NO EQUITY REQUIRED: School lunch debt is reality behind big talk and virtue signals

$93,000,000 in cash, but district needs donations

COLUMBIA, Mo 5/6/25 (Op Ed) -- A public school lunch debt that prompted former school board candidate Ken Rice to host a fundraiser is another glaring example of persistent financial inequities that plague Columbia and Boone County government.

Columbia Public Schools (CPS) reported nearly ninety three million dollars in "unassigned cash" as of June 30, 2024. Yet district officials are also seeking private donations to pay the student lunch tabs. 

Contrast the $124,000 student lunch debt with the nearly $700,000 Columbia school board members paid Mr. "Scholars" himself, former Superintendent Brian Yearwood. After negotiating with him for months, board members terminated Yearwood November 22, but paid him through December plus another $670,000 lump sum. 

To shield themselves from criticism and possible litigation, school leaders lied to the public, claiming Yearwood had "retired". That claim proved bogus when Yearwood turned up seeking superintendent jobs in other school districts.

Though it doesn't take a math teacher to figure that Yearwood's payoff is more than five times the student lunch debt, let's do the math anyway: 5 x 124,000 = $620,000. And yet, district leaders want voters, parents, residents, and taxpayers to pay off the lunch debt.

Another outrageous scandal uncovered $15,000 taxpayers were shelling out for coffee at CPS headquarters on Worley Street.    

During public comment at a Feb. 2023 school board meeting, "Kristin Hill said the fifteen thousand dollars for coffee and supplies at the Aslin Administration building should instead go toward students and teachers," the Missourian reported. "She suggested that administrative staff bring their own coffee. 'What you’re telling us — parents, teachers, students, taxpayers — is that we [school board and administrators] cannot figure out free school meals, but we can figure out how not to pay for our own coffee,'" Hill said. 

Talk about timely irony! 




The greatest financial inequities involve the school district's richest residents and corporations. Stan Kroenke wanted a new sidewalk along his barely-taxed development land across from Mill Creek Elementary, so both school board and city hopped to it and paid the bill.

Some out-town corporation wants a multi-million dollar TIF or Chapter 100 bond subsidy, City Hall, County Hall, and the Columbia school board approve that, too. 

Some big developer wants a new subdivision out in the sticks where he's sitting on hundreds of barely-taxed acres, the school board chips in with a new school, city builds a new park, and taxpayers pay for the infrastructure: roads, sidewalks, street lights, sewers, and so forth. 

But when We Littles need something, we get nothing but big talk and virtue signaling.

Self-serving, milquetoast local politicians preach like fire about right and wrong on the campaign trail, but once elected, they hide behind public information officers, lie to the public, and gaslight the crap out of people who DO stand up, who DO want action, who seek REAL change.  

Columbia is suffering, in tangible, palpable, predictable, and preventable ways under this decades-old dysfunctional rule, which includes City and County Hall.  All three government bodies have hundreds of millions of dollars in reserve funds. But all three always cry poverty whenever average voters and taxpayers ask for something in return -- for their votes, their donations, and their oddly undying devotion to the people in charge.  

"The district's core values on Columbia Public Schools's website are trust, integrity, collaboration, transparency, empathy and grace," Inside Columbia publisher Fred Parry wrote as the Yearwood administration imploded. "School district administrators, along with a handful of school board members, have failed miserably to exemplify any of those six values to which they claim to ascribe."