Last week The Iowa Standard told you about Waukee School Board President Lori Lyon and her reported suggestion to a parent in the district to sue the district over the lack of a mask mandate.
For the record, Lyon would not confirm or deny this when responding to The Iowa Standard. Lyon simply said she votes in ways consistent with the district not getting sued for a reason. She was one of three board members to vote for a mask mandate earlier this school year.
Also, on her board profile page, Lyon says the board must advocate to ensure cuts in state funding don’t negatively affect the needs of students “while remaining fiscally responsible to taxpayers.”
Fiscally responsible to taxpayers…while reportedly suggesting parents sue the district?
Strange approach.
Very strange when considering her answer about the biggest issue facing Waukee moving forward at a candidate forum.
Lyon said the biggest challenge is essentially district finances. She said that Waukee always runs about a little over $4.3 million short due to state reimbursement for new students.
She then said state supplemental aid has been “consistently low.”
“It limits our ability to expand programming that I know many parents would like to have, but we can’t afford,” she said. “When we don’t have the money to do it because we’re not being funded appropriately, something has to be sacrificed. And so oftentimes it is our class size and it is our ability to expand the programming that we’d like to do.”
Yet she reportedly instructed a parent in the district to sue over the mask mandate?
And, for what it is worth, there has been no cuts to education since the Democrats had the trifecta in Iowa. None.
But that wasn’t the only astounding thing Lyon said during the candidate forum. She also practically bragged about cutting — CUTTING — time short at board meetings when it comes to public comment.
“What am I most interested in regarding policy,” she said. “One of the things that I’ve been looking at recently is policy around how we conduct our board meetings and what it might look like if we were to change things just a little bit…
“We have changed our public comment a little bit. And we’ve cut it from five minutes down to three minutes, which has been helpful. It helps move things along a little bit. I’d also like to take a look at our school board, or our district policy around school board ethics. I think that’s something that could use some tweaking and maybe we would want to look at again in the future.”
If you are a parent in the Waukee School District and just heard the president of the school board literally just say it has been “helpful” to cut the time allowed for public comment, why on earth would you vote to re-elect that person?
It’s one thing to think it. It’s one thing to actually do it. And it is another thing to think it, implement it and then praise it.
Regarding altering the district’s policy around school board ethics, perhaps a good start would be not having school board members who allegedly tell parents to sue the district.
