The Missouri School Borg Association

 

By Gretchen Garrity

 

The Missouri School Boards Association (MSBA), a private quasi-governmental organization whose purpose is to assist Missouri school boards, recently held their 2023 Fall Delegate Assembly.

The MSBA works in conjunction with other state-level professional organizations and alongside the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to implement top-down agendas that are not only in direct conflict with local control, but seek to implement and advocate for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI), Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Critical Race Theory (CRT).

With a 2023-2024 revenue budget of over $12 million (some of which is in the form of federal tax dollars), the MSBA is a powerful presence in Missouri schools. According to their own explanation, “Since 1936, MSBA has been the unified voice of school board members throughout the state.”

Why would school board members in Ozark want to have a unified voice with school board members in St. Louis or Kansas City? Why would local school board members want a unified voice with those in any other locale for that matter? One unified voice for all Missouri school board members is not local control.

It is centralized control.

From: Fed-Space

Just the tip of the School Borg, the MSBA is a full-service provider:

“MSBA offers Basic and Full Maintenance policy services to our member districts. Our team of experienced policy editors and lawyers will work with your district to develop policies that drive excellence.”

If you look at MSBA-member school boards across the state you will indeed see a uniform structure of policies and guidelines that are amazingly...unified. Certifications, training, resources, personnel, financial services, business connections, education safety, emergency operations, and legal aid are some of what the MSBA offers. It’s a one-stop shop that makes it easy for school boards to justify paying membership fees that reach into the thousands of dollars annually.

If your local school board is seeking a new superintendent, the MSBA is happy to provide candidates. The MSBA’s school board policies also hand over most of the school board’s authority to superintendents.

In the video below Ozark School Board members Amber Bryant and Guy Callaway at the Nov. 16, 2023 Ozark School Board meeting, advocate for school personnel control by the superintendent and not the school board. Involving a new position, that of Human Resources Executive Director, discussion included who the new director would report to. Board Member Christina Tonsing suggested that the board might have oversight over this employee and not the superintendent. She reasoned that if there was an issue with the superintendent, there was nowhere for staff to resort since the position would be under the direct supervision of the superintendent.

This policy puts the superintendent, an employee of the school board, in a position of authority so complete that there is little to no recourse for school employees who may have issues with the superintendent. Board member Amber Bryant stated, "The only person who reports to the board is the superintendent." Callaway concurred. "I don't think they should report directly to the board," he said.

Interestingly, Bryant is the human resources director for Christian County. She reports to a "board," the citizen-elected Christian County Commissioners. Why wouldn't the elected Ozark School Board provide for a similar personnel structure? They have voluntarily given their authority to a non-elected individual. It is well known that Ozark school employees have been victims of this structure in the past. You can read about them here.

 

The board minutes show how the vote went.

Readers should know that the policy Bryant stated is simply that, a policy. It does not have the force of law. The school board could easily adopt a policy that allows for certain other employees to report to the board, thus placing ultimate authority in personnel matters to the board and not the superintendent--a non-elected position. Here is the Missouri Statute regarding how school boards govern.

The video below is prompted to the discussion at around 47 minutes:

Thanks to Ozark Schools Support Team for providing the video.

This is what 18 hours of MSBA training will get taxpayers—school control in the hands of administrative staff and not the elected school board.

It is organizations like the MSBA, working alongside state government agencies, that have created a veritable Borg system of rules, regulations, and guidelines that drain away local control, and put power in the hands of state-level trade organizations and often handpicked administrators instead of elected board members.

Unfortunately, it is often school board members who are unwilling to utilize their authority for the good of the students and staff that allow for the MSBA to control what happens in local schools.

Guy Callaway & Patty Quessenberry, Ozark School Board members

MORE ON THE MSBA BORG

The MSBA Assembly is held annually. Member delegates gather to confirm the MSBA’s annual budget, its advocacy position proposals, give reports, adopt the agenda, and other business. Although the MSBA is a voluntary organization, it rules school board members through a maze of guidelines and regulations that are enforced on the local level by ignorant and/or complicit school boards.

Throughout the MSBA’s 2023 delegate handbook is a constant drumbeat for increased taxes. In fact, in their first policy proposal, the MSBA advocates for “Adequate and Equitable Public School Funding...MSBA supports increasing state revenues available to adequately fund public education by bringing certain taxes on tobacco, e-cigarettes, imitation tobacco or cigarette products, recreational marijuana, alcohol and alcohol-related products, and internet sales to a level consistent with the national average.”

Regardless of the desired tax on marijuana and internet sales, the word “equitable” is the word to focus on. This is the term that Marxists use to take money from one group and distribute it to another group. Now just remember, that approximately 75% of property taxes go to fund public schools in our local school districts. But this isn’t enough for the MSBA. They come right out and say this about the current tax on tobacco products:

“The recreational marijuana-specific tax rate is not currently used to fund public schools. The Missouri Constitution specifies that the taxes are used for a) administration costs, b) the costs of expunging criminal records for marijuana-related offenses, c) costs of health care and other services to military veterans and their families, d) to increase access to drug addiction treatment, overdose prevention education, and job placement, housing and counseling for those with substance use disorders, and e) to provide legal assistance for low- income Missourians through the Missouri public defender system.”

The MSBA wants to take tax dollars away from military veterans and their families, treatment for drug addiction, and other programs for low-income Missourians. You can’t make this stuff up.

The handbook then moves on to the MSBA’s advocacy positions. We will focus mainly on the highlights of their advocacy positions that involve centralized control. Within the verbiage the word “equitable” or “equitably” occurs at least five times regarding the funding of public schools. The MSBA:

• Supports legislation to “fund state and local programs to eliminate disparity in achievement among all students.” (Utopian silliness.)

• Supports legislation to provide “relief” to school districts that have a “significant amount of tax-exempt property. (Like churches and some job-providing businesses?)

• Urges an increase in state funding “to allow districts to provide free early childhood education programs.” (You can say good bye to small independent childcare businesses.)

• Supports a state program to provide “low-interest loans to school districts during difficult financial times.” (In addition to the bonds and levies that taxpayers already provide?)

• Supports a “constitutional amendment permitting the increase of a school district’s bonding capacity to 20 percent. (Let's help the taxpayer accrue more debt on the school's behalf!)
  

• Supports legislation exempting “public school districts from paying state motor fuel tax for fuel consumed by school buses.”

• Supports an increase in the state motor fuel tax in Missouri!

That’s just some of what you will find in the delegate handbook. It must be noted that the MSBA also desires to have government control over tax abatement projects, including: “School boards shall have legal standing to participate in all phases of the process, including any legal appeal relating to any tax abatement application for property located in the school district...School boards shall have veto power over their portion of any tax abatement project.”

Let’s ponder that for a moment. The MSBA wants school boards to be able to have legal standing over a city or county’s tax abatement processes, including having veto power. I wonder if our tax assessor and other elected city and county officials know about that. This seems like an outright usurpation of the authority vested in other elected officials.

This is the bloated, centralized tick that is sucking tax dollars from wherever it can and attempting to accrue political power wherever it can. 

Moving on, the MSBA:

• Supports “legislation mandating accurate real property assessments and practices to ensure comparable assessments and practices throughout the state.” (So much for local governance.)

• Moving quickly through the positions, the MSBA also advocates for a state accreditation system that forces any schools that receive state funding to be under the system.

• States student curriculum must be inclusive to educate the whole student. This is DEI language.

• Says local districts can come up with goals and objectives for learning as long they meet state and national standards, but then says the local districts are not allowed to prohibit or mandate specific curricular content. (Doublespeak. Schoolspeak. Centralized control of curriculum.)

• Wants standardized kindergarten readiness tests.

• Advocates for state licensing requirements to all public preschools, as well as full certification for all Missouri preschool teachers.

• Advocates for a single, statewide reporting system to be funded, for “safety” reasons.

• Advocates for a State school safety coordinator.

• Advocates that all students MUST attend school until 18 or a diploma.

• Wants to require homeschooling parents to annually report to the school district where their child(ren) reside.

• Wants more control over releasing information regarding emergency operations, school safety hot line, and to have limited financial penalties when schools “inadvertently” break the law.

   
  

  

  Photo: Giant Freaking Robot
  

  
  

Ozark School Board Member Patty Quessenberry, who has been a board member for 27 years, is also the president-elect of the MSBA. She has recently spoken of the MSBA in glowing terms. She has been assimilated. She is most likely running for another term on the Ozark School Board.