Santa Fe Times

The Santa Fe Board of Education met in regular session on Thursday, January 22nd. Mr. Lark shared that school resource office, David Cobb, would be attending a safety workshop sponsored by Missouri School Board Association’s Center for Educational Safety. The training will provide best practices for SRO’s as well as account for mandated training for school districts as a result of legislation passed last session. Additionally, he shared that members of the districts Threat Assessment Team would be undergoing refresher training, which will focus on assessing the validity of threats in schools, such as general threats of violence towards the school as a whole, individual threats, self-harm, bullying, etcetera. The threat assessment process provides a platform that provides a concrete structure for trained individuals to make informed decisions. “Discerning the validity and seriousness of the various and numerous types of threats that are made in all venues of a school district can be very, very challenging. Having a standard process with trained individuals enables us to make decisions that are more informed and consistent,” stated Mr. Lark. He then focused on the Governor’s State of the State Address. Summarizing the educational issues discussed, Mr. Lark noted that Governor Kehoe emphasized his intent to support school choice through legislation involving open enrollment and school voucher systems (MO Scholars). Lark shared that in fiscal year 2026, the state approved $51 million for the MO Scholars funding. He went on to share that more importantly, the major shift is that this funding is