Lawsuit to Remove Harvey Follows Failures by SLPS Leaders, Local Media

City taxpayers expecting local media to serve as watchdogs over local political matters have plenty of reason to be disappointed by most outlets’ coverage of the process around the decision to seat the newest member of the St. Louis Board of Education (BOE), Dr. Robert Harvey. Questions largely left unexamined by the city’s larger outlets have now led to a lawsuit filed by former BOE member Ben Conover, two other former BOE members, and other city residents. Among those signing on to the challenge are two other former BOE members: former Vice President Matt Davis and board member Antionette “Toni” Cousins. Davis is also serving as legal counsel for the case. They are joined by numerous other city residents who signed on to the complaint, as the law requires at least ten city residents to file a petition to remove a member of the BOE.

When asked why so many people, including two other former board members, signed onto the suit to remove Dr. Harvey from the BOE, Conover responded, “All publicly available records indicate Dr. Harvey does not meet the residency requirement for the Board. Despite multiple requests, no proof of residency has been provided. If Dr. Harvey does not meet the requirement, it puts all Board decisions he contributes to in legal jeopardy. I simply do not understand why the Board persists with such recklessness in their stewardship of the District. It is not good for or fair to the staff or the students.”

Our previous reporting showed there were legitimate concerns that Dr. Havey had not lived in the city for the three years required of candidates for the BOE. We showed that there were publicly available property tax records and public social media posts indicating that his residency in the city is less than two years old. In our reporting, we offered multiple opportunities to BOE President Dr. Karen Collins-Adams and Dr. Harvey to produce evidence that he had lived in the city for three years. We received no responses. Now we know, as the Post-Dispatch reports, that the BOE does not dispute the fact that Dr. Harvey did not meet the three-year residency requirement to run for a seat on the school board. Rather, they are now saying that it is not necessary for Dr. Harvey to meet the requirement, as he was selected by the BOE, rather than at the ballot box. They have essentially admitted that they are attempting to rely on a loophole to seat Dr. Harvey. This is information that they were apparently unwilling to share with the public before he was seated. If the BOE is so confident that their appointees don’t need to meet candidate filing requirements, why didn’t they just say so? I would venture it is because they know voters would reject the board’s position that the residency requirement doesn’t really matter.

The BOE was not alone in helping Dr. Harvey avoid questions about meeting the requirements to serve. One has to ask why the overwhelming majority of local news outlets failed to report on Dr. Harvey’s lack of meeting the three-year requirement, at least until after he was seated. Besides our reporting, the only mention of residency concerns, prior to his swearing in,  came in the form of a short mention in a report that indicated he had paid 2024 personal property taxes on a car that was registered at his former Florissant home. If the reporter had this information, then they had Dr. Harvey’s former address in Florissant. Simply searching St. Louis County’s property records would have shown that he had paid real estate taxes on the home in 2024. Instead, reporters covering local education issues waited until after he was already seated to tell their audiences that there were legitimate concerns about Dr. Harvey having lived in St. Louis County until the end of 2024.

In fact, it is not just elected leaders or the media who seem to have been dragging their feet on providing city taxpayers with transparency around the process. School district staff have also helped keep information from the public. This publication requested copies of emails between Dr. Havey and the BOE. Our hope was that this would reveal whether BOE members were aware of Dr. Harvey’s short tenure in the city, prior to voting to place him on the BOE. Surely, this information would be an important consideration in the selection process. While they may have still voted to place him on the BOE, one would expect this to be a topic of discussion. After delays, we were eventually informed by the school district’s Custodian of Records that documents would be made available and that a fee would be charged to obtain them. We were told that these were to be available on or before February 13th. As of this writing, we have been provided neither the documents nor the cost to obtain them.

In total, this is just another episode that proves voters are right to distrust both local elected officials and the outlets covering them. When looking at the balance of evidence, it would seem that the BOE, Dr. Harvey, and the reporters covering local school issues were all aware, or at least had good reason to suspect, that he didn’t meet the three-year residency requirement. It also seems that they chose to keep that information from city taxpayers. If local elected officials and media outlets were serious about a desire to rebuild trust in their institutions, they wouldn’t be acting in such an untrustworthy manner.

After all of this, we will now find out whether the BOE’s loophole argument will be enough to satisfy a local judge. While the BOE was unwilling to make the case for their attempt to use a loophole in the court of public opinion, the newly filed lawsuit means that they will now be forced to do so in the court of law. I join those filing the suit in their hope that the judge will decide against opening up a loophole that would allow politicians to select individuals who don’t meet the requirements needed to file for the seat to which they are being appointed.