How should Wichita school board members be elected? Some Black leaders seek change

Wichita voters may be given the option in November to reshape the way Kansas’ largest school district chooses school board members after community members raised concerns that minority voters aren’t being heard.

As it stands, registered voters in USD 259 can weigh in on all school board races in general elections. District-specific primaries narrow the field of candidates before races are decided citywide.

Critics of the current system say the board would be more representative if members were elected directly by residents in each of the six school board districts.

Speaking during a comment period at a school board meeting Monday, Wichita City Council member Brandon Johnson said the existing election system has disenfranchised voters in school District 1, which includes many of the city’s historically Black neighborhoods.

“I think the school board should be just like the city council, county commission and legislature, where voters of that specific district should have the opportunity to vote for their specific district and not have folks outside of that district weigh in on the representative,” Johnson said.

Last fall, three of the four incumbent school board members up for reelection were ousted by challengers in a slate of candidates recruited by the Sedgwick County Republican Party. New District 1 representative Diane Albert claimed 56% of the vote citywide while narrowly defeating incumbent Ben Blankley 50.9% to 49.1% in her own district, county election data shows.

In 2017, Blankley won the seat despite being outperformed by Betty Arnold among the District 1 voters he would go on to represent, 64.3% to 35.8%.

Johnson also expressed his displeasure with the newly drawn school board district boundaries, which move the historically Black McAdams neighborhood from District 1 to District 6, breaking it apart from other historically Black neighborhoods in District 1.

“If one has done the work to represent these communities, they also understand where these communities are and how we should be protecting them,” Johnson said. “In short, I am confident that there were other ways to uphold our constitutional duty to redistrict while not separating some of the Black voices out of District 1.”

LaWanda Deshazer, a youth adviser with the Kansas NAACP, said both the new maps and the citywide school board election system contribute to voter disenfranchisement in northeast Wichita.

“By disenfranchising the vote, we take away the voice of the people to say ‘We need better. We need more,’” Deshazer said. “When we have a representative over our district — no offense, but if you, not from our community in our district — you don’t always understand the needs that we have.”

Albert took exception to Deshazer’s assessment, saying it was “racist” to insinuate that she couldn’t represent the Black community on the school board.

“It is assumed that I do not understand District 1 and I don’t understand the needs of District 1,” Albert said. “Please do not let the color of my skin let you judge by that decision. I feel that’s a very racist assumption. I grew up at 13th and Oliver from birth to graduation. I’m very familiar with the needs of District 1.”

Black students make up roughly 19.5% of the school district’s 47,000 enrollment. Six of seven Wichita school board members are white, and the other, Hazel Stabler, is Native American.

“One of the reasons why I’m not in favor of this is because I really do want to focus on academic outcomes as the main thing that this board spends time talking about,” Albert said. “This seems like a political move. It seems like a great distraction on the time that we’re not talking about academic outcomes.”

John Todd of Wichita said he believes it’s most representative to allow school district voters to weigh in on all general-election races.

“What we have now is the hybrid, and it’s the best form of the hybrid in my opinion,” Todd said. “The districts vote in the primaries and then for the general election, all of the voters get to vote on it. I think that’s powerful because the best interest of the entire district should go into it.”

“I’ve heard everybody speak but I’m not sure I understand. If this is such a bad way, why has it been going on for 30 years?” said Kathy Bond, another new board member elected last year.

“Well, as you know, bad things can happen for many years until somebody has the courage to try to correct the problem,” board President Stan Reeser responded.

He said a district-only voting model would be more empowering than the status quo.

“Once you get overturned by somebody that is outside of your district, then that is when you start losing faith and trust in our democracy,” Reeser said. “I think this corrects a mistake.”

Reeser said he also wants to “clear up confusion” generated by the existing hybrid election model, which voters selected in 1994.

“People told me after the last local election that they didn’t vote because they knew their specific board member was not up for reelection,” Reeser said. “I tried to explain, well, you missed an opportunity to vote because of the fact that we do vote for our board of education members at-large.”

Speaking at the Wichita Pachyderm Club on Friday, Albert again characterized the effort to reassess the election system as politically motivated.

“They’re very upset that the Republican Party got involved and supported us,” Albert said. “They’re very upset that conservatives as a whole really paid attention to school board elections and we had a lot of help. They’re very, very upset by this, so what they’re trying to do is change it to district-only voting.”

She said she’s received backlash from within her own district for saying the current election system better represents constituents than a district-specific alternative.

“The NAACP group is very, very upset that I stand against this, because as District 1 representative, it’s mostly a Black minority population in the District 1 area,” Albert said. “They’re very upset with me over this opinion.”

Sandra Rankin, a retired school psychologist, said individual districts deserve to pick their own representatives.

“Although board of education members work for all students, they represent a certain district, and only that district should vote for them in the general election,” Rankin told school board members.

Albert is hosting a listening event at the Atwater Neighborhood Resource Center to hear from community members about what they want to see done. The event will run from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday.

The full school board is expected to take up the issue again at their Aug. 22 meeting. The deadline for getting a November ballot measure approved by the Sedgwick County Election Office is Sept. 1.