA and education needs to be more personal to the students.

“It takes a lot to perform at your best all the time,” Austin said. “If you don’t have someone watching your back or to hold you up, it’s a huge factor in how you are going to learn, so students should feel confident and encouraged.”