KANSAS CITY, Kan. — They’re working to help kids learn to read, and now the teachers at one summer literacy program in KCK demand to know why they’re not being paid as they say they were promised.
Instructors at the Freedom School Summer Reading Program held at the Metropolitan Baptist Church on Washington Boulevard say they’ve been promised a paycheck, but they aren’t getting them from the Unified Government of Wyandotte County. This is one of two Freedom Schools taking place in KCK.
Cheryl Landrum is a site coordinator with the program, who says she and her eight staff members at the Washington Boulevard location have been paid once, but that was weeks ago. Since then, there hasn’t been a dime.
“There’s no money,” Landrum said.
Landrum is a full-time educator in another local school system. She says the Freedom School Summer Program was promised funding from a grant controlled by the Unified Government.
“Everybody’s not been paid according to what we’ve been told, and our program ends next week,” Landrum said.
Tosha Weaver works as an instructor, teaching first and second graders to love reading and to have fun with their work. Students are also producing a school musical like any other class would.
Weaver says she was promised $3,000 for the summer, and planned to use the money on a second car for her family.
“I feel like a volunteer now,’ Weaver said. “I am passionate enough about children that I would do that.”
Weaver went on to say she had already made plans for the money within her household budget. However, city leaders say they didn’t promise they’d fund the program.
“There was an understanding,” Gordon Criswell, Assistant County Administrator with the Unified Government, said.
Criswell says the city agreed to use grant money to help pay freedom school’s first round of checks only.
“We had a way to help them with their first payroll, but that pattern could not be a consistent pattern,” Criswell said. “You have to have a source of funds to meet your eligible programatic activities, and then, we re-imburse you for what those activities are.”
Criswell says city leaders are in favor of Freedom Schools, but there’s no public money to fund them all summer long.
Freedom School administrators say at least five employees of the Unified Government have children in their program. The school wraps up after next week’s classes at both its Wyandotte County locations.
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