photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

At an event hosted Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023, at the Lied Center Pavilion, voters were able to speak directly with candidates running in the upcoming Nov. 7 general election, including Lawrence City Commission candidates Courtney Shipley, right, and Dustin Stumblingbear, left. The Lawrence NAACP branch, Loud Light and Black:30 hosted the event, which also included back-to-back forums for the City Commission and Lawrence school board candidates. 

At back-to-back forums Saturday, candidates running for seats on the Lawrence City Commission and Lawrence school board were asked a wide range of questions about equity-related topics, such as how to support students from marginalized backgrounds and minority-owned businesses.

Lawrence’s NAACP branch, Loud Light and Black:30 partnered to host the event at the Lied Center Pavilion, and the event also featured periods after each forum for community members to speak directly with the candidates.

Nine of the 10 candidates running for seats on the school board — current board members Shannon Kimball, Carole Cadue-Blackwood and Ronald “G.R.” Gordon-Ross and newcomers Ariel Miner, Rachel Stumblingbear, Anne Costello, Yolanda Franklin, Brandon Moore and Jody Meyer — were present. Fellow newcomer Edward “E.J.” Gonzales was absent because of a death in the family.

This was the first school board candidate forum since the 11th candidate previously running for election, Kevin Coronado, dropped out of the race. Coronado suspended his campaign earlier this week after being arrested last weekend on suspicion of driving under the influence, though his name will still appear on the November ballots, which have already been printed.

For the City Commission race, five out of six candidates — incumbents Amber Sellers and Courtney Shipley, former commissioner Mike Dever and newcomers Dustin Stumblingbear and Justine Burton — were present at Saturday’s event. Fellow incumbent Brad Finkeldei was absent due to a family commitment.

The deadline to register to vote in the general election is Tuesday, Oct. 17, and advance voting by mail or in person at the Douglas County Elections Office, 711 W. 23rd St., begins the following day.

School board forum

The school board candidates were first asked how they’d respond to a parent or community member challenging school curriculum or library materials.

Costello noted that books dealing with racism, sexuality and gender are often the targets of such challenges, and they’re often written by members of marginalized communities. She said those challenges are also often coming from a vocal minority.

“Research has shown that nationwide, complaints are largely driven by a (small) number of people,” Costello said. “From 2021 to 2022, 11 people were responsible for 60% of book challenges nationwide … and one man alone filed 92 challenges. I don’t agree with book banning, but I do believe that parents have a right — however, that right strictly pertains to their child and not to everyone else’s child.”

The group on the whole was against the idea of banning books or curriculum outright; Franklin and Moore said that teachers should be the ones trusted to make decisions about classroom materials. Gordon-Ross and Stumblingbear also said that it’s still important that the school board hear about challenges to the district’s curriculum, whether just as a way to double-check or as a closer examination of how that curriculum impacts the district’s equity work.

Candidates were also asked about their plan for improving academic outcomes for minority students. Franklin, the first to answer, said that there would be decades of ground to make up when it comes to that issue.

“We have been fighting for academic acceptance since the U.S. was desegregated in 1954,” Franklin said. “Sixty-nine years. Sixty-nine years we’ve been fighting to not just be considered an afterthought in the public school system. My plan is to try to put more of us in some of these decision-making roles.”

Franklin said she also wants to see the district working to offer free mental health services for minority students and to establish curriculum that centers their unique learning needs more.

Cadue-Blackwood said she’d like to see the district work with Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health to engage in an equity impact analysis that can help board members better understand how the recent closures of Pinckney and Broken Arrow elementary schools affected children displaced by them.

Stumblingbear said more mentorship programs for math and science and a redesigned curriculum could help. Miner suggested lowering class sizes and focusing on building staffing stability as other solutions.

Gordon-Ross and Kimball said the district has already been working to improve outcomes for minority students, and that has involved examining data. Kimball pointed to improving graduation rates and state assessment scores as areas where there has been incremental progress.

Candidates also shared their thoughts on the role implicit bias has in Lawrence’s educational system and how they’d solve it. For most candidates, the solution was to implement more robust bias training, and not just in the form of a video that the trainee may or may not actively engage in.

“I think that if we’re going to have police in our schools, we need to have some really intense implicit bias training that is continual and ongoing,” Miner said. “The more that we hold events that bring us together in all parts of our city, the more we can decrease implicit bias in our community.”

That’s the kind of training that Moore said could prevent bias from driving decision-making from district leaders. Meyer also suggested making the criteria for decision-making as objective as possible to avoid such challenges.

City Commission forum

At the City Commission candidate forum that followed, candidates were asked about a few areas they’d already addressed at previous forum events, like how to balance the interests of Lawrence’s business community and homeless population and how to prepare for the economic impact of the Panasonic battery plant coming to nearby De Soto.

But the candidates were also asked about a few topics that hadn’t come up at other events, such as the community’s role in police oversight. That’s part of a “bigger continuum,” Sellers said, in which relationships between public safety officers and the community help to build another pathway to accountability. From there, she said direct oversight is possible through groups like Lawrence’s Community Police Review Board.

That group is still finding its footing at the direction of the current City Commission, as it continues the process of changing how it reviews complaints about policing matters. The CPRB was something the community asked for, Shipley said, and as such should review department policy and the data the city’s been collecting about policing already.

Dever said he thought the CPRB should ultimately have more authority to make decisions once it’s active again.

“I think the community is the ultimate arbiter of what police need to be doing in our community,” Dever said. “We are the ones who decide, because we’re the ones paying the taxes and are in charge of their overall pay. The community has a great say in what happens.”

Stumblingbear said he’s gotten a firsthand view of how policing in Lawrence works through things like going on ride-along trips with officers, the type of hands-on experience he encouraged more of the community to try.

Candidates were also asked how they’d work to serve the needs of minority-owned businesses if elected. Burton, who founded and owns a nonprofit organization herself, said she would make it a priority to sit down and talk with people interested in starting a business individually, in order to get a better gauge of their needs. She also expressed interest in partnering with a local bank or credit union to offer some sort of incentive package to new businesses.

“As someone that is owner and founder of a nonprofit organization here in Lawrence, I can say how minorities are left out and just kind of ignored when it comes to getting any kind of assistance,” Burton said.

Dever said it’s important to communicate all of the types of opportunities available to entrepreneurs, like the Lawrence chamber of commerce’s Diversify Douglas County program, which is intended to offer low-cost loan funding to minority business owners looking to start or expand a business. Stumblingbear said just communicating isn’t the only solution, though — he said it’s important that those prospective entrepreneurs have opportunities to learn the ropes from their peers, other minority entrepreneurs who have successfully navigated running a business.

Sellers said during her time as a city commissioners thus far, she’s been able to recognize how city policies impact minority-owned businesses differently. She said it’s important to “reimagine” tools like the Community Development Block Grant, which she said other communities have used to put more funding and support into their minority-owned businesses.

Finally, candidates were asked how the City Commission can help historically marginalized groups participate in public processes. Burton said it’s important for city leaders not to be dismissive and to listen more, and Stumblingbear said the venues where those processes are taking place should be places where everyone feels safe expressing their views.

Others, including Shipley and Dever, said it needed to be a deliberate effort. Shipley said the city must take care to avoid putting together all-white groups for the city’s various boards and commissions, and Dever said it’s about meeting people where they’re at and asking them directly if they want to participate.

Sellers said that instead of asking marginalized groups to come to the City Commission, the City Commission has a responsibility to go to them.

“With polarizing discourse, we have to stop thinking that coming to the commission meeting and waiting to give three minutes of public comment is the only way that you can be part of a participatory government,” Sellers said. “There are other ways.”