Last night I attended a JCPS Candidate forum for candidates Misty Glin and current vice chair Corey Shull.
Let me say this as succinctly as possible. Do NOT vote for Misty Glin, Steve Ullum, Greg Puccetti, or Charlie Bell.
Misty Glin, Steve Ullum, Greg Puccetti, and Charlie Bell are all running in different districts this year. Despite the fact that school board is a non-partisan race, all four seem to be running in lockstep together, with all four having almost identical donor support from wealthy people tied to religious institutions, the Tea Party, libertarians, and the Jefferson County Republican Party.
From the start of last night’s debate, it was clear that Glin had brought in a crowd of her own to ask questions of her opponent. Among the crowd were two women who have created petitions and astroturf parent groups that have spread the phony panic over CRT, ”pornography” in classrooms, and the idea that somehow masks destroyed our children’s ability to learn.
In no particular order, here are my issues with Glin, her supporters, and the candidates she's running in tandem with after reflecting on last night's debate and doing more research.
1) Glin was asked about school security. While she rightfully is concerned about guns in the classroom, she pointed to JCPS’ handling of the Frankfort mandate of SROs in every classroom as a problem. Glin’s (and my) state representative, Kevin Bratcher, was the sponsor of the SRO bill in Frankfort. He also is a donor to her campaign. Glin failed to mention that Bratcher’s bill failed to provide funding for schools to hire law enforcement officers. Hiring is a challenge even with funds because regular police departments are struggling to fill slots and competing for the same people. Bratcher was quoted by WDRB as saying “If you can’t get there, you can’t get there,” when discussing schools that couldn’t afford officers. Additionally, as Corrie Shull noted, SROs and police presence are no guarantee against school shootings or lessening their , as we saw in Uvalde, Texas and Parkland.
2) Glin also pointed to the fact that we have metal detectors at Van Hoose but not in our schools. While there are lots of issues with metal detectors in schools (including to the time it takes to process kids through and the feeling it passes on to kids), Glin fails to note that these metal detectors and searches at the board office are a recent addition following angry protests and violent threats against the school board and superintendent by the anti-mask crowd. Perhaps she hadn’t attended a school board meeting before all that started and didn’t realize that. More than one school board member has indicated they’ve received threats in the past couple of years. Our superintendent was also threatened by a man with a gun over masking policy. MASKS!
3) Glin talked about 50 years (not quite, but okay) of busing in JCPS and how we needed to stop sending kids 45 minutes away from home to learn, cutting off access to their parents and ability to attend after school events.
First, Glin is correct that some kids were bearing the brunt of unwanted transportation. What she failed to discuss adequately was that JCPS finally is taking steps to provide adequate schools facilities and resources to keep those kids in a neighborhood school.
Second. The transportation plan also allowed kids to have a choice of schools. My daughter and many others traveled 30 minutes or more on a bus to middle and high school because of the magnet school WE choose to send her to. It’s tough to have choice without some form of transportation unless you want to simply limit transportation to parents with means and the time to do so.
4) School choice vs neighborhood schools. Glin and her supporters brought up the following in her discussion.
-Transporting kids across the county is bad.
-We need to have neighborhood schools
-We need school choice
-We’re failing poor and minority children
-Kids/parents can’t attend after school events because of distance
-We’re spending too much on transportation
-Every school should be good enough so nobody wants to go elsewhere
The last one is patently ridiculous. Is there any single school that has ever met every kid’s needs ever? I agree it’d be awesome, but learning styles, staffing, programs offered, and other items unique to each school will make a parent prefer one school to another.
But if you want neighborhood schools AND choice, you have to realize that these two things involve compromise and not everyone can get their neighborhood choice OR their magnet/special school choice without unlimited funds AND transportation.
Glin said that if parents want to send their kids across town, she felt they should have the right to drive them there. Great. But what about the parents who do not have transportation or the time in their day to get them there? When both I and the JCTA head, Brent McKim, asked her about how you achieve this utopia of both choice and neighborhood schools, she seemed not to grasp that they were at odds with each other and would require more money, teachers, and resources to achieve. While JCPS has rightly received criticism for their magnet program, there are realities of supply and demand with resources, facilities, teachers, and the like. If everyone wants a magnet and you don’t have those spaces available, what do you do? How do you balance out your school enrollment from year to year without capping enrollment? Glin has received donations from the organizer of a failed (and potentially fraudulent) petition against a JCPS tax increase. Does anyone believe that she’d work to make sure JCPS has MORE funding so everyone gets the choice they want?
Additionally, if you want to make sure that kids in poverty can get a full experience in a school AND give them the choice they want, you are going to have to make concessions for transportation that go above and beyond what the system does today. I don’t think that this is something Glin or her supporters seriously think should happen since they’re already whining about transportation costs.
5) Glin brought up the shopworn complaint that JCPS has far too many administrators making six figure salaries, and complains that many of these administrators have no contact with children. Glin fails to mention that JCPS is the largest district in the state and ranks in the 30s nationwide. JCPS is double the size of the next largest district in the state. By my count last night, JCPS’ largest single school in population was larger than 95 Kentucky districts. Additionally, JCPS is the second largest employer in the county, and competes for talent with the many large companies in Louisville.
Transportation, student support services, nutrition, administrative services, building support, HR, and other departments to run a large school system require people. Attracting and retaining talent costs money. I’d hazard a guess that the administrative budgets and salaries of most local companies exceed that of similar roles in our public schools. It’s quite possible that there is bloat or excessive pay in some of these roles. But to pretend like it’s all bloat is ridiculous.
Glin also called for an audit. I guess Glin wasn’t aware of a previous audit done of these roles by the state in 2014 and by a firm in 2016 of JCPS and its administrative roles and salaries. It was kind of big news back then. You’d think someone running would be aware.
6) Glin, Bell, Ullum, and Puccetti’s supporters have no problem attacking JCPS for the performance of minority students, but then attack initiatives to train white teachers in ways that they can better connect to minority students and examine how their own biases may play into how students connect to them and their learning. JCPS has acknowledged that many of its initiatives failed to achieve results and is trying a new approach that would realistically seem to be an effective way to bridge gaps. Instead those supporters want to tear them down and attack them as “CRT”, a concept they don’t even seem to understand despite all of their attempts to make it an issue.
7) Glin’s supporters last night included two women who decried a book “Gender Queer” as pornography. This, like their pushes against masks, and CRT, seems to be driven from hysteria drummed up in far right media to bring attention to issues that aren’t really issues and use them to attack public schools. Gender Queer is in two school libraries. It is not used in a curriculum, assigned to students, or on reading lists for them. It is simply a book available for students to check out. While it may be considered “adult” to some parents, it’s not a “pornographic pitcher book” as Glin referred to it last night. These parents seemed to have seized on the overblown hysteria about LGBTQ rights and empathy in classrooms to attack this and other books that it’s doubtful many students or parents even knew existed until right wing pundits decided to make them an issue.
To be clear, I think parents should be involved in their kid’s choices in life and I don’t oppose any parent who wants to understand their child’s assigned reading materials and seek alternatives if they have moral objections. But I also don’t think that these parents should censor library materials under the guise of “protecting” kids. I suspect that the subject matter within the book is not something that is foreign to high school aged students, nor will it alter their moral compass, warp their brain, or create any lasting turmoil for them. It’s simply a book that a few kids might read and relate to and possibly feel less alone in their feelings as a young adult.
8. It’s not clear that Glin, Puccetti, Bell, or Ullum understand that public schools must serve all students who walk through their doors and that the school board has limited power in day to day operations. Ullum has attacked the length of school board meetings as proof they’re not good at their job, ignoring the fact that the school district is huge and has many issues to discuss AND Kentucky law doesn’t allow them to discuss their business outside of official meetings. It’s also clear from Glin and the supporters she brought last night that listening and consideration of other points of view is not important. All are quick to attack the current board, but none seem to acknowledge that our current board acknowledges there are problems and is working within their legally appointed powers to help affect change to a large system. JCPS has a diverse student body that includes students of all races, colors, creeds, national origins, faiths, languages, economic status, and sexual preference. It’s clear that many of their supporters have issues with at least some of these demographics when they don’t align with their own. We do not need that type of thinking on our school board, nor will it help improve things for our students.
9. Glin stated that her child was bullied at school and little was done about it. As a parent, I completely understand why this would make you mad as a parent and want changes. I'd want to tear down schools brick by brick to get my child's issues resolved. But when I hear the way in which Glin and her supporters have embraced the attacks on gender and LGBTQ issues in the classroom, I think of all the people I’ve known who were bullied when I was young by classmates, and even teachers and administrators. Last night Glin’s supporters came ready to attack Corrie Shull last night for his stances with straw man attacks and hyperbole they’ve used to attack him and others who try to have a nuanced discussion with them. Improving education should be a cooperative effort, not a blood sport.