The Bowlus Commission met with two members of the USD 257 board of education on Thursday. The meeting was the first of its kind since last week’s court decision, which granted the school board the widest possible latitude in exercising its discretion as trustee of the Bowlus Fine Arts Center.
The decision answers the decades-long speculation and uncertainty that has bedeviled those who’ve struggled to understand the exact nature of the district’s obligations to the Bowlus as they were originally inscribed in the will of Iola banker Thomas H. Bowlus nearly 60 years ago.
And yet, for all its intentions toward clarity, the court’s decision stirs up a host of new questions in its wake.
THE WATCHWORD Thursday was “stability.” Commission members wanted to know: 1) Since the school board now can remove itself as trustee of the Bowlus Fine Arts Center, will it?; 2) Will the district’s anticipated bond campaign alter the board’s devotion to the Bowlus?; 3) How, given the potential uncertainty engendered by this latest decision, can a new executive director assume his or her position with a clear remit of their duties going forward and with sufficient confidence that their board is behind them and that their board represents one half of a durable partnership?
School board president Dan Willis and board member Jen Taylor joined five volunteers from the Bowlus Commission, plus the center’s executive director Susan Raines, in a genial meeting of minds to discuss the future of the fine arts center and the health of the connection between USD 257 and the Bowlus, which has persisted since the center’s beginning.
COMMISSION MEMBER David Lee put it the most incisively. “There’s got to be something there that says for a period of time we’re not going to pull the rug out from under you. … What about some kind of commitment that there will be certain levels of stability for a period of time? I think that will go a long ways.”
Fellow commission member Patti Boyd agreed. “The part of all [this] that worries me the most would be if the board of trustees was to resign the Bowlus. … I think the pieces that have to do with how the school district uses the Bowlus, all those are — and always have been — negotiable. … I would, personally, love to see an answer at some point from you guys — do you see yourself resigning from being trustees? That’s the big question I have. That’s what I want to know. Everything else we can work out. We’ve done it in the past; we’ve been able to find money when we’ve needed to, we’ve been able to make those things work. But that piece changes it all.”
“And I think that the sooner the decision can be made, the better,” added commission member Susan McKinnis.
Willis was sensitive to this point, but was also wary of charging ahead merely for the sake of a solution. “[The not knowing] makes it difficult. I do understand that. … [But] this is something that has to be very, very thorough — if there are even any changes to make at all. … I just can’t see us fast tracking this; actually, I’m scared to fast track this.”
Raines commended Willis’s caution in this respect but wondered if the upcoming bond issue wouldn’t, if it doesn’t have the effect of forcing the board’s hand on the question of the Bowlus, perhaps have the opposite effect and lead to long, cumbersome delays in deciding the precise nature of the district’s relationship to the arts center.
The steering committee to discuss USD 257’s future infrastructural projects and attendant bond campaign will hold its first meeting on Monday. “I’ve always been in support of new schools or remodeled schools or whatever you’re able to finance,” said Raines. “But not knowing what that’s going to [look like] is going to delay your decision here, is what I’m guessing. And I just want clarity on that. Is that true or not true, in your minds?
“It’s possible,” said Willis, without closing the door on the chance that continued dialogue between Bowlus affiliates and members of the community might produce a near-term solution, one not previously considered.
“I don’t actually think you’d have to wait until after you’ve got a bond issue going,” said Boyd, at a point later in the meeting. “I think that it could be useful to have those decisions made before a bond issue, so that we understand what we’re going to do here on the Bowlus.”
“I would like that,” said Willis, who has invited a number of Bowlus-associated personnel to attend Monday’s steering committee meeting. “Because what that bond issue looks like may be something that can benefit the Bowlus. We don’t necessarily only have to have fine arts in the building now, if there’s something else that makes sense. There’s just so much synergy possible if we look at the positive on this.”
Realistically, though, both Willis and Taylor agreed that any decisions the board takes with respect to the Bowlus will likely not occur before Raines has completed her tenure as director of the fine arts center.
AFTER 14 years leading the Bowlus, Raines is scheduled to retire on Aug. 31, 2018, but has agreed to remain as a consultant to the new director for the remainder of that calendar year.
“The hurdle of the next 12 months,” said Lee, is ensuring that the new director enters his or her role knowing that things are going to be “constant for [them] for at least three, four, five years’ time. … If [Raines] was going to be here, I don’t think it would be as critical.”
Raines also reminded the board, on behalf of her as-yet unhired successor, that the employee benefit package makes a difference in hiring good people. “If, at some point down the road, you’re not going to [be the trustee and the new trustee] is not a taxing entity, then there’s not going to be KPERS [the public retirement system] and insurance. And that matters.”
On the money-side, the new director will inherit a budget that has — with a mix of public and private aid — remained healthy under Raines’s direction, and remained consistent each year with her projections. (One asterisk to that, this year, concerns the legal fees column. Raines budgeted the usual $1,000 but the court has recently ordered the Bowlus to split evenly the legal fees with USD 257 for the costs of the district-initiated petition. The board has not yet been presented with its final bill, but the total costs, explained Willis, will likely be $20,000 to $30,000. Of which the Bowlus is responsible for half.)
On the upside, continued Raines — citing the court’s determination that the Bowlus assets could never be forfeited to the KU Endowment Association, as once feared — the new director will not operate, as Raines has for more than a decade, with the fear that any violation of Bowlus’s will and trust might result in the entire disbursement of the half-century old project.
To that, the entire room was in agreement. “It’s a win for the community,” said Boyd.
And Raines was not unsympathetic to the board’s dilemma, and even conceded that a little uncertainty in the changeover can be tolerated. “In fact, it could be [the new director’s] vision that leads you, which is what you really want.”
THE TONE of Thursday’s meeting was mutually admiring. The Bowlus Commission poured favor on the current crop of school board members. And Willis and Taylor each lent a sympathetic ear to the comments from the commission, and, while neither could offer any hard commitment at this preliminary stage and in the absence of their full board, both members expressed a strong desire to see the Bowlus prosper for as long as they’re around to see it, and beyond.
“I have no stomach to pull the rug out on this or throw a blanket on it,” said Willis, doubling down on the soft-covering metaphor. “Whatever happens, we want this to work.”
“Let’s talk about what kind of commitment you can make,” said Boyd. “Not money. We’ve gotten around money all kinds of times, and we can probably do it again. It is just the stability and the commitment in the relationship. Not ‘Tell me exactly what classes are going to be there,’ not ‘Tell me that you’re not going to build a new school somewhere farther away.’ Just tell me that we’re going to stick together for awhile. That the Bowlus is not going to give up on the board and the board is not going to give up on the Bowlus.”
