Kansas City nonprofit wants to make charter school leaders look more like the students

Unlike professional sports, Saturday’s Kansas City charter school board draft is not likely to draw a lot of attention or come with any notable fanfare. In terms of what it could mean for thousands of children here, however, its impact could have far greater consequences for the community.

BLAQUE KC, a local nonprofit aimed at equity in education, has created a roster of 45 candidates applying to join its lineup of potential charter school board aspirants. After vetting and training, the field was narrowed to 16. Twelve charter schools have signed up to select a board member from among the group.

The draft is a first of its kind event for Kansas City, and it could change the racial and cultural demographic disparity identified several years ago among the predominantly Black and Hispanic public schoolchildren in Kansas City, as well as the people who sit on the boards governing their schools.

That’s significant because “representation matters,” said Nate Hogan, school board president for Kansas City Public Schools. “Every decision the board makes does have some impact on its kids.”

Research says that Black and and brown children perform better academically when they have teachers who look like them. And by the same token, it’s important that educators of color are led by diverse leaders.

We want what’s best for our kids, and so should all Kansas Citians. While the majority of students attending public schools in Kansas City are children of color, those demographics are traditionally not reflected in the governing boards.

That’s not to say that white and economically well-off board members can’t run schools where most of the students are neither of those things. But it does help when leaders are familiar with the neighborhoods where the students live.

At public charter schools, where board members are selected rather than elected by the public, many of them don’t even live in the state. That too will change with a new law passed this year requiring charter school board members to live in Missouri.

That’s a big deal, said Cokethea Hill, BLAQUE KC founder and chief executive officer. “We have heard reports that more than 60% of charter school boards do not live in Missouri.”

So cheers to Missouri lawmakers for recognizing that school board members “need to be connected to the community,” said Brent Ghan, deputy executive director for the Missouri School Boards’ Association. “We have been pushing that for some time. They need to understand what the community’s goals are for their children.”

That’s exactly what BLAQUE KC is going for with the candidates they have assembled for Kansas City charters: a smorgasbord of lawyers, corporate leaders, business owners, educators, judges and health care professionals who were either raised or educated in Kansas City, or now live or work here. All but one are people of color.

With this campaign, BLAQUE KC is doing away with the excuse that institutions have used for too long to explain not having more people of color represented on their boards.

“Many organizations state that it is difficult to locate and access professional candidates of color to serve on governing boards,” Hill said. “Our goal is to build a pipeline of professional candidates of color, train those candidates on governance, and help place them on local boards.”

Last year The Star Editorial Board questioned the motives of BLAQUE KC after it spent tens of thousands of dollars backing two candidates who ran and won seats on the Kansas City Public Schools board. The nonprofit had declined to say what groups were behind that money, and some Kansas City school leaders suspected BLAQUE KC was part of an effort to undermine public school systems in support of charters and the national school choice movement. We still don’t support that initiative.

But this is different. Nearly half of public school children in Kansas City attend charter schools. Improving the governing boards at those schools is appropriate.

Getting elected to school boards also comes with hurdles for people of color. Independence this year elected its first Black school board member in the history of the district. It was just two years ago that Lee’s Summit elected its first Black person to the board.

BLAQUE KC’s draft is, as Hill said, evidence that “when asked, leaders of color will step up to serve their community,” and its schoolchildren. And that we all can celebrate.