She admits she cursed out fellow Hickman Mills school board member. How can she lead? | Opinion

Carol Graves was livid, she said. And she’d grown tired of what she called disrespect from fellow Hickman Mills school district board members Irene Kendrick and Beth Boerger, she told us in a lively discussion this week.

But the profanity-laced tirade Graves fired off during last month’s school board meeting was unbecoming of an elected official.

If allegations that Graves referred to Boerger as “that white b****” and told Kendrick to “shut the f*** up” are true, we must question Graves’ ability to effectively serve in a leadership position.

In a letter sent last month to the board, Jessica Swete, president of the Hickman Mills teachers union, called on Graves to resign.

Graves isn’t going anywhere she told us. She’s been a board member for eight years and is proud of her service, she said.

“The Hickman Mills NEA is requesting that Carol Graves resign her position immediately as a Hickman Mills school board member,” Swete wrote on behalf of the union.

The correspondence, dated May 31, continued: “During the May 25th, 2023, school board meeting, the audience heard Ms. Graves screaming at other school board members. During that same meeting, Ms. Graves told other members to ‘shut the f*** up’ and ‘you and that white b****.’”

After viewing video and listening to audio from the school board’s closed-door May 25 meeting, we can’t fault district stakeholders for wanting change. On the recording, we can hear portions of the unprofessional confrontation.

Although we can’t explicitly hear a racial slur from Graves, something was said that prompted this reply from Kendrick, who clearly says: “I hope everyone heard the racist comments she made. I hope everyone heard that.”

Others in attendance did, according to the teachers’ union.

Reached via email, both Kendrick and Boerger declined to comment.

Did Graves, the immediate past president of the Hickman Mills Board of Education, go too far? Absolutely.

To her credit, Graves knew she was wrong and publicly apologized at the same meeting. In a statement provided to us this week, she denied she called Boerger a racial slur.

She did not deny she cursed at Kendrick.

“I did not make the statement alleged in the letter from the teacher’s union,” Graves wrote. “There were heated comments made during the last board meeting. The board recessed the meeting and upon return I publicly apologized.”

On video, what we viewed reminded us of petulant children throwing a tantrum when things don’t go their way. Graves wants to be board president again, according to district officials we spoke with. But so does Kendrick. The board is split 3-3, they said. And the deadlock will continue as long the board continues to bicker over how to fill its vacant seat without violating its own bylaws.

As a body, the Hickman Mills school board needs to get its act together. Too much is at stake. It has until July 15 to appoint a seventh member, according to Missouri statutes. It has shown it cannot function properly without one.

For years, the district in south Kansas City has struggled to regain its accreditation, but has slowly made progress toward that distinction. But the infighting is embarrassing and it cannot possibly look like it’s making headway in the eyes of state officials who oversee the accreditation process, district officials said.

During a conversation with a member of The Star’s editorial board, Graves paused mid-sentence and asked: “Why is this important to you?”

It’s important because the spat was clearly distracting the board from important business it was supposed to be conducting. District residents elected her and her colleagues to represent them in the best interests of schoolchildren. No elected official should lose sight of the schools’ mission to educate young people.

But for the greater good of the children of the Hickman Mills district, Graves must step down or at least stop blocking another director from being named school board president.

And we don’t make that call without a great deal of consideration.