Nicky Nickens was surprised when an audience member at a Lee’s Summit school board candidate forum told her he thought the district had “four nice, moderate candidates.”
As a candidate for school board alongside incumbent board president Jennifer Foley and fellow challengers Leon Weatherby and Michelle Dawson, Nickens sees clear distinctions.
But she also understands how voters who attend forums or read questionnaires might get the impression that the candidates are mostly the same.
Compared to other school board candidates The Beacon surveyed across the area, the Lee’s Summit candidates were most likely to select the same multiple-choice responses.
“It’s really hard to tell the difference,” Nickens said, “if you didn’t sort of have the inside track, or if you didn’t follow social media, for example, or if you weren’t part of certain groups.”
Ahead of the April 8 election for two open spots on the Lee’s Summit board, voters and groups who are tracking the election more closely watch whom candidates align themselves with, what they say on social media and how they’ve voted — or said they’d vote — in the past.
When they do endorse or rate candidates, a pattern emerges. Conservatives gravitate toward Foley and Weatherby, while equity-focused groups support Nickens and Dawson.
Nickens and Dawson also won support from the district’s teachers union and appear to be endorsed by the Lee’s Summit Democrats, even though both candidates said they didn’t think the Democrats endorsed in nonpartisan elections.
To find out what the community is seeing, The Beacon reached out to all four candidates and half a dozen local and state groups that appeared to endorse, rate or promote specific candidates.
We heard back from Nickens, Dawson, the Missouri Equity Education Partnership, the Strengthening Education Together political action committee and members of We the People of Jackson County, MO.
Foley declined an interview, saying that she’s focused on other outreach. Weatherby did not respond to repeated interview requests. Nor did the Lee’s Summit district’s teachers union, the Lee’s Summit Democrats or Salt and Light of Jackson County — a group promoting “conservative, moral values defined by Biblical principles” that endorses Foley and Weatherby.
Equity and diversity
For some, the candidates’ stance on equity is crucial. Others want pushback on diversity, equity and inclusion programs they see as unhelpful or counterproductive.
Ron Freeman said he was born during the Jim Crow era and grew up in a “sundown town” where Black people weren’t welcome in certain areas. When he was first invited into a white family’s home, it “began my journey of relationship-building and connecting cross-culturally with people,” he said.
Racism still exists, Freeman said, but he thinks the district’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts can fall into a mindset that doesn’t recognize progress or allow for nuance.
“The board decided to jump into the DEI fray with a very divisive narrative and created a storyline where blacks and whites were divided,” he said.
Freeman is a director of We the People of Jackson County, MO, a conservative group that runs a private Facebook page with thousands of members and holds monthly meetings open to the public that attract from 175 to 325 people.
The group doesn’t officially endorse candidates, but three directors and another member spoke with The Beacon about why they support Foley and Weatherby, both of whom also spoke at a recent We the People meeting.
“I do make sure that everybody knows how I feel,” director Chuck Quesenberry said, adding he suspects the majority of people who attend meetings agree with his personal endorsements.
Director Tom Manz said one thing that sets his preferred candidates apart is a focus on the basics such as reading instead of an overemphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion.
“DEI stuff in schools is out of balance,” he said. “We’re not opposed to equal opportunity, but we don’t want people being forced into positions … just because of their race or their gender.”
Other groups see good reason to approach all issues through the lens of equity.
Davoya Marshall said equity shouldn’t be partisan and is about “making sure that everybody has what they need to be successful” even if that’s different from what others need.
She’s a parent of four Lee’s Summit students and the president and co-founder of Strengthening Education Together, a local political action committee.
According to its website, SET exists to “support equitable public schools that serve all students well” and raise funds to promote like-minded candidates. Marshall said it has raised about $5,000 this year.
She said the group uses a rubric to decide which candidates to support. This year, only Nickens and Dawson submitted information.
“They’re both really very capable, highly qualified women,” Marshall said.
Meanwhile, she has concerns about the other candidates’ track records.
Though Foley hasn’t taken a blanket stance against DEI or social-emotional learning, she voted against a consultant contract focused on dignity and belonging, and also voted against purchasing a social-emotional learning curriculum for grades 6-12 in March 2024.
During a PTA candidate forum, Foley said there’s evidence that standalone social-emotional lessons for older children are not effective.
As a new candidate, Weatherby doesn’t have a voting record on the board, but Marshall said his messaging about DEI has been inconsistent.
During the same candidate forum, Weatherby said there were “probably some professional development contracts within LSR-7 that would not be allowed” under an executive order but that he “would not support a broad sweep of eliminating every policy that may have came out of DEI.”
The Missouri Equity Education Partnership didn’t endorse candidates this year, but it rates them as pro-equity, unclear or anti-equity.
Dawson and Nickens were the only candidates to fill out the group’s survey, and both won pro-equity ratings. Foley is rated “unclear” and Weatherby “anti-equity.”
Ken Susman, a special-projects team leader for the organization, said that since the group tracks districts statewide it sometimes follows the lead of local groups like SET that are pro-equity. It’s also looking for candidates’ beliefs on issues such as services for students with special needs, addressing racial disparities in discipline and support for LGBTQ students.
DEI is “being portrayed as very divisive when it’s really just like making sure that everyone has what they need,” he said. “The goal is not division. The goal is inclusion.”
Candidates’ strengths and priorities
The school board needs to set aside ideologies and politics and operate in a stable, nonpartisan way, Dawson said.
She said her background in operations and project management, and her experience attending the district’s Parent University, help her understand how the district functions and what distinguishes it from other types of organizations.
“Board members who say, ‘Well, we need to run this like a business,’” are misguided, she said. “It is not like a business. It is not funded like a business. Its outcomes are not measured like a business. We cannot do that.”
Nickens, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Central Missouri, also emphasized taking a nonpartisan approach to the board.
She said her understanding of “the whole child” and strategies to support mental health and social-emotional learning help set her apart.
“What happens at home has a massive impact on what happens in school,” she said. “Obviously, you want (students) all to learn how to read and succeed at a high level, but it’s not only the teaching that impacts their success.”
Nickens and Dawson both highlighted support from the district teachers’ union as a point of pride and expressed concern with two recent board decisions.
One was the decision not to put a waiver of Proposition C on the April ballot. Proposition C is a Missouri measure approved in 1982 that increased sales and use taxes to raise money for schools. But it required districts to reduce property taxes unless voters approved a waiver.
The district would have used the extra revenue to improve salaries.
Foley, who voted with the majority against putting the waiver on the ballot, has said there was concern the measure would compete with the school bond this April, and that there’s another opportunity for it to go on the August ballot. Weatherby said he would have voted the same way as Foley.
The other controversial decision was when board members reportedly voted not to renew the superintendent’s contract during a closed session, then reversed the decision in a divided vote after public pushback.
In response to a Beacon records request, the district released the results of the vote to renew the superintendent’s contract, with Foley siding with the majority. It didn’t confirm that there was an earlier vote but said it would be a closed record.
Nickens said the deliberation process was baffling because the board should have been looking at the same measures of the superintendent’s performance all along. She thinks the district is doing well, with high state achievement scores compared to nearby districts, declining discipline issues and efforts to improve reading underway.
But not everyone sees the same strengths.
Several members of We The People said they’re concerned the district’s academic achievement is sliding.
Freeman, the We The People member, cited structured literacy instruction, listening and transparency, and fiscal accountability as his primary reasons for supporting Foley and Weatherby.
“If you can’t read, you’re in trouble,” he said. “Go back to the best practices. I don’t care what color your skin is, there’s an educational model that is truly effective at helping you learn. Let’s do that.”
Districts across the nation have been revamping their reading programs after realizing some popular techniques weren’t evidence-based and were making it harder for some kids to learn.
During her campaign, Foley has particularly emphasized parents’ concerns about reading instruction and the progress the district has made to address them during her time on the board.
In response to a questionnaire, she told The Beacon she’s a director of professional sport in her third year on the board of education. She emphasized improvements in staff pay, math and literacy support and community engagement.
Meanwhile, Weatherby, a mechanical designer at Honeywell, has focused on how the district spends its money, using his campaign Facebook page to explain Proposition C and lay out his ideas on how the district could improve the bidding process for large projects.
Quesenberry, of We the People, described Weatherby as a “numbers guy” who is “all about the spending that the school board does, and to make sure that the spending is in the right order.”
“You need a versatile group in the school board that has their strengths,” Quesenberry said. “It makes it a better, stronger school board.”
