Who are Dads4Heights?

Dads4Heights is a group of three dads running for schoolboard at Shawnee Heights USD 450. The dads—Damon Shore, Michael Cichowicz, and Troy Showalter—all have children currently in the district, however, they haven’t always known each other. In fact, prior to running, they had never met.

Showalter had never run for schoolboard before, though he claims he had been asked to do so in the past. He told The Kansas Constitutional that after a couple parents asked him to run this year, he decided that there was “enough going on” to justify the effort. Once he was running, parents introduced him to Shore and Cichowicz.

“As things went along, we decided that it might make sense to work together to leverage our time and our resources to be able to cover more ground,” Showalter said.

Shore told The Kansas Constitutional that he started paying attention more to politics after COVID happened.

“As our children started to transition in the school… I was fortunate enough to have a career change,” Shore said. “So, I leave one of the toughest environments from a leadership or management standpoint in manufacturing, and I go to a company culture that’s drastically different. It frees up so much more time for me to be involved. At the same time, District A is open, and I started getting information about what’s going on in our school system.”

Shore said after a “healthy discussion” with his wife, he put his name down, and parents who knew him and the other dads running started telling him that he should talk to Cichowicz and Showalter.

Moving to Kansas the summer before his daughter started school at Shawnee Heights Elementary School, Cichowicz said that he had wanted to be involved in the school since his daughter was in kindergarten.

“This school board in particular is a way in which I think I can utilize my skills,” Cichowicz said.

“Nothing against the PTO and what those parents do, it just wasn’t a good fit for me,” Cichowicz told The Kansas Constitutional. “I transitioned to the Site Council where we looked at learning outcomes, we looked at policy, it was a smaller group, so I got a more accurate feel of what’s going on.”

Cichowicz served as Vice Chair and Chair of the Site Council—serving two-year terms before running for schoolboard.

“Interestingly, Damon lives about a block over from me,” Cichowicz said. “He was walking down the street with his family a couple days before we even met for the first time. And it was just like, ‘Hey, I think I saw you the other day.’”

Cichowicz met Showalter a couple weeks later where they talked about why they were running, realizing they were likeminded.

“We are running individual campaigns,” Cichowicz stated. “The idea that we are ‘running mates’—in the sense of my idea of ‘running mates’ means that ‘if you vote for one of us, you have to vote for all of us.’ That’s not accurate in this case.”

The three dads are running for different districts and voters can vote for whoever they want, whether it’s all three or only one or two of the dads.

“This movement… is just three dads who care about their kids, care about their district, care about their schools, and care about the overall community,” Cichowicz said.

On the dads4heights website, Cichowicz has listed out the following key issues he plans to focus on:

• Implement a strategy to address bullying. Physical and emotional safety is paramount to success throughout a student’s academic journey.

• To provide more opportunities for parents, especially fathers, to be involved in their children’s academic and emotional development.

• To review and outline a clear avenue for parents, professional staff, and our community to have a strong voice on policy decisions that are made by the board of education.

• To encourage staff to advance in professional development and implement strategic policy to recruit and retain a strong workforce. 

When asked about giving an example regarding these issues, Cichowicz said that when it comes to bullying, he would like to see an “action plan” and have it be followed in a meaningful way.

“If someone is being bullied there needs to not only be a conversation, but there needs to be an action plan and that action plan needs to be followed,” Cichowicz said. “I’ve actually seen an action plan… from someone who was a victim of bullying…. It really didn’t do much besides check a box.”

He also spoke on concerns of school safety, opportunities for teachers to get training, and ways to bring parents, and specifically dads, into their children’s schools to be more involved.

Shore also has bullet points listed on the website regarding his main focuses:

• Creating a safe environment in our school district with an emphasis on anti-bullying and accountability.

• Reviewing and evaluating the school district’s spending history and future investment opportunities.

• Aligning school district policies and curriculum to improve student performance.

• Working with parents over the next several months to discuss their concerns and expectations for the upcoming school year.

Curious to know more about what it meant to align school district policies and curriculum, Shore explained that he has counted three policies that pertain to “sexually explicit material,” but that the curriculum allows for such material to be in it.

“It’s a contradiction to our own policies,” Shore said. “Whether it’s defined as digital or print, regardless, it explicitly talks about not having sexually explicit material available.”

Shore got deeper, mentioning the ‘Sold A Story’ podcast by award-winning education reporter Emily Hanford, which dives into America’s literacy issue. He spoke stating he’d like to see a policy that evaluates curriculum based on evidence-based research, rather than relying on things like state assessment scores or interim goals.

“The way I look at it is it’s appropriate tools to make the teachers more effective,” Shore said. “You can have good teachers. You give them good curriculum, they can become great teachers. You can have great teachers. You give them an inferior curriculum, it drops their effectiveness.”

The dads also mentioned that the bullet points they share did not come from them sitting around thinking about them, but rather from the community and what voters wanted to see regarding policies from the school board.

Showalter’s page states that he “will focus on these core principals in assisting with our core priorities with respect to USD 450’s budget, social engineering, and gender and sexual related teaching.” Stating he wants “to know what parents think and what parents want in these areas.”

Showalter said there are a lot of reasons he is running pointing specifically to our response to COVID and the sexualizing of minors.

“I look at the world as how does it help kids? Are we sexualizing minors? If we are, why? We should know why. And then what are we doing to prepare them for the world that they’re about to enter and are we giving them the tools to be successful?” Showalter said. “This is about resource allocation. If we’re spending $15,000-$17,000 per child per year and a third of them can’t be competent in math and reading, maybe we need to think about how we’re allocating our funds.”

Showalter also stated that he is concerned that we are killing the want for kids to work, diving into the reality that not every kid will go to university, but any kid can be successful regardless of the education they choose to pursue with the right mindset and work ethic.

To learn more about Dads4Heights, you can visit their website: dads4heights.com. There, you can find a frequently asked questions page which shows questions that they have each individually provided answers for. You can also donate to their individual campaigns on the site and ask them questions you may still have for them.