Since being elected three years ago as a school board director, Randy Cook has done a great job, holding the line on fiscal responsibility and focusing on academics. He has been fearless in making sure the district focuses on what really matters. See his list of accomplishments here.

Unfortunately, local progressive Political Action Committees (PACs) have been trying to tear down Mr. Cook by making false and misleading claims. Recently, they posted a long rant online, full of accusations with no facts. And just this week, they sent a mailer full of more outrageous claims, again without any evidence. Let’s address their false claims:

Claim 1: Mr. Cook “repeatedly demonstrates an alarmist leadership style and causes chaos for our students, faculty, and community—an approach that has landed our district in the national headlines.”

The Truth: Mr. Cook has taken action to solve problems in the district – and when the progressives didn’t like his solutions, they generated protests (including inciting a student walkout) and emailed reporters to create news stories in an attempt to mislead voters. National news articles came from the claims made by those progressive activists – which have since been proven false.

Claim 2: Mr. Cook’s “knee-jerk reaction to a routine directory request triggered parent reactions across the district… only to reverse the flood of requests when they realized that same directory information is necessary for many in-schools services like school pictures, yearbooks, sports associations/competitions, and even purchasing regalia for graduating seniors.”

The Truth: The local NEA and a Democrat-run political PAC had both requested all available directory information about students that could be collected under the Missouri Sunshine Law for political purposes. This included sensitive student information, and Mr. Cook instinctively recognized the concern for parents. He informed the community about this practice and worked with the administration to create a new opt-out option that would allow parents to keep their data private from third parties while still allowing student information to be in yearbooks and sports associations.

Claim 3: “Despite being elected to a nonpartisan office, nearly all of Cook’s actions run lock-step with party politics. In the last year, Cook has introduced and passed nearly 20 policies… Long-standing policies have always been in place to ensure that content is fit for classrooms and libraries, parents can screen their own children’s content, or book challenges could be raised. Despite the effectiveness of these systems (and no book challenges being raised since 2022), Cook’s new policies increased board authority over book purchases and challenges and micromanaged the work of district librarians and teachers.”

The Truth: This claim is full of misinformation. Mr. Cook’s proposed policies were long needed, a result of previous boards that rubber stamped whatever the superintendent wanted. Here are more details on some of them. His policies were common sense measures that put students, parents, and academics first. They were also adopted by a majority of Board members that were also elected by this community to address these very issues.

The claim that existing book policies kept inappropriate content out of classrooms and libraries is an outright lie – this is just one example (there are many more). 

The reason no book challenges have been filed since 2022 is because parents tried challenges prior to that – and every challenge failed, no matter how explicit the content. So, starting in 2022, parents began focusing on electing board members like Mr. Cook to deal with this problem.

Claim 4: “The policies also flew in the face of Cook’s promises to protect “parents’ rights” as they now allow any taxpayer to raise challenges to books in classrooms or libraries, even if they do not have children enrolled in our schools..”

The Truth: District residents were always able to challenge books, even under the old policy. Mr. Cook’s changes clarified the process, replacing ambiguous language that was a primary reason that no book challenge had ever succeeded. After librarians and others gave feedback about his initial draft of the policies, Mr. Cook updated them to take those concerns into account while still keeping the intent of the policies.

Claim 5: “Other policies censored teacher and parent speech. Instead of encouraging civic engagement, some of Cook’s restrictions effectively silenced discussion of school board elections on school property.”

The Truth: The district has always had restrictions on campaigning on school property. The previous policy had loopholes which the progressive PAC was abusing. When parents showed up with their kids for school activities or parent teacher conferences, representatives of that PAC were there to harass them about the upcoming election. Mr. Cook’s policy and regulation changes reined in these abuses, while still allowing open classroom discussion and learning about elections.

Claim 6: “In a concerning pattern of stripping quality resources from our schools, Cook successfully led rejections and defunding of textbook adoptions, teacher trainings, and popular resources like Brain Pop”

The Truth: Mr. Cook opposed the iReady math curriculum resource for elementary school math. It was almost twice as expensive as the previous resource, relied heavily on computer-based instruction, and had no evidence that it was any more effective. A quick web search shows that iReady has many dissatisfied customers. The district piloted it, but the pilot was too limited to show effectiveness (or lack thereof) and was only measured by an opinion survey. Other effective resources were not considered. The board was right to reject iReady.

Mr. Cook has voted for over 93% of the travel requests that have come before him during his term. The conservative board majority only denied three requests over the past three years, and those were for administrators (not teachers) to take taxpayer paid trips to conferences with sessions on implementing DEI and social justice in schools. Mr. Cook has only voted against one travel request for actual teachers, and that denial was for a conference instructing teachers on how to “queer” the kindergarten classroom (among other troubling topics).

BrainPop is an animated video service that puts kids in front of more screens. Mr. Cook objected to this service offering videos that push gender ideology, systemic racism, and anti-police propaganda on our elementary school children. We applaud his focus on reducing screen time in the classroom and making sure taxpayer dollars don’t fund private companies that push their political agenda on kids.

Claim 7: “Another policy was essentially an FHSD version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.”

The Truth: We’re not sure why this progressive PAC wants staff or teachers having secret conversations with kids about sex, gender identity, and other sensitive topics, which was the focus of the policy. The district’s own sexual abuse prevention training warns about staff talking about these kinds of topics with kids outside of district approved health classes. 

Claim 8: “A school board director is meant to be a nonpartisan position, filled by those who act in service of our community and in response to the needs of students, staff and teachers. Rather, this leader’s agenda is directly in line with party politics.”

The Truth: “Nonpartisan” just means that party affiliation is not shown on the ballot. Each candidate still has beliefs and ideas that may align with a political party. Progressive candidates Gryder and Oelke have a St Charles County Democrat party official as their treasurer. The treasurer of the progressive PAC making this claim is also the treasurer of the St Charles County Democrat party. Amy Gryder works closely with St. Charles County Democratic party political candidates. The PAC making this claim even had Jessica Piper, a Democrat politician from the other side of the state, come to town and headline one of their events. For them to be complaining about partisanship is laughable. If Mr. Cook’s actions are in opposition to the extreme positions taken by today’s Democrat party, it only shows how out of touch they are.

Claim 9: Mr. Cook “failed to address basic reading instruction.”

The Truth: Mr. Cook addressed reading instruction his very first year in office. In December 2022, he proposed adding Science of Reading instruction directly into Policy. In February 2023, the District held a workshop regarding literacy instruction in response to questions he had raised in the months prior. In this workshop, the Board was assured that the recently approved legislation (RSMo. 161.241) regarding reading instruction was being carried out. Mr. Cook also asked questions regarding the reading interventions used in the district.

Just 2 months ago, the Director of Curriculum sought approval to send the district’s new ELA Content Leader to LitCon, a conference sponsored by the discredited Reading Recovery Council of North America, which was presenting ways to bypass the Science of Reading. Randy Cook proactively addressed this before the board meeting and suggested another conference that was aligned to the Science of Reading. The Administration agreed and changed the travel request. This is a great example of how Mr. Cook has spent the last three years working to improve the district, even when not claiming public credit for doing so.

Claim 10: Mr. Cook caused “increased legal fees.”

The Truth: There is no basis in fact to make the claim that legal fees increased due to any action Mr. Cook took or didn’t take. As district legal matters are entirely confidential, this PAC has no more knowledge than anyone else about changes in legal fees. They irresponsibly make this outrageous claim because they know that Mr. Cook cannot publicly refute it due to his obligations as a sitting board member.

Conclusion:
The claims presented on the website and mailer are all false or misleading. The actual record shows Randy Cook to be an effective board member and problem solver. Francis Howell is the best district in the county by any measure (including teacher retention), and is a leading district in the region today, thanks in no small part to the leadership of Mr. Cook. We have happily endorsed him for re-election this year. Help us get the truth of these claims out there by sharing this article, and then go vote for Randy Cook and Ashley Sturm on April 8!

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Francis Howell Families Endorses Randy Cook and Ashley Sturm for FHSD School Board