State education board member pitches private business at Capitol

A Kansas State Board of Education member drew condemnation from four elected colleagues Thursday for passing out brochures promoting his mathematics tutoring business to high school students during a board meeting in the Capitol.

Board member Steve Roberts, who refers to himself as "Mr. X, Mentor of Mathematics," distributed cards directing dozens of Highland Park High School students to an Internet website where clients could subscribe to a math instructional program for $15 per month. The site, but not the cards, say Kansans can access tutorials for free.

Two Republicans and two Democrats on the 10-person state board objected in separate interviews to Roberts pitching his private business to student guests during the October meeting.

Roberts, an Overland Park Republican elected last year to the board, said positioning himself at an exit and handing materials marketing mrxmath.com to the high school students was a spur-of-the-moment calculation.

He said motivation was derived, in part, from realization the government class students from Highland Park were brought to the Statehouse by Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat. Hensley teaches at the school.

Hensley had written a letter to Gov. Sam Brownback requesting Roberts resign for using the N-word during a board meeting in the spring while making a point during discussion of African-American history. At the time, Roberts said it was important to push boundaries of political correctness by uttering the N-word in public.

"It was kind of in your face to Senator Hensley, too," Roberts said. "Who does Senator Hensley think he is? Who appointed him judge and jury?"

Hensley was unavailable Thursday while participating in parent-teacher conferences, but a staff member for the senator expressed dismay with Roberts' decisions to speak the N-word and then use minority students from Highland Park as pawns in a game of “in your face” directed at Hensley.

"This spontaneous act of nonsense is something you may expect from a child on a schoolyard," said spokesman Tim Graham, "but not from a member of the state school board."

Jana Shaver, chairwoman of the state board of education, said a meeting of the board was an improper forum for Roberts to make students aware of Mr. X services in algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus.

"In my opinion, that is not the appropriate time to distribute that as they were leaving our state board meeting," said Shaver, a Republican from Independence.

"It's something I would never do," said board member Janet Waugh, a Democrat from Kansas City, Kan. "I'm probably to the extreme on conflict of interest."

Sally Cauble, a Dodge City Republican who serves as vice chairwoman, said members of the board approached Roberts after last week's session to express reservations about his circulation of self-promotional advertising.

"A couple of us felt like it was unethical," Cauble said. "My concern was that he was representing the state school board."

Board member Carolyn Campbell, a Topeka Democrat, said, "It was very poor judgment on his part."

Carol Williams, executive director of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, said there was no ethics law in Kansas forbidding Roberts from distributing information about his company while performing duties as an elected official.

A conflict of interest could exist if Roberts attempted to convince the state board to adopt his math tutoring or Internet instruction programs for use in public schools, Williams said. Conflict would be based on his substantial financial interest in a company he would be promoting to elected colleagues on the board, she said.

Roberts has two decades of experience as a private tutor of math, engineering and science principles. A website devoted to outlining Mr. X's programs urges students and teachers to sign up for a fee of $15 per month. He offers a 30-day, no-risk trial. The website caveat says, "We are now free to all residents of Kansas."

The state board conducted business meetings Oct. 15-16 in the Capitol because the state's education department is making the transition from an old office building to a new location. The November session won't be in the Statehouse.