Board members discuss nonprofit's role
Apr. 22—A leading nonprofit on policy for Show Me State public education agencies has an ongoing role in the governance of local schools, and also helps elected board members govern themselves.
Kim Miller is now serving as the official delegate for the Missouri School Boards Association. As one of several hundred delegates, each one representing MSBA member school districts, Miller's job (in addition to her role as a school board member elected by St. Joseph voters in 2022) covers three interest areas.
Miller first works as a policy advocate, second as someone who briefs the board on what the MSBA is doing and third as a "collaborative networker," who coordinates with other MSBA delegates and officials to generate ideas, discuss them and recommend their implementation on a local level. The vast majority of all St. Joseph School District policies are crafted this way — via the collaborative process, the MSBA provides a recommended rule change and then the local school board votes to approve it. The local school board can choose to reject a recommendation, but it seldom does so.
"It's not an opportunity for me to speak my own opinion," Miller said. "It's an opportunity to speak on behalf of our local board. And that gives them voice on the things that come across our desks as board members and into our district."
The most important of these roles, concerning policy, is particularly relevant because St. Joseph board members spent much of the last year accusing each other of violating policy. The infighting came to a head on April 3, when the board voted to censure Whitney Lanning and not censure Isaura Garcia. Lanning and Garcia each remain parties to a civil lawsuit filed over an incident on Feb. 26.
Ultimately, no policy is capable of reducing the power of any board member to speak or to vote. The board learned that the hard way this month, when statements were made during their April 3 meeting reaffirming that a censure has no practical capacity to reduce a board member's power. However, there is still an impetus to police future behavior, in as much as making rules and applying them can do that.
"I've actually already contacted MSBA about scheduling a work session in order to learn how to put aside our respective issues and the differences in order to do what is best on the district," Board President LaTonya Williams said.
Williams and Miller, although they have been on opposing sides of several board questions, will have a tandem impact on what the MSBA does. That is because Williams will continue to serve on the MSBA's own board of directors, representing nine counties in Northwest Missouri (there are a total of 17 regions).
Marcus Clem can be reached at marcus.clem@newspressnow.com. Follow him on Twitter: @NPNowClem
