Who is this Mike Landis who is running for Joplin R-8 Board Part 1

You can forgive Joplin patrons if they don't have any idea who this new guy is who is running for the R-8 Board of Education.

The flyer offers an introduction.

"While others follow, Landis leads- always has, always will."

"Mike Landis has never been afraid to make tough decisions that put taxpayers first.

"Mike is a leader for local control, not driven by bureaucrats or ego."

Who the heck is this Mike Landis?

This can't be the same guy who served on the Board of Education for years and made the tough decisions that resulted in "might as well" spending or paying nearly $100,000 to replace bleachers for the new Joplin High School because they were the wrong color.

Or the same one who joined with other board members to hand all decision making after the May 22, 2011 tornado to former superintendent C. J. Huff.

Or the same one who sat silently as Huff launched misogynistic attacks at board members Debbie Fort and Jennifer Martucci and often whispered back and forth with Huff while either of those two was speaking.

Could this be the same Mike Landis who said nary a word as millions and millions flowed out of the school district during the Huff era, but became incensed at the idea of teachers wearing blue jeans one day a week.

Landis mentions on his flyer that he is a former member of the board. He fails to mention that he quit the board, became involved in a secretive plot with former Superintendent C. J. Huff to create enough vacancies that replacements would be chosen by the Jasper County Commission and not by the board itself. The plot came three months after Landis, knowing that new board members were likely to be elected who wanted Huff out of the district, made sure to add another year to his contract.

After that Landis was in the majority on a 4-3 vote to give Huff a generous severance package.

Those developments were all explained in a Turner Report post written December 20, 2016, on the day Huff received his final district paycheck- more than a year and a half after his 'retirement."

Three weeks after the hiring of new Superintendent Melinda Moss, the Joplin R-8 School District is finally rid of the man she is replacing.

Though C. J. Huff has not done any work for the district since June 30, 2015 (except for helping with the multi-million dollar P1 lawsuit, created by his desperate, but unsuccessful, effort to get the new Joplin High School opened on time in 2014), he has continued collecting his paycheck on the 20th of each month.

The last paycheck was deposited into his account today.

Huff's time would have already been up had it not been for a decision by the R-8 Board of Education in February 2015 to add another year to Huff's contract. The board, which included Huff loyalists Mike Landis, Randy Steele, Anne Sharp, Shawn McGrew, and Lynda Banwart, added a third year to the remaining two years of Huff's contract despite knowledge that Huff was going to be heavily criticized in a state audit and was almost certain to lose his majority support at the April 2015 election.

After the election of Jeff Koch and Jennifer Martucci, Huff, who had attacked Martucci in Facebook postings in an attempt to keep her from being elected, made little effort to work with the new board, insulting board members Debbie Fort and Martucci during meetings and refusing to turn over documents to board members, instead requiring them to fill out Sunshine Law requests and pay for the materials.

Huff finally agreed to "retire," but not before milking the taxpayers for everything he could get. With Landis and Steele fighting for him, Huff was able to get full pay through the end of 2016, $50,000 to serve as a consultant on the lawsuits he had brought on during his tenure, primarily the P1 action, and he was able to write his own recommendation letter, which included the revelation that when Huff came to Joplin, the community was apathetic and did not care about education, and then listed his successes, especially with Bright Futures.

Part of the deal also requires that no one on the board say anything bad about Huff, nor he about anyone on the board.

Despite his generous severance agreement with the district, Huff was still not done setting up obstacles to the board members who had forced the vote on his retirement.

Documents obtained by the Turner Report through a Sunshine Law request, showed that Huff, Landis, Jasper County Commissioners John Bartosh and Darieus Adams, and Prosecuting Attorney Dean Dankelson conspired to throw the selection of a board member to replace former Joplin Police Chief Lane Roberts from the board elected by Joplin R-8 patrons to the County Commission.

On May 27, 2015, one day after Randy Steele resigned, claiming that he was receiving threats from people who wanted Jim Kimbrough appointed to the board to replace Roberts, Huff, aware Landis was planning on resigning as well, called the Missouri School Boards Association (MSBA) to find out what was necessary to get the Jasper County Commission to appoint replacement board members.

Susan Goldammer, senior director, employment and labor relations for MSBA, e-mailed the information to Huff, "Any vacancy occurring in the board shall be filled by the remaining members of the board, except that if there are more than two vacancies at any one time, the county commission, upon receiving written notice of the vacancies shall fill the vacancies by appointment."
Goldammer was unaware that anything was in the works.

"As you can see, it takes three or more vacancies for the county commission to get involved. That has only happened once since I have been at MSBA. The Board will need to fill these two," she said, referring to Steele and Roberts.

Huff forwarded Goldammer's e-mail to Landis at 12:36 p.m. May 27. At 9:38 p.m., Landis forwarded the e-mail to Darieus Adams.

In a June 3, 2015 e-mail from Landis to Bartosh and Dankelson, Landis wrote "We voted in April to accept Lane Roberts' resignation from the Joplin BOE. Thanks, Michael D. Landis."

From that e-mail, it was evident Landis had sent Dankelson word that he, Steele, and Roberts had resigned and that he wanted the County Commission to appoint replacements and that the prosecuting attorney had questions about Roberts' resignation.

Dankelson responded the following day in a message that was headed "Subject: Document May 28, 2015," and was sent to Bartosh, as well as Landis:

Would you be able to provide an affidavit to the commission confirming your intent to resign from the Joplin School Board effective May 28 and that you have no intent to withdraw that resignation? I am assuming from this e-mail you have no intent to withdraw it.

Since the Sunshine Law request pertained only to documents received or sent by the three county commissioners, it did not include Landis' original e-mail to Dankelson.

That same day, the Commission received petitions containing 65 signatures asking it to appoint new board members, with the signers including Landis, board member Lynda Banwart, and numerous contributors to the Joplin Progress Committee.

The County Commission, in a meeting held without public notice, decided to appoint Sallie Beard, Gary Nodler, and Ron Gatz.

Seven years later, Landis and Gatz' daughter, Veronica Gatz Scheurich, are running for the board and once again, many of the people who were once a part of the Joplin Progress Committee, are putting their money into those campaigns.

Apparently, Landis does not want to address any of those concerns since he has been a no-show at every public forum to this point.

Now that's leadership.

More to come.

(Disclaimer: Mike Landis served on the school board that fired me from my teaching position in the R-8 School District and I filed a First Amendment lawsuit against him.)