Kansas City Fight To Save Gordon Parks Charter School Continues!!!

Earlier this week we were the FIRST Kansas City newsie outlet to offer another glimpse at the fight to keep the Gordon Parks school open.

Now . . .

CHECK OUT EXCLUSIVE KANSAS CITY INSIDER INSIGHT INTO THE COURT FIGHT TO KEEP GORDON PARKS CHARTER SCHOOL ALIVE!!!

Here's the court document that backs up a great deal of this insider testimony . . .

And now an update on the fight to protect the well-being of Kansas City students:

Missouri State Board of Education Doing The Dodge To Avoid Answering Questions About Abrupt Closing of KC’s Gordon Parks Elementary!

Gordon Parks won a court victory when a judge in Jefferson City smacked down the State Board of Education, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Attorney General’s Office. The judge said Gordon Parks’ lawyers could take depositions from individual members of the State Board of Eduication who voted to shut down the elementary school for KC’s most –risk kids. The State had fought that effort, lost and now tries some slippery stonewalling to limit what State Board of ducation members can be asked about.


The stonewalling starts on the third page, first full paragraph of the State’s seven-page motion filed in Cole County Circuit Court at Jefferson City and obtained by an awesome KC source:

Argument

Defendants seek a protective order to prevent Plaintiff from inquiring into the deliberations made by the State Board of Education or any inquiry into the reasons any individual board member had for voting a certain way.”

On Page 4, the State’s real stonewall agenda is further revealed, as AG Chris Koster and his assistants declare:

“Inquiry into the actual deliberation of the SBE, however, is not relevant to the review conducted by this court under § 536.150. The particular analysis of an individual board member has no particular relevance since no individual SBE member made this decision. Any testimony any one member of SBE might offer, if so ordered, would simply be the opinion of that individual and not the opinion of SBE and therefore, would be irrelevant to these proceedings. “

Later on Page 4, the State tries to hide behind an irrelevant argument about the Sunshine Law:

“It is the public policy of the State of Missouri that meetings, records, votes, actions, and deliberations of public governmental bodies be open to the public unless otherwise provided by law. § 610.011, RSMo. In this case, however, the deliberations and votes occurred in a properly closed portion of an SBE meeting. § 621.021(1), RSMo. While this is not a sunshine law case per se, the public policy of the State of Missouri is expressed in the Sunshine law which allows these deliberations to be done in private. “

Here’s why that is irrelevant: The Missouri Sunshine Law does not REQUIRE that any portion of a public governmental body’s meeting be closed to the public and the news media. It merely allows it, not REQUIRES it, in situations such as discussions of pending litigation (Gordon Parks had NOT taken the State Board to court at this point), personnel matters (which would be State Board or department personnel, not anyone else’s personnel) and buying or selling real estate, which wasn’t an issue.

Just what is the Missouri State Board of Education, which is dominated by members from the St. Louis region, trying to hide from the public and the news media?
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