Joplin Progress Committee gives $4,000 to Slumber Party Four

The desperate push to continue the Joplin R-8 School District down its present path began with a slumber party at the administration building at 32nd and Duquesne and is now being continued with a generous helping of campaign cash from some of the city's business interests (and a surprising number from outside the city).

As noted earlier today, the Joplin Progress Committee has contributed $4,000 to the school board race, with the promise of more coming as we approach the April election.

Those who received the contributions were Board President Jeff Flowers, incumbent board member Randy Steele, Shawn McGrew, who has been closely associated with the Bright Futures program, and Lynda Banwart, who headed the committee that pushed successfully for the passage of the bond issue following the tornado.


The significance of the slumber party is that Flowers and Steele, who should definitely have known better,  McGrew an Banwart were allowed to stay comfortably inside the Administration Building for several hours before the doors officially opened and candidates could officially sign up.

Getting the top spots on the balot is important. Studies have shown that when voters do not know the candidates or are in doubt about who to vote for, they often go for the first ones listed on the ballot.

The Slumber Party Four, the ones who appear to want the follow the path laid out for the district by Superintendent C. J. Huff, took advantage of the fact that the board members had keys to the building, something that others who wished to run did not have. That meant they could be there early and could decide who else to invite.

The  listing of candidates features Flowers,  McGrew, Steele, and Lynda. Banwart in the first four positions.

Now they not only have the top positions on the ballot but they also have money from special interests that has not been put into Joplin School Board races before. Perfectly legal, but what these people want out of the Joplin R-8 School District, especially those from out of town, may not be what parents and other taxpayers want.

This is what I wrote about the slumber party in the December 17 Turner Report:

The April 2014 Joplin R-8 Board of Education race will be a referendum to decide whether district patrons want to continue to allow C. J. Huff to continue to play high roller with his pyramid scheme of financial management or whether they would prefer a return to fiscal sanity.

It also marks a turning point for whether they want to continue to allow teachers and staff to be fearful of losing their jobs if they say or do one thing to displease those at the top (or even if they are just doing a job that administrators want to give to someone else) or if they want to make the Joplin School District the workplace of choice as it once was.

Most importantly, the April ballot is a choice between one new program and one new expenditure after another designed to build administrators' resumes or finally making decisions based on what is best for the children and the taxpayers.

Let history show that the most important board election in years began with a slumber party.

Details are not clear about exactly who attended this slumber party, which was held at the Administration Building at 32nd and Duquesne, only that select people were invited. Filing for the Joplin R-8 Board of Education officially began at 8 a.m. this morning when the doors were unlocked. For the first time, some board candidates were allowed to circumvent the rules.

Board President Jeff Flowers indicated that he arrived at 8 p.m. the previous night, using his own key to enter the building..

According to her Facebook page, by the time former Irving Elementary Principal Debbie Fort showed up at the building at 3:30 a.m. to wait in line, she received an unexpected greeting.

"I arrived at the Board of Education at 3:30 am to file my candidacy. Imagine my surprise to discover one or more of the current board members waiting inside the warm building. I don't know if it's legal but for me it certainly seems unethical. They offered to let me wait inside but I declined. Seems like the playing field should be the same for everyone."

Reportedly, it was Jeff Flowers who greeted her.

The idea behind arriving early is the tried-and-true premise that those who are not certain about who they are going to vote for have a tendency to cast their ballots for the first names listed.

Those names, in addition to Flowers, include his fellow board member and former board president Randy Steele, Shawn McGrew, who has played a prominent role in Bright Futures the past couple of years, and Linda Banwart, one of the people who was in charge of the successful campaign for the $62 million bond issue, the largest in Joplin R-8 history. All four reportedly were part of the slumber party designed to make sure their names were listed first. (Note: The names will be listed in this order- Steele, McGrew, Flowers, Banwart.)

What they talked about during the long hours is unclear. Perhaps they ordered pizza and whiled away the time discussing whether Becky really kissed Johnny or if Cindy had a crush on Freddie.

Maybe time was spent on a rollicking game of Truth and Dare, ending with a dare for everyone to ask for plush jobs with Western Governors University.

Or perhaps they waited in stony silence, waiting for someone to have an original thought.

After Debbie Fort turned down Flowers' generous offer to come in out of the cold and join the slumber party, the next candidates to arrive, also left off the invitation list, were Jeff Koch and David Guilford.

Their names will be a bit further down the list.

This time, despite the statistics, I have a feeling most people are going to review the full list of candidates. Despite the Joplin media's lack of interest in the scandals surrounding C. J. Huff, Angie Besendorfer, and the Joplin R-8 School District, word has been spreading quickly.

Angie Besendorfer is already on her way out, the first to desert the proverbial sinking ship. While state and federal investigators have been focusing in on the problems emanating from 32nd and Duquesne, C. J; Huff has been scrambling to hold his crumbling empire together.

During the past couple of months, Huff has discouraged some people who wanted to run for board of education and, on at least one occasion, dropped a hint to a prospective board candidate's employer that running for the position could cause problems in the workplace.

And Huff has every reason to be worried- if his favored candidates do not win, the days of "joined at the hip' will be a distant, unpleasant memory. All that will be needed at that point, is one more vote to bring an end to the disaster that has been C. J. Huff's administration.