Yolanda Adams recall, Kenosha Unified School District, Wisconsin (2021)
| Kenosha Unified School District recall |
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| Recall overview Political recall efforts, 2021 Recalls in Wisconsin Wisconsin recall laws School board recalls Recall reports |
An effort to recall Yolanda Adams from her position on the Kenosha Unified School District Board of Education in Wisconsin did not go to a vote in 2021. Recall supporters did not collect enough signatures by the filing deadline on October 27, 2021.[1]
The recall effort began in September 2021.[2] Recall supporters listed hyper-partisanship, disrespectful actions toward community members, frivolous spending, not representing the will of electorate, a widening achievement gap, and questions about a lack of community input for federal COVID relief funds that the district received as reasons for the recall effort.[3] Adams said the group had a right to pursue a recall but was glad it did not go to the ballot due how much a recall election would have cost.[1]
Adams' term on the seven-member board was scheduled to expire in April 2023.[4]
To read about other recall efforts related to the coronavirus and government responses to the pandemic, click here.
Recall supporters
Recall supporters published the following statement on the reasons for recall in The Wisconsin Conservative Digest:[3]
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Recalling an elected official is always the very last resort and is not to be taken lightly. This is not about masks and is not a temperamental reaction to not getting our way. This recall is about a school board president and several hyper-partisan board members who disrespectfully treat parents and students in the district as if they are inferior and ignorant. Under Ms. Adams’ leadership, the board has recklessly and frivolously spent hard-earned taxpayer dollars with zero accountability for their wastefulness and inefficiency. Throughout the pandemic, parents worked hard to establish meaningful positive relationships with KUSD leadership, to understand the district’s complex circumstances in this unique time, and to negotiate and compromise on solutions that would best serve all students. Despite these sincere efforts to learn and understand educators’ and administrators’ points of view, parents have been largely ignored by the Kenosha school board. Since March of 2020, the KUSD school board has consistently voted to usurp student and parental rights to choose what is in the best interest of their children. Several board members have repeatedly disregarded the will of the electorate by ignoring the outcomes of parent surveys, emails, phone calls, and letters. As elected officials, the board’s job is to represent the will of the electorate, instead, they punted. They consistently deferred their decisions on covid safety measures to the local health director, thus, they have effectively abdicated their voting rights to an unelected bureaucrat who does not represent voters. During Ms. Adams’ time with the KUSD school board, the achievement gap has significantly widened, the overall district report card has remained woefully flat, and taxes have increased. Last year enrollment in the district dropped by an unprecedented 1,336 students, resulting in an unexpected, unplanned budgetary deficit of nearly $3 Million. KUSD has only been able to recover about 175 of those students, nowhere near enough to offset the deficit. The board has failed to address this deficit, and they have continuously failed to explain why the district’s expenses continue to increase in the face of declining enrollment. At the same time, they continue to ask for more money while academic and social outcomes decline. This failing record can only be stopped by replacing some board members with qualified leaders who are committed to putting students first, and to operating the district with efficiency and fiscal responsibility. To add insult to injury, in the face of the nearly $73,000,000 in “covid relief” money that KUSD received, the board voted for a tax levy of 9.63%. This was a major slap in the face to district taxpayers who are already burdened and have been shown zero accountability for their money. The law REQUIRES that nearly $44 Million of that “covid relief” money must include community input when deciding how it will be spent. To date, the district has never reached out to the whole community for insight or ideas for how to responsibly spend this money. Clearly, Ms. Adams and her willing accomplices on the board feel they “know better and to reach out to the community is beneath them. Ms. Adams’ current term ends in April 2023, the seats currently held by Rebecca Stevens, Tony Garcia, and Atifa Robinson will be challenged by qualified and motivated candidates in the April of 2022 election. Due to state rules, Mary Modder, Todd Price, and Todd Battle cannot be recalled at this time because they are in the first year of their current terms in office. If the recall and spring elections are successful, we have the potential to impact significant change in our school district that, ultimately, not only benefits students but raises the standard of living for our entire community. We will NOT co-parent with the government. They work with us, and we must all have a seat at the table.[5] |
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Recall opponents
Adams said the group had a right to pursue a recall. She said she was pleased the effort did not collect enough signatures because the school district would have had to pay for the recall election. “It would put an undue hardship on all our local municipalities,” Adams said. “And, I think we’ve spent enough money on recall elections in this state. We don’t need to be doing that in Kenosha with the regular election being so close in April.”[1]
Path to the ballot
- See also: Laws governing recall in Wisconsin
To get the recall on the ballot, recall supporters would have had to collect signatures equal in number to 25% of voters in the school district who cast ballots in the 2018 gubernatorial election in 60 days.[1]
Ballotpedia covered 35 coronavirus-related recall efforts against 94 officials in 2022, accounting for 13% of recalls that year. This is a decrease from both 2020 and 2021. COVID-related recalls accounted for 37% of all recall efforts in both 2020 and 2021. In 2020, there were 87 COVID-related recalls against 89 officials, and in 2021, there were 131 against 214 officials.
The chart below compares coronavirus-related recalls to recalls for all other reasons in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
2021 recall efforts
- See also: School board recalls
Ballotpedia tracked 92 school board recall efforts against 237 board members in 2021. Recall elections against 17 board members were held in 2021. The school board recall success rate was 0.42%.
The chart below details the status of 2021 recall efforts by individual school board member.
See also
- Kenosha Unified School District, Wisconsin
- Recall campaigns in Wisconsin
- Political recall efforts, 2021
- School board recalls
- States that allow school board recalls
External links
- Search Google News for this topic
- Kenosha Unified School District
- Recall KUSD School Board Facebook page
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Kenosha News, "Efforts to recall KUSD school board president fall short; unseating incumbents in April election group's next task," October 26, 2021
- ↑ Facebook, "Recall KUSD School Board," accessed September 29, 2021
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 The Wisconsin Conservative Digest, "Kenosha parent’s group speaks out against misinformation about recall," September 20, 2021
- ↑ Kenosha Unified School District, "Board Members," accessed September 29, 2021
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
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