Lee's Summit R-7 School District

I was talking to a friend today and some things came to mind. Many people want to know why I fight with the school district and the State. I have earned quite a reputation as a crazy mom. There are many people that are happy with the education that their children are getting and wonder why I am not. Well, let me explain it to you. I have known that my son has autism since he was three years old. I lived in a very small town in Illinois with the population of 1,200. I had twin daughters that were 5 years old and were in all day kindergarten. The town was having testing for children 3-5 years of age. I thought it was to see where they were academically and what they needed to work on prior to starting kindergarten. My son was three years old and the only child that I had home during the day. I signed him up for the testing and took him up to the school. I wasn’t sure if he would go through it because he was a screamer. I don’t mean that he screamed every once in awhile. I mean that he...

Reorganized School District No.7 301 NE Tudor Road Lee's Summit, Missouri 64086-5702 Phone: (816) 986-1024 Fax: (816) 986-1160 Jerry L. Keimig Executive Director of Special Services December 22, 2008 Ms. Heidi Atkins Lieberman Assistant Commissioner Division of Special Education Missouri Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education PO Box 480 Jefferson City, Missouri 65102-0480 Dear Ms. Lieberman: This letter is in response to concerns expressed by OSEP regarding Ms. Tucker. Ms. Tucker has responded to staff in our District with a continual barrage of emails and web postings on a variety of topics expressing concerns, sending general information regarding special education issues, and conducting personal attacks on staff. Ms. Tucker continually voices her concerns regarding educational programming for her son. We would agree that he has specific areas that need to be addressed, but despite multiple District attempts to provide direct interventions for her son, she has refused many o...

Spending Our tax levy is one of the highest in the metro area, yet we spend among the least on our students. Our children can learn in any building. During the last election one of the present school board members said that he would hold up our facilities to any of those in Johnson County. I didn’t move to Lee’s Summit to compete with Johnson County. I moved here because the schools were supposed to be among the best that the metro had to offer. Here is an article from the Lee’s Summit R-VII newsletter: The Kansas City Business Journal recently featured a listing of the top 25 school districts based on enrollments. The information including budget and employee statistics appeared in an October 2008 issue of the publication. Lee’s Summit R-7 ranked seventh in the metropolitan area in terms of total enrollment among the 25 districts selected for the newspaper edition. The R-7 School District’s total enrollment for this school year is 17,137. The six districts in the metro area with ...

Some critics suggested that NCLB created incentives for schools, districts, and states to manipulate test results. For example, schools have been shown to employ "creative reclassification" of drop-outs (to reduce unfavorable statistics). NCLB also may have caused some states to lower their official standards. Because each state could produce its own standardized tests, a state could make its statewide tests easier to pass, thereby increasing test scores. Missouri for example, improved testing scores but openly admitted that they had lowered the standards . Critics also said that punitive measures against "failing schools" created incentives to set expectations lower rather than higher. Critics even said the legislation tended to increase segregation by race and class, to be followed-up by pushing low-performing students out of school altogether. Other critics argued that NCLB caused teachers to "teach to the test", focusing all their efforts on things tha...

At the recent candidate forum Patti Buie stated that the Lee's Summit School District spends $3 on every special education student for every $1 they spend on regular education students. I wanted to address that, but I didn't have my facts. Last year, when I ran for school board, they gave Micheal Mahoney some figures. It didn't add up. He did his math wrong on the first airing, but they corrected it on the second airing. Also, we are trying to get an audit of the district. It takes 5,000 signatures. http://www.truveo.com/Mom-Of-Autistic-Boy-Runs-Special-Campaign/id/2960772320 According to the district, there are 17,000 students enrolled. 1,900 are special needs students. Their budget is $200,000,000. They spend $15,000,000 on special needs. According to Texas Instruments, Their special needs students represent 11% of their enrollment. They spend 7.5% of their budget on special needs. And let's not forget that they get extra money from the federal governm...

Sherri Tucker for School Board Spending Our tax levy is one of the highest in the metro area, yet we spend among the least on our students. Our children can learn in any building. During the last election one of the present school board members said that he would hold up our facilities to any of those in Johnson County. I didn ’t move to Lee’s Summit to compete with Johnson County. I moved here because the schools were supposed to be among the best that the metro had to offer. Here is an article from the Lee’s Summit R-VII newsletter: The Kansas City Business Journal recently featured a listing of the top 25 school districts based on enrollments. The information including budget and employee statistics appeared in an October 2008 issue of the publication. Lee’s Summit R-7 ranked seventh in the metropolitan area in terms of total enrollment among the 25 districts selected for the newspaper edition. The R-7 School District’s total enrollment for this school year is 17,137. The six distr...

Our tax levy is the highest in the metropolitan area and we spend among the least on our students. But, don't worry. We have a $12 million aquatic center and a state of the art Board Room. This was in the R-7 newsletter that was sent out to those in the district. They are proud of how little they spend on our kids. The Kansas City Business Journal recently featured a listing of the top 25 metropolitan-area school districts based on enrollments. The information including budget and and employee statistiecs, appeared in an October 2008 issue of the publication. Lee's Summit R-7 ranked seventh in the metropolitan area in terms of total enrollment among the 25 districts selected for the newspaper edition. The R-7 School District's total enrollment for this school year to 17,137. The six districts in the metro area with higher enrollments are Shawnee Mission, Kan.; Olathe, Kan.; Kansas City, MO; Blue Valley, Kan.; Kansas City, Kan.; and North Kansas City. The Business Jour...