Mauro Majority

The only serious contest in this year's Kansas City, Missouri, school board election is for two districtwide at-large seats, which three candidates -- Michael Byrd, David Smith and Ingrid Burnett -- are seeking. Only one of the three candidates will lose.

But observers say the outcome of this one race may shift the board's center of power. "What's at stake in this election," says one supporter of Burnett and Smith, "is keeping Michael Byrd out of office and stopping the Black United Front from controlling the school district."

Should Byrd win, he and new board member Marilyn Simmons would be the district's most visible presence of the Black United Front, which has been accused recently of behind-the-scenes power plays to redraw election maps, put a favored job applicant in a high post in the district, take control of a parent-advisory group and change the leadership of Southeast High School. For more than twenty years, the Black United Front has tutored schoolchildren and advocated black history and African culture and geography as part of the district's curriculum, but its political activities have drawn more attention in recent months. Byrd declares himself "a very proud member."

Byrd's two opponents have a powerful ally: board member Al Mauro. Mauro recruited Burnett and Smith and helped collect signatures for their ballot petitions. He did the same for a longtime friend, Joel Pelofsky, who is running unopposed in the predominantly white 2nd District. If all three win and join Mauro and Harriet Plowman (who often votes with Mauro on district issues) on the board, those five members could form a potentially district-controlling majority coalition.

Is Mauro building a Mauro Majority?

No, he says. "I don't believe in the coalition," Mauro says. "If you're saying, 'Do I want five votes?' I want nine votes. If I were president of that board I'd want a unanimous decision. If you can't get that, get a majority. And then move on."

If anything, Mauro says, coalitions of board members working in secret have hindered democracy on the board. "My frustration," he explains, "is that I feel that certain people have gotten together and decided what they're going to present [outside of board meetings], and then you sort of hear about it at a board meeting."

Mauro refuses to identify those "certain people," but it's a safe bet Michael Byrd is one of them. Though Byrd and Mauro get along at public meetings, they often line up on opposite sides of political battles. Mauro led the charge when the board eliminated the salary of Black United Front member Linwood Tauheed, who had briefly secured a top-level administrative position with the district last fall.

Allegations of political patronage have plagued the district for years (see Kansas City Strip, below). Often, these accusations have targeted African-American leaders and organizations, though whites have usually held more power in the district. "One thing everybody can agree on," says one black leader, "is that African-Americans have never controlled the Kansas City school board. Ever. Never ever."

Kansas City's white leadership -- which some refer to as "the majority community" -- has a poor track record controlling the troubled school district.

· Until 1969, the white majority held virtually complete control in elections because all school board seats were "at large" rather than assigned to districts. Still, the school system was hardly stellar. "I can remember back in 1949," Pelofsky says, "we lost our accreditation, even though the school board at that time was all picked out of the southwest corridor by political parties in the primary election, and nobody ran against anybody."

· In 1969, black students became the majority in the district. Kansas Citians have not approved a tax levy increase for schools since then. During the '70s, white leaders did little while white students fled some parts of the school system, resulting in a desegregation lawsuit.

· The white community got involved, however, when large sums of state tax money flowed into the district to "solve" the segregation problem. While the money was being spent in the late '80s and early '90s, the Civic Council, a clandestine organization of Kansas City's top business CEOs, was well-represented on the school board. Local white-owned companies got a healthy chunk of that money.

· More recently, the white business and civic communities threw support behind former superintendent Benjamin Demps while many in the African-American community said Demps -- himself black -- didn't try hard enough to understand them.

Mauro is clearly connected to that majority community's power and wealth.

Mauro's long list of contributors to his 2000 bid for the school board includes Chamber of Commerce officials, downtown property owners and developers, and major corporation executives. Over a two-month period, Mauro raised more than $63,000. School district contractors are also represented on Mauro's list of supporters -- the law firm Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin, Truman Medical Center, UMB Bank and Dunn Construction ponied up more than $1,200.

Mauro says his connections are irrelevant. "Look, I don't want to go into all that," he says. "If they perceive it that way, fine. You could talk that one to death."

Power and money were the least of Mauro's concerns when he ran for the school board in 2000, he says. "I ran for the school board because I'm concerned about what's happening with this school district," he says. "We should have more than 35,000 kids in the district. [Years ago] we were at 70,000. OK? Why are parents leaving the district? It's not because it's doing a good job. It's because it hasn't done a good job. And who's kidding anybody?"