TKC MUST READ!!! KCPS LEADER DEMANDS EQUITABLE DEVELOPMENT AND REBUKES 'SYSTEMIC RACISM' OF NORTHLAND BLUESCOPE PROJECT!!!



More insight on a controversial project an a COMPREHENSIVE & impactful statement from the leader of Kansas City Public Schools.

Here's the word with some of the more important parts highlighted . . .


Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Mark Bedell On Equitable Development

Thirteen years spans a child's first day of kindergarten to their last day of high school. In Kansas City Public Schools, the majority of students experiencing these milestones are children of color. More than half of the students in our classrooms are Black.

On Thursday, the City Council is scheduled to vote on an incentive package for BlueScope, a billion-dollar multi-national corporation. After a 100 percent property tax abatement for 20 years, they want 13 more, holding the City Council hostage by saying they might move to Kansas.

And what they want is the continuation of a deal that has already disproportionately impacted the funding of Kansas City’s schools, libraries and mental health resources.

Last week, Mayor Lucas introduced a resolution focused on implementing more equitable practices and policies at City Hall. I am asking for the City Council to give meaning to their votes of support. Financial decisions can be moral ones and this request is a violent economic practice that would never be inflicted on the majority-white school districts in the Northland. I am confident my Superintendent colleagues in those districts would agree.

Members of the City Council, as well as business leaders, have stood up in the recent weeks to say Black Lives Matter. I commend them for doing so, but as the adage goes, actions speak louder than words. If Black Lives Matter to you, then so should the schools south of the river.

In the wake of the last month, I am sitting with how racism continues to fester in the culture, conversations and policies relating to business and economic development practices in our City. Frankly, I am exhausted with the development community pitting the City against the public entities that are doing the work of trying to give our students and their families access to the world they deserve. This is systemic racism.

In response to the BlueScope project, a Northland Councilmember said the Council had to think of the City first, not the schools, libraries and mental health services. Are our families not Kansas City constituents?

The funding for public schools is constantly under attack. As we work to budget in this trying and uncertain time, we continue to fill in the gaps created by the racial and economic inequities our society allows.

Even throughout a pandemic, we have supplied multiple meals a day for all Kansas City kids who need them. These are students who don’t always have access to food because this City is rife with food deserts. We have sourced technology equipment for our children. We do this because there is a vast digital divide that impacts our families at a higher rate than ones living in other areas of our City.

We have offered trauma-informed supports as our children continue to have to walk through neighborhoods with increasing gun violence.

We have secured resources for families who are dealing with evictions and experiencing homelessness because there is a lack of safe, affordable housing in this City.

I understand why the Council would want to retain BlueScope and the earnings tax it generates. KCPS supports growth and business retention, and we know a thriving City should benefit all of us. But a Kansas City company believing they can bring forward any additional request that diverts resources away from our students speaks loudly to the systemically racist real estate practices we have allowed to exist here. Approval by the City Council would speak even louder.

This is a call to action — for our elected officials, for our business leaders, for our community stakeholders — to not only stand with me, my Board and KCPS families in our demands for a more equitable City, but to fight for one as well.

Enough is enough.

Yours in education,

Mark T. Bedell
Superintendent of Schools
Kansas City Public Schools
#########

You decide . . . 

Comments

  1. 12% of the population making 90% of the noise. Work for it race baiters.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Are you child haters the same people complaining about corporate tax breaks in the other story?

      Delete
  2. Translation:

    "I wants my free shit".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Translation: I need more corporate welfare for whites.

      Delete
  3. The Bitter Truth6/24/20, 12:31 PM

    Not a huge fan of Mark T. Bedell, but he does point out a few good points.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Funding for the Kansas City Public Schools is not the issue. Take a look at the per pupil spending in KCMO versus other districts in the area and you can see the problems are vast and beyond the control of the district.

    These types of public officials think a tax base comes from thin air. They live in an insulated universe focused on the politics of teacher's unions and school board meetings. They are not held accountable for results. The only solution to their problems is more taxes.

    Funding is under attack because there are no results.

    Food insecurity is because families that don't have jobs.

    Food deserts are because of lack of consumers, violence, and poor city government (who wants to invest and spend money in these areas?)

    Look at the students with smart phones and tell me there is a technological divide - is this a question of priorities at home?

    Why is there trauma and violence? Move out of these neighborhoods. There are affordable areas with jobs and transportation outside of the areas plagued by violence.

    Blame the families, blame the community, blame the school district. BlueScope is not the problem.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is not just school funding under attack, this is welfare for well off people under attack, which cannot be allowed. So let's make a bunch of stupid prejudiced advise.

      Delete
    2. If you broke it down on a size basis,30 grand per kid versus some millions for hotels,atleast the hotels might make some money for the city!

      Delete
  5. I admit I don't understand. Are the "white" (actually multiracial) KCPS schools north of the river and the black KCPS schools south of the river funded out of same source? If so then why would the south black schools be impacted more than the north "white schools by allowing the tax exemption? Seems to me they'd be affected equally.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow - and you wonder where the victim mentality comes from. It comes from the top. Blame everyone except the families, students, teachers, and school board.....you know....the people that should actually be supporting, learning, and teaching....

    ReplyDelete
  7. ^^^True Dat

    ReplyDelete
  8. "Systemic Racism".
    It's the new buzzword, so be sure to use it to try to describe and explain EVERYTHING before its sell-by date expires.
    No sense of responsibility or even any creativity or imagination from the person who is supposedly "running" a school district.
    Sad.

    ReplyDelete
  9. 12:49 is spot on - this guy is pretty much blaming the problems in his district on the sun rising. No solutions - just blame blame blame blame blame.

    heaven forbid educators blame their student's families as harshly as they do the local business community. Man - that would be something - holding students and families accountable for their children's education?

    ReplyDelete
  10. It'll never be enough. Now any money spent on anything other than black grifting and race baiting is racccist.

    Racism is common sense. We are not all the same. We are not all equal. Life is not fair. Get over it.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Kansas City Mayor is black.
    Kansas City School District Superintendent is black.
    Jackson County Sheriff is black.
    U.S. House Representative is black.
    Previous President of the United States was black.

    Systemic racism does not have elected black leaders in every position.

    When are blacks going to ever stop crying victim-hood? Probably never.

    Fuck you CHUD.

    ReplyDelete
  12. seems like a lot of these families are caught in a dependency cycle.

    ReplyDelete
  13. and the Jackson County Executive is black.

    and they just raised everyone's property taxes 25%. Where the hell is that money going as it 75% of it should go to the schools.

    Judge Clark forced the State of Missouri to spend billions on Kansas City inner city schools in the 1990's.

    Most rural schools were built during the Great Depression - WPA days but they seem to educate kids who go on to college without assaults and murders every day.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Appoint Patty Cakes to be KCSD Superintendent.

    Patty Cakes has all the answers.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Maybe people would listen to poor Markie if students in the KCPS weren’t illiterate. Sadly, most are.

    ReplyDelete
  16. The unmentioned problem here is that developers find ways, whether lawful or not, to incentivize politicians and public officials, of all races and genders, to support their project.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Anything that happens to black people good or bad is always because of their race.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I think it's unfortunate that he is an incompetent spokesperson for a dysfunctional organization with a long history of failure yet he is making a completely valid point about the plague of abating city and county tax revenue. It starves cities of the dollars they need to operate and raises the tax burden on everyone else.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Right conclusion that many would agree with, that being that uncontrolled developer incentives must end for the sake of the City's fanancial health.

    Wrong argument that the KCPS's problems stem from these incentives and that racism perpetuates them. The KCPS is extremely well funded per student, and it's racism that funds these schemes, it good old fashion greed.

    ReplyDelete
  20. ... NOT racism that funds...

    ReplyDelete

  21. Wow this guy demanding equatable development and is worried about racism and kids??? Well I demand to put a stop to BET TV, Black Chambers, Black Awards and no I don't care about the Marxist funded BLM that is hiding behind racial equality and is really a domestic terrorist organization.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Didn't even read this shit because who gives a fuck about the schools in kcmo

    ReplyDelete
  23. Byron Funkhouser6/24/20, 5:26 PM

    He makes some good points.

    You must stop the corporate welfare.

    ReplyDelete
  24. The entire area north of the river should be section 8 and a sanctuary area.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Can’t KCPSD just inflate the number of kids who attend? Why hasn’t anyone tried this approach?

    ReplyDelete
  26. He took a valid concern and hollared racism. Right there i started thinking, bring it over to Johnson County where I live. In fact they should. All this race obsession only hurts KCMO.

    ReplyDelete
  27. This problem with kcps has been around for decades and it’s the black communities fault, they wanted the schools to be dumbed down so much even their kids couldn’t fail. As usual this problem was created by the blacks to fit their wants and desires. They got what they wanted so it’s nobody else’s fault but their own.

    You can go to a high end college for what it costs to send a kid through kcps and get nothing in return. This is one of the biggest reasons no businesses want to come to killa shitty.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Dr. Bedell needs to direct 100% of his attention and effort in getting the KCPS system accredited, which is supposedly what he was hired for, and leave the city politics to the people who were elected to perform those duties.

    ReplyDelete
  29. If not for white people the world would still be crapping in holes in the dirt. Screw the mob.

    ReplyDelete
  30. America's Most Costly Educational Failure
    Apr 29, 1998 - But spending a fortune is no guarantee of better schools. It certainly didn't help a poorly performing school district in the heart of Kansas City, ...

    ReplyDelete
  31. I bet he can't find KCPS students that can spell systematic racism.

    ReplyDelete
  32. This is actually not part of the racial issue of today. This is about decades of developers demanding tax cuts for pet projects and the school districts (plural) getting taken to the cleaners by the city councils (also plural) in the area. Developers want big impressive projects and great employees but they want to get part of the school districts tax revenue to go with it. The schools we all say we support are denied getting all of the money from your tax payment because it goes into the developers pockets. The schools and the kids are the losers. When they steal money from the districts the cost to serve students goes up. What is truly ridiculous is that these companies getting the tax breaks are hurting their own employees and their families. No developers should ever get a cut on school taxes.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Some good points, but the "systemic racism" BS is a stretch. Actual issue is that DOWNTOWN is in the KCMOSD and is where most development occurs.

    Besides, it is hard to sympathize with the KCMOSD when it has a multimillion dollar windfall off the Jackson County reassessment boondoggle that raised the taxes of the District residents by 100-200% because (unlike EVERY other taxing district) the KCMOSD REFUSED to adjust their levy. They just let the homeowners pay a lot more in taxes or lose their homes.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

TKC COMMENT POLICY:

Be percipient, be nice. Don't be a spammer. BE WELL!!!

- The Management