Joy Hofmeister
Kim Archer
Tulsa World
Two staffers from State Superintendent Janet Barresi’s campaign for re-election were in Jenks on Friday to peruse thousands of pages of communications records between Jenks Public Schools employees and Republican challenger Joy Hofmeister, a district spokeswoman confirmed.
In January, Barresi’s former campaign manager, Sam Stone, filed an open records request with the district for all communications records between district employees and Hofmeister dating back to 2007. He asked that they be available for inspection by Feb. 10 or Feb. 17.
“It’s part of doing our research on Joy. We’re trying to flesh out her positions on the issues,” he said when contacted in March.
He denied that the campaign was trying to “dig up dirt” on Hofmeister.
Jenks Public Schools spokeswoman Bonnie Rogers confirmed that Barresi’s new campaign manager, Robyn Matthews, and Oklahoma City political strategist Neva Hill arrived early Friday to scour the records.
She said she had pulled more than 7,000 pages of emails and other communications and that the two Barresi campaign staff members looked through the records and asked for copies of 692 pages.
She said the pair paid the district $1,410 for time and materials expended by Jenks school employees in compiling the request.
Rogers noted that Hofmeister has had extensive communication with Jenks Public Schools employees over the years.
All four of Hofmeister’s children attended Jenks schools since kindergarten. One child, a son, remains in Jenks Public Schools. He is a senior.
She also has been a member of the board of the Jenks Public Schools Foundation and is a former public school teacher.
Hofmeister owns a local franchise of Kumon after-school math and reading programs and regularly communicates with the district regarding students in her program.
The request also asked for copies of any contracts between Hofmeister and/or Kumon and the district. Rogers said there is none.
“I’m not really surprised that Janet Barresi has sent her political operatives to disrupt our Jenks Public Schools in an attempt to dig up some dirt to be used in her negative campaign against me,” Hofmeister said in a written statement.
“What does surprise me is that Ms. Barresi is wasting time on something like this instead of putting all of her efforts into solving the problems created by yet another failure in the state’s testing system,” she said.
A call to Barresi’s campaign manager was not returned.
