As the April 6 Kansas City, Missouri, School Board election approaches, we're profiling each of the candidates.
Peterson raised his two boys north of the river, where he had his private dental practice. He had already been a Boy Scout leader and Little League coach, when he took a seat on the Park Hill School District board in 1979. The challenges weren't as steep as those currently facing Kansas City, Peterson says, but Park Hill was also in a tough spot during his tenure on the board.
"The district, at that time, was transitioning from a rural to an urban district and we had a really hard time passing bonds to get things done for the kids," Peterson says. "And the teachers went on strike. I don't blame them. The pay was not so good for what they were doing."
The strike was resolved and Peterson says his sons got the kind of education that made it easy to get into college. But after he sold his practice in 1997 and moved south of the river, Peterson got educated about the trouble in Kansas City classrooms. "I feel like the school district is broken and needs to be fixed," he says. And, if Peterson is elected to an at-large seat on the school board next month, he thinks he has the tools to help turn things around.
Though he raised his kids in the Northland, Peterson was a product of Kansas City public school, graduating from Westport High School in 1949. "I had really great teachers, but I was a lazy student at the time," he says with a laugh. "But I went into the Air Force and that helped straighten me out a little bit, so I returned to college more serious."
After graduating from University of Kansas City School of Dentistry in 1963, he started his own practice. But he spent more than 20 years at the head of a classroom, too, teaching part-time at UMKC from 1985 until 1997 and full-time from 1997 until retirement in 2006. That's when he started hearing from friends volunteering in classrooms about kids who couldn't read anywhere near grade-level and trailed far behind in their math skills. Peterson connected the dots with larger civic issues. "Until education straightens out, crime will only get worse," he says.
So Peterson decided to take a second shot at a school board, gathering signatures to run for an at-large seat in Kansas City. "They thought I was crazy," he says of voters he met while petitioning to get his name on the ballot. "'Why do you want to do that?' they said. But most people were sympathetic. They said the direction really needs to change."
If elected, Peterson says his main focus would be academics. To get into the University of Missouri, he points out, requires a score of 24 or higher on the ACT. The average among KCMSD students is 16. Despite their students' lagging achievement, he says, teachers aren't assigning enough homework. "I'd like to see instruction improve immensely," he says. "Number one, I would insist on evaluations so that administrators could monitor teachers and principals and, if they aren't really bringing the system up to where it needs to be, they'll either need additional instruction or they need to be left go. We need people in there that can teach."
To meet that challenge, Peterson wants kids to go to school more, too. "I would like to see longer school days," he says. "I'd like to see longer school years." How to pay for that? Peterson isn't sure; possibly through the cost savings incurred when the district closes more than two dozen schools.
Peterson also has a special interest in the homeless population. He recalls a recent Vanguard Breakfast Club meeting, when he had a chance to sit with Sister Berta Sailer, the director of Operation Breakthrough and one of the city's most vocal advocates for low-income families. She told Peterson about some of the parents she serves.
"One lived in a bus stop shelter where they would sleep at night," Peterson says. "Another would find an abandoned house and curl up against her child to protect him while she slept. We have 2,000 homeless students -- at least 2,000 -- and I'm kind of wondering if we could manufacture funding somewhere so that some of these schools that we're closing could be made into shelters for the homeless."
As for those school closings, Peterson is supportive of Superintendent John Covington's plan -- and admires Covington's work thus far. "I want to keep that guy around," he says. "He's got the ball rolling."
Like Covington, Peterson recognizes the district's financial challenges -- and he's got some experience poring through financial ledgers. Right now, Peterson serves on the board of trustees for UMKC and recently relinquished his position as chair of the Rinehart Foundation, the fund-raising arm for the dental school. He knows how to evaluate budgets and, more important, how to deal with money. "When I took the chair [of the Rinehart Foundation] we had $150,000," he says. "When I stepped down 17 years later, we had under $7 million, mostly for scholarships."
But, more than fiscal responsibility, Peterson thinks his addition could bring stability to 1211 McGee. "I think I could bring a little maturity to that board," he says.
This week's candidate forums:
Coalition of Hispanic Organizations
All-candidate forum
Thursday, March 4
La Galeria, 2918 Southwest Boulevard
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Black Agenda Group
At-large candidate debate
Monday, March 8
Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, 2310 E. Linwood Boulevard
8:30-10 a.m.
Metropolitan Organization for Racial and Economic Equity
At-large candidate forum
Tuesday, March 9
Greater Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 4600 Cleveland
7-9 p.m.
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