School Board Night at LASD and MCC, April 21, 2025: Quests for Transparency

[XLFD]

On Monday, April 21, 2025, the school boards of Ludington and Scottville/MCC had their monthly meetings, the Ludington Torch attended both.  In comparison, both boards were notified by community members of multiple and correctable transparency/openness issues that have plagued these public bodies over recent years.  

The Ludington Area School District (LASD) Board had few items on their docket, these amounted to approval of $229,000 of payments in their 2019 bond project, approve the 2025-26 budget for the West Shore Educational Service district (inside the packet), and designate Superintendent Kyle Corlett and alternate Laura Jacobs, business services director, as trustees for the West Michigan Health Insurance Pool.  

A late add to the agenda was to award sprinkler bids to Olson Irrigation, for three school properties that amounted to $61,500.  Student Mayor Kylee Johnson was not available for a report on student activities, but High School Principal (and President-elect of the MASSP Board of Directors, see photo) Steve Forsberg read her report before giving his own short presentation on the Parents Advisory Council and the Oriole Advisory Council, the latter consisting primarily of students.  Dante Vela was recognized as the month's Soaring Oriole.  

Everything was accepted unanimously which would have made for a dull meeting if not for the public comment and one trustee's response to the overwhelming consensus of most of the comments.  LEA President Todd Schipper was worried about untrue rumors generated concerning union members and doctored material on a survey among union members, presumably by administration.  Three would weigh in on ADA compliance at the swimming pool and its surrounding parking lots.  One of those would also weigh in on a Snapchat controversy alluded to by the LPD:

Such issues were ignored by the trustees and administrators, but public comment would end with Jason Wolven making the point that the minutes of LASD Board meetings were incomplete without including some kind of summary about what was brought forth in public comment, and my own comment regarding the same problem and asking for clarity in regard to the school's position on recent Title IX changes:

XLFD:  "I am hopeful today that you will allow me the ability to square a circle in regard to current school policy in the face of conflicting national and state education policies dealing with Title IX. I am also hopeful that if you do clarify this district's policy at this meeting that you record it in the meeting minutes.  Frankly, the minutes of this board's meetings over the last five years are mostly indistinguishable from the agenda of those meetings, meaning that this board has little interest in what parents, staff, students, and community members bring to these meetings.

In February, Donald Trump signed an executive order titled "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports", which among other things indicated the Department of Education would "take all appropriate action to affirmatively protect all-female athletic opportunities and all-female locker rooms and thereby provide the equal opportunity guaranteed by Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972" and "prioritize Title IX enforcement actions against educational institutions that deny female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events by requiring them, in the women’s category, to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males."

This conflicts with our state and district policies that recognize "gender identity" as a protected class, such as in the district's bylaw 2266, which states the board "does not discriminate on the basis of gender identity in its education programs or activities".  In the past, this manifests itself as allowing a gender dysmorphic male to compete with women and share their locker rooms.  If that were to happen currently, the district would be violating federal policy and welcoming enforcement actions under Title IX.  

With this in mind, what would the district's response be to a gender dysmorphic boy student who wanted to compete in Ludington's girl athletics and use the girl's locker room and showers?  Thank you for any answer.  [END comment]

Clarification of the district's Title IX policy would not be forthcoming, but at least Trustee Mike Nagle would address it as an issue where they are looking at in terms of what would happen given the hypothetical situation I introduced.  One would hope that the LASD would have a direction for such an occurrence rather than an indefinite answer like Nagle's which makes one think that they would not accept the Trump executive order as their guiding principle, but rather the district's ingrained policy.

Freshman Trustee Alan Neushwander would surprise the assemblage shortly after public comment by endorsing the idea that comments should be recognized in the minutes with a short summary of what was said and who said it.  He compared other committees that he had been part of and how their minutes would contain a brief summary of the comments made and who made them, and how he thought that it would be more transparent for the board to acknowledge those who brought their ideas to the table of the trustees.  

Most in the audience of about 40 people applauded the recommendation for change in this regard, noticeably absent among the applauders were the rest of the board and the administrators.  Wolven and I have been advocating for this simple step for years without an official word from the board recognizing it as a great idea for regaining the public trust.  The board did exactly what Neushwander suggested back in 2019, before choosing to go dark and remaining there through the COVID era.

Mason County Central

The Ludington Torch arrived at Scottville's high school with three minutes to spare before Board President Oscar Davila called the meeting to order.  The agenda had three items of business.  The first was to approve Matt Millspaugh as athletic director/high school dean of students.  The second was to grant tenure to six teachers and to move about a dozen more one year up on their probationary status.  The third was for them to approve the 2025-26 WSESD Budget, just like the LASD did.  All were unanimously approved.  

Margaret Greiner spoke during the public comment period asking for information regarding the salaries of MCC coaches and other staff, not being able to find a listing on the district's website.  She was told by Superintendent Jeff Mount that the coaches and staff salaries would be found in the district's collective bargaining documentation.  Mount would later list a few projects of school infrastructure costing millions that the district had completed following the three recent failures of raising bond money, the last in November of 2023.  

This was an interesting admission, being that the board hasn't approved such expenditures during that time, effectively violating their own board policy and allowing administrators to approve projects and contractors without approval by the board, which is mandated for any project costing more than $30,000.  When you have this much non-transparency in the system, you begin to understand why the bond proposal votes keep failing and why Greiner keeps badgering the superintendent for answers that should be readily available to the public.  More people are learning that the MCC board is neglecting their duties and that the superintendent has usurped them, at the cost of accountability and transparency.  

Our readers may wonder why we have not supplied the agenda packet for MCC.  While the Ludington Torch had reasoned with the board so as to get this concession towards greater transparency by having their packet published on the school's website over the last few months, they overlooked publishing this meeting's packet on their website, according to Mount after I questioned him on whether he was putting it out somewhere else than the school's "live feed".  

We hope that this will be the last oversight in regard to this important step towards greater transparency, and hope that the board gets back to approving projects and project bids, rather than insuring Mount keeps such information from the board and the public which only guarantees future failures in any bond proposal.  

The board would finish in closed session to evaluate Mount's year and talk about MCCEA (teacher's union) negotiations.