As conservative Republicans seek more influence over Kansas public schools, two critical races on the November ballot that cut through Johnson and Wyandotte counties will help determine whether the state Board of Education lurches to the right.

Kansas State Board of Education districts 2 and 4 – which collectively encompass significant portions of the two counties – both feature battles between Democrats with experience in public education and Republicans critical of what they say are failings in the system. The districts represent two of the five on the ballot on Nov. 5. Half of the board’s 10 seats are up for election.

Conservatives currently control four seats, but could have a majority if they pick up just two seats. The prospect worries Democrats and more moderate Republicans, who fear a right-wing board would support efforts by the GOP-controlled Legislature to incentivize private education.

“These are religious ideologues who really are coming at this from a place of politics,” said Melanie Haas, a current board member running for reelection as a Democrat in District 2, which includes much of eastern Wyandotte County and northeast Johnson County.

“They haven’t been inside of a school, many of them, in many years. Of the five candidates, some of them didn’t even send their kids to public schools,” Haas said. “So I really take issue with them attacking our schools and using culture wars as the wedge when they really don’t know what’s going on inside of schools.”

Conservatives and other critics of public education are eager for a chance to disrupt the status quo. In their view, schools have strayed too far from core academic subjects and they voice concerns with test scores and student performance.

Haas, who won in 2020 by an 11-point margin, faces Republican Fred Postlewait, a retired Leavenworth Public Library computer systems manager who helped lead efforts to oppose a $420 million bond issue by Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools. Voters rejected the bond in a May election, prompting the KCK district to bring forward a smaller project for new school buildings that’s on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Postlewait on his website says over the past decade “social engineering has replaced education.” In an interview, he faulted “DEI” and the presence of cellphones and laptops in elementary schools. He criticized drops in ACT scores (Haas said scores have come down because Kansas now pays for the test so more students take it).

“The state board has seen this happening,” Postlewait said. At another point, he said, “the education for our students has been going downhill continually for the last nine years.”

Board control at stake

The state Board of Education has long been a battleground pitting conservative Republicans against moderate Republicans and Democrats. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the board famously fought over the teaching of evolution, adopting a series of science standards over several years as members struggled with each other over the topic.

The board has now been in a lengthy period of relatively moderate control for the past two decades. But the outcome of Tuesday’s contests could signal whether the board is entering a new, more tumultuous era.

“They do not have the same ideals that we used to have as Republicans,” Sally Cauble, a former Republican member of the state Board of Education, said of several of the current GOP candidates.

Cauble is helping lead Kansans for Excellence in Education, a PAC that’s endorsed this year’s Democratic candidates. She and other public education advocates expressed concern that national proponents of vouchers and tax incentives linked to private schools will target Kansas.

In 2023, the Kansas House passed a bill that would have created educational savings accounts for public and private school students across the state. The voucher-like program would have included a fund for families to use taxpayer dollars for private and homeschooling expenses. The state Senate rejected the bill.

Rep. Kristey Williams, an Augusta Republican who chairs the House K-12 Education Budget Committee, said she wants a state Board of Education that won’t oppose what she and supporters call “school choice” policies.

While the Legislature – not the board – appropriates funding for public education, the voices of board members can be influential among lawmakers.

“Kansans overwhelmingly want kids to be in the best possible environment so that they can learn,” Williams said. “I don’t think we should be confined to traditional methods of instruction that might be only public school. There are micro schools, there are homeschools, there are private schools.”

In District 4, Democrat Kris Meyer is clear she opposes any move toward vouchers or a voucher-like system. Meyer, who has previously worked as an elementary school principal in De Soto, said “school choice means vouchers” during a forum at the Lawrence Public Library earlier this month.

District 4 includes areas of northern Johnson County and southwest Wyandotte County, along with other areas of eastern Kansas. The current board member, Ann Mah, a Democrat who ran unopposed in 2020, didn’t seek reelection.

Meyer said that while Kansas public schools can always improve, they are “doing a great job.” She has been critical of her opponent, Republican Connie O’Brien, over her stance on education funding.

O’Brien, a former state legislator from Tonganoxie, answered a voter guide questionnaire that she strongly supports eliminating the U.S. Department of Education and responded “strongly agree” to the statement that “dollars should follow the child” in education – a phrase Meyer called code for vouchers.

O’Brien said at the Lawrence forum that she doesn’t support vouchers. Still, she suggested a desire for vouchers is rooted in legitimate grievances.

“You have to wonder why parents march up to the Capitol every year wanting those things,” O’Brien said.

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