Emails obtained under a Freedom of Information Act/Kansas Open Records Act request show that president Deb Zila chastised her fellow Shawnee Mission School District board of education members following their failure to act on some of superintendent Gene Johnson’s proposals at their Nov. 8 meeting.

In a message sent Nov. 10 with the subject line “Disappointment,” Zila tells her fellow board members that her confidence in them has been “immeasurably shaken.” She references the critique Kansas City Star columnist Mike Hendricks published after the Nov. 8 board meeting (in which he said the board had “melted like a cheap candle”) and says she is “ashamed to say I thought we could all ‘walk the walk’ and make those hard decisions when it counted.”

She concludes the message, “I would ask you to ponder your priorities and commitment to the district and its students.”