Controlled Programming

 

By Gretchen Garrity

Tuesday night (March 19, 2024) there was a Nixa School Board Candidate Forum. It was hosted by the Nixa Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) and the Nixa Teachers Association (NTA). Held in the Media Center, the forum was well attended.

The sponsors had selected questions and given them to the candidates ahead of the forum. Therefore, the candidates' answers were about as vanilla as they could get. They were canned. They were rehearsed. I'm not blaming the candidates. Who wouldn't want to be spared inconvenient questions, or questions that one had no answer for? Who would want to be confronted by an upset parent or voter?

The forum was what is called controlled programming. You, the voter, have no voice (unless you managed to get a submitted question chosen and even then you couldn't talk). If you arrived at the meeting early enough to meet and shake hands with the candidates, you might have been able to ask them a question. Or, if you lingered afterwards you might have gotten a question in. 

But the formal process of a citizen squaring off in public with a declared candidate, a citizen positioned as an equal able to query and expect answers from the person who is asking for their vote, was missing.

In general, these forums are how the System checks off boxes. Public meeting? Check. Candidate forum? Check. Voter information? Check. Public duty? Check. 

It's all for show.

How much is really learned about the candidates? Having sat through a couple of these types of events, the candidates pretty much said the same things as at the other times. The forum last night was recorded. Whether it was live-streamed or will be released online I don't know. If it was live-streamed or released, I would've saved the time and energy of being a mere spectator needed to fill the audience.

I had questions. They weren't the questions in the prearranged forum. They were tough questions I wanted to ask two of the candidates. 

A question for current school board president/candidate Josh Roberts: "You mentioned that the school district is currently consulting with a psychologist to decide whether to provide an on-campus psychologist to teachers. Can you tell me what has changed in the last decade or so that would warrant teachers needing a psychologist on campus?"

A question for school board candidate Megan Deal: "Can you give your opinion of trauma-based education?" And a followup, "Would you agree that parents should be provided an opt-out form if they decide they don't want their children participating in any type of data collection via surveys, questionnaires or evaluations that refers to their child's feelings or beliefs or attitudes, especially those relating to sexual behavior, orientation, or gender identity?"

Civic participation in the election process is so important that events like the PTO/NTA forum ultimately prove unhelpful. What has happened to debates, and open forums, where voters can get a real idea of the candidates' suitability for public office? To preempt questions from the citizens and give candidates the questions ahead of time is a disservice to the community when there is no other avenues for public discourse.

We are being controlled by a managerial class of government workers and their associates who may not even be aware that the processes they implement are not in the spirit or letter of a free exchange of ideas. Citizens deserve to be able to interview the candidates in order to determine which one best deserves their vote.

I would ask the Nixa PTO and NTA to change their format during the next election and allow a period of time for the citizens to actually participate in the forum. Allow questions that might bring up uncomfortable subjects such as Social Emotional Learning and Diversity Equity and Inclusion, and how those agenda--implemented from both the federal and state level in our local schools--are causing behavioral issues in students.

Instead of calling for more social workers and psychologists and more government programs, perhaps a truly open forum would allow citizens to engage on a level that would actually bring both enlightenment and change to our school boards and ultimately benefit the students and staff.

I'm inserting this video of an interview of Abigail Shrier, author of Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up, to give you an idea of how important ideas are not being shared with our candidates, or others in the audience. It's fascinating, and our community needs to know that there is a very different narrative to the one we are exposed to by the System, which is always and only a call for more programs and more staff:

One last point. We the People of Christian County is the only group I know of (please tell me if you know of others), that had local school board candidates come to speak...and take unvetted questions from the citizens. I would say a couple of the candidates were probably sweating by the time they got out of there, but they came and took questions. Thanks to Josh Roberts and Megan Deal of Nixa, and to Jason Shaffer in Ozark and Edmund Unger in Sparta. And a big thanks to We the People of Christian County.

Skewing the Stats

 

"There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics." -- Benjamin Disraeli

By Gretchen Garrity

We the People of Christian County held a candidate forum in Nixa on March 4, 2024, where an oft-repeated statistic was shared with citizens by Nixa School Board President and candidate Josh Roberts. He said, "We’re fiftieth in the nation, fiftieth in teacher pay. It’s embarrassing, but the local community--we pay more than most other communities--so we are doing our part. It needs to come from the state and federal level to increase teacher pay and not from your pocket.” Roberts was wise to read the prevailing winds, since local taxpayers are increasingly fed up with property tax increases for schools.

Currently, total funding for public schools in Missouri looks like this from the Missouri Budget Project:

Click on image for clarity

 As you can see, local property taxes make up a very large percentage of funding for government schools compared to national percentages. Even though, according to the Missouri Constitution, "Art. IX, Sec. 1(a). Free public schools...the general assembly shall establish and maintain free public schools for the gratuitous instruction of all persons in this state within ages not in excess of twenty-one years as prescribed by law."

DEAD LAST?

But we are going to concentrate on the startling statistic that Roberts shared. How can Missouri be so terribly low in salaries for teacher pay? Dead last? As everyone knows, statistics can be manipulated to show just about anything. Before we go on, ask yourself where did this stat originate?

If you go looking for it you will find it widely reported in the press: "Missouri ranks last in nation for average teacher starting salary." The "News" has helped to spread this narrative, which the linked article sources as the NEA, the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the United States. Here is the Missouri NEA's Salary Benchmarks and Rankings. Not light reading at almost 200 pages, and who can trust them?

This very short video (one minute) shares how government schools are funded:

 

According to the Show Me Institute in an article titled "Breaking: The Actual Starting Teacher Salary According to DESE," by James V. Shuls, “The NEA report calculates the average starting salary of Missouri’s more than 500 districts. It counts small, low-paying school districts the same as it counts large, higher-paying school districts.

If the Middle Grove School District, which according to the Missouri State Teachers Association is the only district to start teachers at the state minimum of $25,000 and has just 35 students, were to hire one teacher, and the Parkway School District, with more than 17,000 students, were to hire 20 teachers at the starting salary of $44,250, the NEA report would count each district once and say the average starting salary was just $34,625. In reality, the average of those 21 new teachers would be $43,333. This is a difference of more than $8,700.”

“The NEA reports Missouri’s starting salary as $33,234. But what is Missouri’s actual average starting teacher salary?

According to data I have obtained from DESE, the average regular term salary for a first-year teacher in Missouri was $38,367.33 in 2022. This figure was provided directly by DESE after my request. The increase of more than $5,000 would move Missouri up to 37th on the NEA report.”

Do read the whole thing (not long).

There are numerous sites with statistics that rank Missouri anywhere from the bottom to somewhere in the middle of the pack of fifty states:

Education Data Initiative

USA Facts

Congressional Research Service

Missouri School Rankings

Study (teacher salaries by state)

Zip Recruiter (Teacher salaries in Missouri. This is fascinating since this site has no educational agenda)

Zip Recruiter (Teacher salaries by state. Here Missouri ranks 21)

Lastly, as you look at the statistics from the different organizations, you will see that often the differences in salary are only a few hundred dollars from state to state.

As long as we allow the narrative to be about dollars alone as the major comparative, taxpayers will keep taking the hit through manipulation by both the news and school districts. 

What about academic scores? What about cost of living? What about each community's differing needs and wants?

In an article titled "Follow the Money" by Susan Pendergrass, the question is asked, "Do you ever wonder where more than $250,000 spent on a classroom of 20 students goes? So did we—so we built a website to help answer this question."

The website is excellent and helps citizens to understand more about the labyrinth of school spending in Missouri.