Three Cape school board candidates address voters

Three candidates for Cape Girardeau Public Schools Board of Education addressed voters Thursday night, Feb. 16, at a gathering of Cape Girardeau County Republicans.

All seven candidates running for the three positions up for election were invited to speak at the event, but only three — Missy Phegley, Roy Diamond Jr. and Kim Swartz — accepted the invitation.

Phegley, the board’s vice president, was the only sitting member at the event. Members running for reelection — Jared Ritter and Casey Cook — both sent letters apologizing for their absence. The letters, citing prior obligations, were read to the audience by Pachyderm Club president Victor Gunn.

The other two candidates on the ballot, not present, were Sommer McCauley and Byron Bonner.

Each candidate at the event was given 10 minutes to address the audience. Gunn invited audience members to seek out the candidates after the event to ask any questions.

Phegley, assessment coordinator and director of composition in the English Department at Southeast Missouri State University, told the audience she has worked as an educator for 28 years.

“I feel in my heart I am meant to be an educator,” Phegley said. “I feel being part of the school board is a terrific way for me to share my talents, my experience and expertise.”

Phegley has served one term on the school board and five years on the board of directors for Cape Girardeau Public Schools Foundation. She said that as a parent of two children who both attended Cape Girardeau public schools she’s “seen the strengths of our school district, and I’m also tuned into the needs of our students.”

“I strongly believe that schools are the heart of our community, and it is vital that we thoughtfully and carefully make decisions that are affecting our students, teachers and staff, because these decisions we make also directly impact the community,” Phegley said.

She said educational systems provide young people with tremendous opportunity, however, she also recognized that “our students don’t always have access to the same opportunities.”

Phegley said sometimes that means helping an individual with a basic need, sometimes it means advocating for processes or policies that ensure all students can have the same experience regardless of their family’s financial status.

“Education can be messy,” Phegley said. “We face a lot of challenges, but I think it’s important to keep our focus on supporting all students.”

Diamond, a commercial painter, said he was raised in Cape Girardeau and is an alumnus of the Cape Girardeau public school system. He said he and his wife raised two children and “our lives revolved around school and sports while our kids were in Cape schools.” He said he was commissioner of Cape Youth Tackle Football for six years and sat on their board for 10 years.

“Supporting the youth and youth activities in Cape is a high priority for our family,” Diamond said. “Being raised in Cape and Cape public schools, my passion is both for the school and for the city. We can all work together to make the school and the city a better place. I am running for the school board because I would like to help our district be the best that it can be.”

Diamond said Cape Girardeau has many students with potential to do great things.

“We have a responsibility to equip students to participate as citizens in any capacity they endeavor. That could include everything from college readiness, reading a tape measure or correctly counting back change. Sometimes that’s tough.”

He said more should be expected from Cape Girardeau’s school system.

Swartz, a retired marketing director, said she has lived in Cape Girardeau for 34 years. She said one reason she is running is her two grandchildren currently attend Cape Girardeau public schools. She said another reason was her “great concerns” over the lockdowns and masking and distancing restrictions during COVID-19, as well as the rise of social networking platforms such as TikTok.

She said she has been attending Cape Giardeau’s school board meetings for more than a year to become “more educated.” In that time, she said she has researched the school district’s policies and procedures and learned they are not developed by Cape Girardeau’s school board but by the state legislature.

“They’re not generated at 63701. They’re generated at 65101, Jefferson City,” Swartz said. “Every single policy is attached to a dollar, trust me. If you are implementing a policy, it’s because it is going to bring you some money, particularly where COVID is concerned.”

Swartz described herself as the type of person who “wants to cross ‘T’s’ and dot ‘I’s,’” and she wants to do that with the district’s policies and procedures as a member of the school board.

“These are the kind of weeds I like to get into, the kind of things I like to talk about,” Swartz said. “Parents need full transparency. After sitting in the school board meetings for over a year, what I really learned was where to find the information. We have a lot of information online that parents can access, but they don’t know it. I think parents’ rights are important. I think if a child has the ability, I think we should give them the opportunity to go even greater in their academic or sports careers. If they are not at a level that is equal to other students — we’re all different right — they should be given that same opportunity, that it doesn’t always mean equal outcomes, and I think personal initiative has a lot to do with that, too.”

The candidates at Thursday’s event were asked whether they were satisfied with the Board of Education’s process for the search to replace superintendent Neil Glass by the end of February.

Diamond said he couldn’t really comment on the process because, not being on the school board, he doesn’t know the process they are following. Regarding the school board’s stated goal of hiring a new superintendent by the end of February, Diamond said it depends on the candidate.

“I’ve hired a lot of people and fired a lot of people,” he said. “You have to go through the hiring process, but you know that perfect candidate when you sit down across from them.”

Swartz said she was “surprised at the immediacy” of the process that the school board was only allowing themselves two weeks to accept applicants and two weeks to make a choice.

“It’s the most important job the school board has,” Swartz said. “Choosing a superintendent is something they have great control over. I believe we should take our time and have a good slate of candidates to choose from. I understand that we might have good candidates here. If that’s the case, I believe, the best thing we can do for that candidate is to stand him up against other great candidates. Otherwise, we would be doing that candidate a disservice.”

Phegley said she has served on several search committees and thinks the process they have laid out is “pretty solid.” She said they may not be able to announce the new superintendent by the end of February, as planned, because of possible complications in coordinating the schedules of the candidates and the board members.

On Monday, Feb. 20, the school board announced that “due to conflicts with scheduling, the Board is delaying the timeline/process a little,” and the decision on a superintendent would be made some time in March.