Divided leadership vote sends Moniteau board into new year
CHERRY TWP — The Moniteau school board ended 2024 with closely split votes on leadership positions at its Dec. 4. reorganization meeting.
Michael Panza, the current president of the Moniteau board, was reelected by his colleagues to remain president for 2025.
Panza won with a 5-4 vote, with his support coming from himself, Mark DeMatteis, Linda Dillaman, Jennifer Rottman and Travis Beachem. Kathy McBride lost the vote, with votes from herself, Christopher Stramm, Brittney Larimore and Janeen Beatty.
Meanwhile, the board’s vice president, Linda Dillaman, was voted out of her leadership role and, with a 6-3 vote, McBride was voted in as vice president. Only Panza, Dillaman and Beatty voted for Dillaman.
Despite the split votes for next year’s leadership, Panza said he is not concerned about the relationships between the board members.
“We all get along, we work great together. I’m not worried about anything,” Panza said. “At the end of the day, the only people we’re concerned on working to benefit is the kids.”
Panza said he and McBride will meet in the coming weeks to discuss committee assignments for 2025.
He also said that of his concerns regarding the upcoming year, the board will focus on “the same thing we’re always focused on addressing: school funding.”
For the upcoming year, he expressed a focus on the state government following through on school funding, as it relates to a previous lawsuit ruling in 2023 that the state government was not adequately funding less wealthy districts and needed to change its formula.
For the 2024-25 school year, Moniteau school district’s budget has expenditures of $25,393,564 and revenue of $23,582,899.
“There was a lawsuit that was brought against the state for not funding school districts enough. They were supposed to work out funding for school districts, and it was supposed to be done by last February, and so far they haven’t taken care of it,” Panza said. “So bottom line, the adequacy gap that Moniteau faces is $1.5 million. Our budget last year, we were out of budget by $1.5 million. The legislature really needs to step up and do something.“
