Recent college graduate challenges four older board members
by Mary Rupert
This year’s election for the Kansas City Kansas Community College Board of Trustees includes one challenger and four incumbents.
Four positions are open, and the incumbents are running as a slate.
At an election forum on March 18 at KCKCC, only the challenger, Victor B. Trammell, was present to discuss his campaign and answer questions. According to information at the forum, two of the candidates, Don Ash and Clyde Townsend, were out of town, while two, Mary Ann Flunder and Ray Daniels, were ill.
Two other college trustees who are not running for re-election this year also made comments during the forum.
Trammell is a freelance writer and author. Trammell was the president of The African-American Student Union (TAASU) at Kansas City Kansas Community College in 2007, and also won the Milestone Award for Academic Achievement that year. He also was a student representative on the college senate at KCKCC.
He said he has previously worked with some political campaigns in the area, including as a canvasser in the midterm elections of 2006, and has served as an election poll judge. In 2014 he was elected a ward captain.
In 2011, Trammell was appointed to the Unified Government’s drug and alcohol advisory board, which he said has enriched his knowledge of how public funds are spent.
He is a graduate of KCKCC with an associate’s degree in general studies, and received a Bachelor of Science in business administration and management in 2013 from the University of Phoenix.
Trammell,34, said his experience as president of the student group TAASU would be helpful, and it was necessary to have a vision when taking office. Adversity gives a person a visionary strategy that is necessary to be successful, he said.
At times a board member has to make difficult decisions, he said. If it benefits the most number of students, that is the decision that would have to be made, he said.
The TEC Center is a step in the right direction, Trammell said, with skills learned at the center as a pipeline from the public schools to jobs in the community. Trammell agrees with the incumbents that a continued effort is needed to bolster success at the TEC Center.
If four-year universities become more expensive in the future, Trammell said he would encourage increased marketing for growth of student enrollment at KCKCC.
“I have a heart for this position,” he said. “I value this institution.”
Two current KCKCC board members whose terms are up in 2017 also spoke at the March 18 forum, although they had not planned in advance to speak.
“We have had a lot of challenges and a lot of opportunities,” said Cathy Breidenthal, a KCKCC board member. She mentioned the new Technical Education Center and new athletic fields as some of the newer opportunities at the college. “It is a true state-of-the-art facility,” she said about the TEC center.
The board, along with all community colleges, has faced challenges with the budget in the current school funding climate in Kansas, and has had to reorganize and make some very difficult decisions, she said.
J.D. Rios, a trustee also attending the forum whose term is up for election in 2017, said the community college was the economic engine for this county. The more forward progress it makes, the better for Wyandotte County, he said.
The Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools Diploma Plus program will only be successful if KCKCC has the capacity to add 1,000 more students within the next four years, he said.
He said it was important to know that the TEC Center is college. “It is passe to say people are not cut out for college,” Rios said. “It is essential for the new economy. Your board of trustees know this, understand it, live it and will continue to serve you.”
Ray Daniels, and Don Ash, incumbents running for election this year, were at the Feb. 25 Armourdale candidate forum, but incumbents Mary Ann Flunder and Clyde Townsend were not able to be there. Flunder was having surgery.
Daniels has 48 years experience in education in Wyandotte County, including 40 years with the Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools, where he was superintendent his last seven years. Two years after he retired, he became a trustee at KCKCC, and has served two terms.
There is a need for this community to have quality people to fill quality jobs, he said. The University of Kansas Medical Center was recently talking about 1,000 new jobs, he said.
“If our young people and our elderly people are not prepared to take those jobs, Wyandotte County is going to fall behind,” Daniels said. “Education is the answer.”
KCKCC works with the local school districts to provide quality education, he said. KCKCC just opened a new Technical Education Center last year at 63rd and State Avenue, he said.
“There’s a prediction that by 2020 in Kansas, almost 80 percent of the jobs are going to require some post-secondary education,” Daniels said. “It’s doesn’t mean a four-year degree, it doesn’t even necessarily mean a two-year degree, but it does mean there will have to be some additional sort of work done by people to get those jobs.”
Good jobs with good benefits right now include occupations such as welder and electrician, he said. He said he heard recently there were 9,000 technical jobs available now in the Kansas City area, and not all require degrees, some just require training and certifications available at such places as the TEC Center.
Don Ash, another KCKCC incumbent trustee, also has served two terms as a trustee. He is also the Wyandotte County Sheriff. Ash served with the Kansas City, Kan., Police Department until his retirement, then he ran for Sheriff.
In addition to all the reasons mentioned by Daniels, Ash said KCKCC also is notable because of the “economic engining” that goes on through the college. He said $12 million of federal Pell grant money passes through the college each school year.
In the years since 2007, KCKCC completed the merger of the technical school from the Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools into KCKCC, which was required by the Legislature, he said. Since the merger and the $30 million renovation of the TEC Center, enrollment has grown to more than 400 students seeking technical certificates or degrees, he said.
More than 90 percent of the students complete their training, or are hired before graduating into jobs that pay well and can support a family, he said.
“We want to continue the work we’ve begun, we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress in the last eight years we’ve served,” Ash said.
Flunder has served as a trustee for about 23 years. A member of the local NAACP, she also has been a Silver-Haired Legislature member and a member of the Kansas Black Chamber of Commerce, according to the candidates’ campaign information. She has done work at the national level on behalf of community college associations.
Townsend was appointed in 2005 to the board of trustees and has served two full terms, according to the candidates’ campaign information. He is a former Wyandotte County commissioner and a former member of the Board of Public Utilities. He is a former employee at the Kansas City, Kan., Street Department.
The general election is April 7, with polls open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and advance voting also continues on Saturday, April 3 at two sites.
The March 18 candidate forum will be shown on cable television from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday, April 6, on the college’s cable channel, 17 on Time Warner Cable and 146 on Google TV.
To see the video on YouTube, visit www.kckcc.edu and click on the YouTube icon in the bottom right corner, then select the candidate forum for KCKCC, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XKwdZLhhx8.
Advance voting is already underway for the April 7 election. For more information on voting, visit https://wyandotteonline.com/walk-in-advance-voting-begins-today-march-28/
or www.wycovotes.org.
