How Kansas Citians once fought for a struggling school and won — briefly

Yahoo

27-04-2025

What's Your KCQ is a collaboration between The Star and the Kansas City Public Library series that answers your questions about the history, people, places and culture that make Kansas City unique. Have a suggestion for a future story? Share it with us here, or email our journalists at [e-mail].
In December, when Kansas City's Guadalupe Centers announced a plan to use the former FBI field office on Summit to expand its charter school program, a reader asked What's Your KCQ? about the history of another area school a few blocks to the south.
Today the building at 1936 Summit St. still bears the engraving 'West Junior High School,' but those who have lived in the area long enough may recall the institution's final decade when it became both a senior high school and the center of community activism.
By the late 1960s, years of highway construction had left the West Side physically isolated. Its declining population, made up of roughly equal numbers of Hispanic, Black and white residents, suffered from unemployment at double the citywide average. The Star reported that federal housing officials told the mayor the area was 'no longer viable as a residential community.'
With a fifth of the population under the age of 20 and a dropout rate nearing 9%, neighborhood activists argued that a new high school would serve as a community anchor. After years of public pressure, the Kansas City Board of Education acquiesced and, in 1968, authorized an official study of education on the West Side.
Results of the study called for both the establishment of a high school and meaningful community input in its administration. Despite the reservations of some members, the school board agreed to convert West Junior High into a high school in time for the 1969-70 academic year.
Almost from the beginning, the question of community input caused friction with the board. West Side residents asked repeatedly for a more diverse faculty and curriculum, while the board, looking to cut costs as taxpayers fled the city for the suburbs, publicly considered closing the school at least six times over the course of the decade. By 1978, a cycle of falling standards, declining enrollment, and uncertainty over the school's future had clearly emerged.
The board selected West High to house a 'minimagnet' business/management center. Despite community support, the program quickly came under scrutiny.
At a meeting of over 100 West Side residents in early 1979, four school board members listened as parents complained of disinvestment and low academic expectations. Some claimed that teachers allowed students to watch television in class and didn't report absences. One teacher said West had become little more than 'a day-care center.'
Representative Raul Rojas called the district's neglect 'mental genocide.' But perhaps the harshest criticism came from longtime community organizer Donaciano 'Don' Pecina. He read the names of 15 one-time West students who, he claimed, were now dead. These kids, Pecina said, 'didn't have a chance.'
Tensions erupted again later that summer when the board was considering 'alternatives' for West and held a meeting to solicit community input. Pecina rose to ask if there was any possibility West would be closed. Board President Dr. Edward Scaggs refused to answer.
When Pecina pressed the question, Scaggs adjourned the meeting. In response, the Westside Educational Task Force publicly accused district superintendent Robert Wheeler of targeting West as a form of retaliation against the community.
Despite these tense exchanges, the 1979-80 school year passed uneventfully.
However, on Aug. 4, 1980, superintendent Wheeler recommended closing West, and the very next day, the board voted 5-3 to do so, acknowledging that the sudden move might upset West Side residents.
What ensued took district officials by surprise.
At about 2:20 p.m. that day, Pecina and at least 28 others, including parents, teenagers, and children, entered the school with sleeping bags, food, lumber, and chains, and notified the principal that they were occupying the building.
The protesters, now calling themselves the Coalition to Preserve Education on the West Side, agreed to a meeting with several state education officials as well as Wheeler and Scaggs, but also vowed to continue their occupation until Sept. 3, at which point they would establish their own community high school.
About 5 p.m., Pecina read a statement from an upper window of the school to the applause of about 200 West Side residents gathered outside, who broke into chants of 'West, West, West!'
By Aug. 14, a long-term siege became unnecessary. In a remarkable about-face, the school board agreed to the establishment of an experimental, 'community-sponsored' school at West. Under the agreement, a nine-person committee would work out a plan for the school, which would open in fall 1981 and operate for at least three years.
The seven-day occupation ended with demonstrators and board members laughing and embracing.
The committee's plan received board approval in February, but by April, talk of budget shortfalls again clouded the future; the district had already furloughed 800 employees and closed 13 buildings due to federal spending cuts.
Amid these rollbacks, some board members remained committed to using the building for education, while others opposed reopening West at all when other area schools were being shut down. A.H. 'Scotty' Kilpatrick commented that the district was 'building false hopes on the West Side.'
In late July, the board put an end to the uncertainty and announced that reopening West was simply unworkable. Pecina, who had volunteered on the planning committee for nine months, refused to concede defeat. He and others pledged that the school would open as planned on Monday, Aug. 31, no matter what the district said.
That Friday, school district lawyers requested a restraining order against the volunteer teachers. Circuit Judge Donald Mason denied the request, ruling that the district had not sufficiently disproved the existence of a contract with the protesters, referring to the Aug. 14, 1980, agreement endorsing the experimental school. District officials had signed the document but backpedaled and claimed it was more of a 'concept' than a contract.
At a time when trust in government was generally in decline, the school district's posture severely diminished its stature. Star columnist Rich Hood put it best when he wrote that the question at the heart of the proceedings was 'whether a government agency has to keep its promises.' Even a member of the school board lamented that 'West is a very blatant way of showing that we cannot be trusted.'
The legal battle effectively ended in October, when Circuit Judge Julian Levitt ruled that the 1980 agreement was legally unenforceable. Nevertheless, he continued, it represented at the least 'a very solemn promise,' and 'it would be tragic if the school board does not make every attempt to create an experimental program at West.'
Despite these sentiments, Levitt's decision plunged the final nail into West's coffin.
Over the following decades, the building at 1936 Summit St. fell gradually into disuse before officially closing in 1999. In 2014, after over a decade of wrangling with potential buyers, the school board voted to sell the building to Foutch Brothers, LLC, who have since converted it into market-rate lofts.