EVANSVILLE — The EVSC school board’s intervention in a school board election — grossly unfair or completely justified, depending on which member you ask — could turn that race into a referendum on EVSC itself.
When former school board member Amy Word was convicted of a felony in June, the board had 30 days under state law to name someone to serve the remaining months of Word’s four-year term. School board seats are not partisan elected positions with replacements chosen by a political party’s precinct committee members.
But rather than name a caretaker to hold Word’s District 3 seat for the rest of the year, the school board chose to send questionnaires to Josh Barnett and Amy DeVries, who are already candidates in November’s election for two District 3 board seats. There is a third candidate for the two seats — Terry Gamblin, who has served 36 years on the board. That makes it a contested election.
The school board’s first question to Barnett and DeVries wasn’t why they wanted to be on the board. It was why they’re running for seats on the board.
School board members Mike Duckworth, Karen Ragland and Chris Kiefer then outvoted Melissa Moore — with Gamblin and David Hollingsworth abstaining — to put Barnett on the board over DeVries.
It was wrong and it was unnecessary, said Hollingsworth, who had nominated former school board member Jeff Worthington as a placeholder instead. Hollingsworth wanted the school board to stay neutral in the Nov. 5 election.
“It creates an incumbent (in the election), and I think that’s unfair,” he said. “What if you nominate A and then they lose to B? You did (administrative) orientation for A, and you have to do it all over again for B. That’s not frugal use of taxpayer dollars.”
Hollingsworth added that school board members have potentially created an awkward working relationship for themselves if voters elect DeVries and she joins a board that rejected her.
But Hollingsworth had another concern, one he didn’t raise until the Courier & Press told him DeVries had mentioned it.
He said a school board member who he wouldn’t name told him before the board’s vote that the sports apparel company Barnett co-founded several years ago had made financial contributions to EVSC.
“It was made very clear that that was a favorable thing for (Barnett),” Hollingsworth said. “I’m not saying that’s unethical, but that was part of the reason why they saw it in his favor. They liked that.”
More: EVSC attorney: Amy Word’s felony conviction changes her school board status
‘I took that as a positive’
As co-founder with three friends of basketball and sports apparel company 19nine, Barnett did make his company’s first “Local Pioneers” award, a $10,000 donation, to Lincoln School in 2023. EVSC’s Facebook page expressed “much appreciation” to Barnett.
Barnett’s application to the school board pointed to the Lincoln School donation and to others his company had made to EVSC entities.
“Through my business we have donated multiple times to Hangars (a clothing resource serving EVSC students) for kids in need of quality clothing,” Barnett wrote. “Our latest donation was in excess of $50,000 in collegiate hoodies and t-shirts for kids to wear throughout the school year.”
Barnett told the Courier & Press that 19nine donated excess athletic logo apparel to help underserved students at EVSC.
“From being a teacher in the EVSC, I knew that they have college spirit days and all that stuff, so my intent behind that was to give the kids something that they could be proud of, something that was high quality — something that we sell for $65, $70, that we had overages of,” he said.
“I wanted to give those back so those kids had something to wear.”
Kiefer doesn’t see anything questionable in the school board’s decision to elevate Barnett over an opponent in a contested election after Barnett made donations to EVSC. He noted that Barnett made the donations before there was a school board vacancy to run for.
“I didn’t take it as giving him the upper hand,” Kiefer said. “I just thought it was somebody that wanted to invest in Evansville, wanted to invest in the EVSC. I took that as a positive.”
There was no need to choose a caretaker to hold down Word’s former school board seat until after the election, Kiefer declared.
“These are two people (Barnett and DeVries) that were willing to put their name on the line to run for office,” he said. “It made sense to me that we ask them to do a questionnaire, and then we voted on who we thought would be the best fit to put in right now.”
Kiefer had one other point to make: Being an incumbent school board member in an election isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. He pointed to Worthington, who lost his seat in 2020; Andy Guarino, who was ousted in the 2022 election; and Rance Ossenberg, who lost his seat in 2018’s election.
The superintendent speaks
Barnett, an Evansville native and a graduate of Reitz High School and Indiana University, taught in Indianapolis Public Schools until he moved back to Evansville to teach at Washington Middle School from 2013 until 2020. He resigned that job to start 19nine.
19nine was successful enough, Barnett told the school board, that he was able to sell the company to a New York City-based private equity firm and turn it into a career working for another company under the equity firm’s umbrella. He now works from Evansville as a vice president for New York-based SLAM Media, a self-described “full-service basketball media company.”
Kiefer and EVSC Superintendent David Smith have said they are impressed that Barnett and his wife, both natives, prioritized getting their children into EVSC schools when they moved back to Evansville from Indianapolis. Barnett has one son at Cynthia Heights Elementary School, another at Helfrich Park STEM Academy and a daughter at Reitz High School.
DeVries has experience as an EVSC parent, too. She told the school board in her application that she and her husband “sent all three of our children (two of whom have special needs) through EVSC schools.”
“I believe that I’m the most qualified candidate between the two of us because of my experience as a parent, as a volunteer and as a community organizer,” DeVries told the Courier & Press. “I’ve had my ear to the ground in this community.”
Smith spoke glowingly of Barnett in a recent EVSC podcast.
Smith noted that Barnett’s grandfather coached basketball at Reitz when he — Smith — was a student at Reitz. Barnett’s mother taught many years at Tekoppel Elementary School, the superintendent said.
Smith didn’t mention Barnett’s past donations to EVSC, nor did he address the wisdom of appointing one candidate in a contested election for a school board seat over another.
Barnett’s experience as a teacher within EVSC and in Indianapolis and his “business acumen” will benefit EVSC, the superintendent declared.
“The questions that he asked and just his knowledge about things, not only school-wise but also business-wise, I think, is going to make him a very, very good board member,” Smith said.
November’s vote can ‘send a message’
There may be a hazard for Barnett in being so closely identified as the school board’s preferred candidate for a school board seat, said one former member.
“It’s the school board’s candidate — so if you wanted to send a message to the school board, you don’t vote for this candidate,” said Ann Ennis, who served on the board from 2018 through 2022.
Ennis made clear she wasn’t saying DeVries or Gamblin are better candidates than Barnett for the two available school board seats. But she said the school board’s action leaves Barnett vulnerable to being perceived by voters as “beholden to the school corporation.”
That means EVSC administration, she said.
“If you’re happy with the way they’re making decisions, then go with it,” Ennis said. “And if you’re not happy with the way the decisions are being made, send a message.”
DeVries wrote in her application that she would be open to hearing from people who aren’t happy with EVSC schools.
“I have spoken with families who do not trust school officials and some residents in District 3 feel forgotten or ignored,” she wrote, adding that she would listen to their concerns and advocate for them when appropriate.
The table was set two years ago
The situation the school board confronted could have been avoided, Ennis lamented.
It started with Word’s refusal to resign from the school board after her July 2022 arrest on a felony charge stemming from allegations of drug use and dealing at Lamasco Bar & Grill.
Kiefer, then the board’s president, asked Word to resign after her arrest, but she declined. The board then approved an unpaid leave of absence for Word, who owned and managed Lamasco at the time. That deprived the seven-member board of one of its members for nearly two full years, through several delays of Word’s trial. Until, that is, she was convicted of the felony on June 28 and ceased immediately to be a member of the board as a consequence.
The problem was, Indiana’s deadline for filing candidacy for school board seats in this year’s election had passed eight days earlier on June 20. If school board members had any notion of choosing a temporary replacement for Word and having that person join the election race for her former seat, it was too late by days.
“It’s unfortunate that it took three years to wrap this up, so what you end up with is this,” Ennis said.
Voting for school board this November
Voters must take a detour off their ballots to participate in nonpartisan school board elections, and consequently those elections don’t get as much participation.
In 2020, the most recent presidential election year, a total of 78,718 Vanderburgh County voters cast ballots in partisan races for federal, state and local offices. In that year’s four-way race for two school board seats in District 3, Amy Word was the highest vote-getter with 31,094. Terry Gamblin received the second-highest number of votes at 26,250. Even assuming all voters marked only Word and Gamblin’s names — an unlikely scenario — at most 57,344 votes were cast in the race.
School board candidates represent districts, but their seats are voted on countywide.
School board member Karen Ragland, running unopposed to represent District 1, received almost 44,300 votes in 2020.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: EVSC wades into contested school board election for candidate who gave to EVSC
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