By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Defeat at the polls has the St. Joseph Board of Education reflecting on what went wrong.
Part of that is taking a good, long look at its reflection in the mirror.
St. Joseph School Board member, Mike Moore, says board members have heard a lot since the April 8th defeat of the $157 million bond issue.
“I heard, well, we couldn’t vote for it because we didn’t have an exact piece of ground identified,” Moore tells KFEQmmunity. “We heard, quite frankly, we heard voters just don’t like the school board.”
Moore says he doesn’t take that personally, but has heard the message.
St. Joseph voters soundly rejected the proposal April 8th. Only 5,262 voted in favor of it, according to unofficial results released by the Buchanan County Clerk’s office, with 6,081 voting against; a split of 53.61% against to 46.39%. The issue, which would have increased the St. Joseph school levy by 60 cents, needed a 57% majority to pass.
Moore says some have told him the board was too involved in the campaign. But Moore says the board felt it needed to take a bigger role, because a past campaign used the district email, a minor violation, but still a violation of state campaign laws.
“The board felt strongly that we needed to be deeply involved so that we could help control those sort of mistakes,” Moore says. “Looking back, I think there’s enough dislike of the board in general that that probably hurt Prop 2.”
Moore says the complaints he has heard generally target only a couple of the school board members, focusing on the social media posts they make. Still, Moore says the board acts as a whole and all of its members must work together to move the St. Joseph School District forward.
Moore says there is only one way to address the perception.
“It’s really us trying to find a way that everybody – I say everybody – most people feel like they win. Right? Right?” Moore says. “So, it seems like everything that we can come up with, every path that we take people perceive there’s a big loss. And so we have to find a way that the community, staff feels like their winning.”
The St. Joseph School District has a formal survey on its website, asking for public input. Click HERE to access the survey.
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You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.
