BOARD MEMBER SENDS CHILDREN TO DIFFERENT DISTRICT

JACKSON -- No one is sure why Millie Yates pulled her children out of Meadow Heights School District where she serves on the Board of Education.

Fellow board member Sandy Raines said she thought it was because Yates didn't like the classes offered at Meadow Heights High School. A man who spoke to Yates said it was because her children were being physically threatened.

Yates said it is no one's business.

All agree, however, that it is unusual when a school board member in one district sends her children to live and attend school in another.

The Yates children attend Jackson public schools. Jackson Superintendent Wayne Maupin's records indicate, from the start of school in August until Dec. 21, her children -- Susan, Millie and Gibbie Yates -- claimed residency with their half-sister, Kim Powell, in the Nell Holcomb School District. Powell is an English teacher at Scott City High School.

Millie is a sophomore and Gibbie a freshman in Jackson schools. Susan graduated from Jackson High School in January.

They attend Jackson because Nell Holcomb School District doesn't provide classes past the eighth grade. Nell Holcomb pays non-resident tuition to Jackson for each student who attends school there.

Nell Holcomb Superintendent David Fuemmeler said Nell Holcomb would pay for the time Susan, Millie and Gibbie Yates lived in the district and attended school in Jackson. In December that changed when the Yates children moved to Jackson.

"We were pursuing whether the children were residents or what the situation was," Fuemmeler said. "We found out that (Kim Powell) had temporary power of attorney. Then there were some family issues, and she left our district."

Maupin has a copy of the limited power of attorney established by Yates allowing Powell to make decisions about the children.

Maupin said about a dozen children in Jackson schools are there under limited-power-of-attorney arrangements.

Typically the Jackson school board rejects requests for non-resident students to attend school in Jackson, but Maupin said the Yates case doesn't fall in that category.

"The fact that she is a school board member elsewhere has no bearing on this," he said. "The children just have to reside in the district, and we are assuming that they do. Otherwise, they can't attend here. They have to physically be domiciled here in the district."

In a telephone interview, Yates said her children lived with Powell at 616 W. Washington in Jackson. A reporter's visit to apartment 2 in the building revealed that Gibbie Yates was there.

Yates refused to say why her children lived apart from her.

"My children living in Jackson is personal," she said. "I don't care to discuss it with you or anybody else." Then she hung up.

A Meadow Heights school employee said he and others have seen the children driving from Patton toward Jackson on Highway 72 on several school mornings.

Yates' fellow board member, Phyllis Bollinger, said too many people have spotted the children on Highway 72 for them to be living in Jackson through the week.

Bollinger said Yates had a long history of run-ins with board members and teachers, which may be a contributing factor in her sending the children to Jackson.~

"I'm sure you could talk to most any teacher up here: She has had problems with many of them," Bollinger said. "I don't know her exact reasons. I just know she's still on our board."

Yates' term on the board expires in April 1996.

Board member Raines said she was once a friend of Yates and felt the woman was "after the truth." Now, Raines describes Yates as "manipulative, arrogant and divisive."

She thinks Yates removed her children from Meadow Heights over some classes that weren't being offered there, but couldn't remember the exact details of the meeting where Yates made the announcement.

"She usually comes into a board meeting with so many things, I'm hard pressed to know what we're talking about," Raines said. "She will feed you a small amount of truth and then fill it with a lot of things that are not quite true."

June Long, who has two children in Meadow Heights school, said she, too, has known Yates for a long time but voted against her in 1993.

Before her work schedule changed, Long regularly attended school board meetings. She said Yates went to the meetings armed with personal accusations and little else.

"I don't think she is there for the betterment of the school, or why would she pull her own kids out?" Long said. "No one seems to know why."

One of Yates' problems with the school district began a few months before she was elected to the school board in 1993. Alleging financial mismanagement in the school system, she collected more than 200 signatures calling for an audit of the district.

The petition shows it was submitted Jan. 4, 1993.

Not a year before, Meadow Heights' state funding was cut 8.3 percent, or about $110,000. Facing financial woes, the district cut a physical education position, a secretarial position, art education, vocational agriculture education and spring baseball.

The programs were restored for the 1994-95 school year, but the audit, performed in March 1994, added to the school's financial trouble.

The bill was $5,607.84. According to Deputy State Auditor Chuck Pierce's report, the district needed to do some things differently, but there was nothing to warrant bringing in the county prosecutor.

But not everyone is upset with Yates' school board performance. Board member Dennis Mouser thinks she represented the people who put her in office.

"I don't know what your vendetta is against her, but I hope she sues your ass off," Mouser told the Southeast Missourian.

Nobody would comment on whether Millie and Gibbie Yates plan to graduate from Jackson High School.