Kent Moore was first appointed when 24-year Lafayette Mayor Jim Riehle was in his first term. Here’s how Moore helped shape the Lafayette School Corp.
Dave Bangert|Journal & Courier
LAFAYETTE, Ind. – When Kent Moore was appointed to be Lafayette School Corp.’s attorney, he was told that the departing counsel was expected to give a farewell speech, some lasting words of advice, at the last school board meeting.
George Hanna, an appointee of Lafayette Mayor Don Blue, had done it in the summer of 1974 and told Moore to remember that. A week ago, Monday, Moore did the honors.
“Of course, after 44 years,” Moore said, “I think I was the only one there who knew that was the custom.”
Moore, a Lafayette attorney who started with LSC when J. Russell Hiatt was superintendent, could have unraveled stories about building projects, teacher strikes, disputes over curriculum or elementary reorganization plans. Instead, Moore took the moment to talk about public education – “a common denominator at a time when we really need a common denominator” – and, in particular, his belief that school board members are doing the work everyone knows is important, but few are willing to do.
“Nobody comes around and says, ‘Hey, my kid got a great education,’ or ‘Hey, I’m really happy, this bus route is great,’” Moore said this week. “They come around when they’re upset, right? … The point I was trying to make is, school board members, to me, are heroes. These people come in, they serve with minimal compensation and work under a simple phrase: What is best for kids?
“I have really seen that, in a front row seat, for 44 years.”
Ed Eiler was there for 36 of those years, including 16 years as LSC superintendent, before retiring in June 2012. For context, Moore was with LSC two years before Eiler was hired in an LSC administrative slot.
“I’m not sure Kent Moore is the longest serving school attorney out there,” Eiler said. “But you could probably count on your thumbs the number out there with more experience.”
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Eiler said the job is broad, ranging from contracts, employment, property, construction, bonding, torts and a host of student-specific situations revolving around student due process, special education and more. It’s work, Eiler said, that school corporations these days are more likely to give to attorneys from larger firms, so work can be delegated as needed.
“I can’t say that I had to call Kent every day,” Eiler said. “I can say I probably had conversations at least once a week about something. I can also say that once I spoke to Kent, I always felt confident with the advice he’d given. … There’s this institutional knowledge that Kent has from the past 44 years that’s invaluable.”
Moore said that in August 1974, he might have been the only Democratic lawyer in Lafayette – “There weren’t very many of us,” he said – who didn’t ask to be appointed as LSC’s attorney. That was in the days when the Lafayette mayor appointed six of the seven school board members, with the seventh appointment coming from the Tippecanoe Circuit Court judge, in deference to the parts of the school district that was outside city limits. (Direct, non-partisan elections came in the ‘80s.)
Jim Riehle, a Democrat who would be elected to six terms, was in his first term as Lafayette mayor. Moore said Tom Heide, Riehle’s city attorney and head of the Tippecanoe County Democratic Party, called one afternoon to ask whether he was interested.
“The only thing he told me was, ‘Do a good job because it reflects on the mayor,’” Moore said.
Moore, a Brookston native, at the time was six years out of Indiana University Law School and in private practice with his father, William C. Moore.
The family connection to law was generational. Phineas Kent, his great-great-grandfather, was a publisher and an attorney who had a hand in drafting the Indiana Constitution in 1851. His grandfather, Miller Kent, was a lawyer and a banker in Brookston.
His father, William Moore, made his way to Indiana via a box car, after a teacher in his hometown, Winona, Minnesota, encouraged him to go to the teacher’s alma mater, Wabash College. Moore said his father, who had spent part of his high school years hopping trains to find jobs during the Depression, got to Crawfordsville with $100 and a change of clothes. When he graduated at the top of his class, he won a prize of $200. (“He figured he was 100 bucks ahead,” Moore said.)
Growing up in Brookston, Moore said his father’s name was on a plaque dedicated to the superintendent, board members and others who played a role in building the school in the ‘50s. As he settled into his role with Lafayette schools, Moore said there was an allure to being with Lafayette schools long enough to get his name somewhere in a school, matching what his father had done.
Months before landing the LSC appointment, Moore had sued Lafayette schools in federal court on behalf of a Lafayette Jefferson High School senior who had been blocked from participating in graduation ceremonies because she was pregnant. The case never went to trial, when Hanna, Hiatt and the LSC board folded. The pregnant student got her diploma along with the rest of her graduating classmates.
Moore said his family made a conscious decision to live in Lafayette school boundaries. Their children – including Dan Moore, a Tippecanoe County magistrate – went to Miller Elementary, which sat near Fourth and Kossuth streets and drew in equal parts between the upper-scale homes in Highland Park and the proudly working-class Wabash Avenue Neighborhood.
“We’d go to parent nights, and you’d have people from both neighborhood there in force, all with that common bond in the school,” Moore said. “It was that common denominator I was talking about. When they got to Jeff – Denny Blind was the principal at the time – I was always so impressed by how the staff made a point of helping my kids find their place. They all found their niches. That was so important.”
In that way, Moore said, LSC is essentially the same district he started representing in 1974.
“He probably attended close to or more than a thousand school board meetings,” said Les Huddle, LSC’s superintendent and one of six during Moore’s tenure. “I can’t even imagine some of the issues he dealt with. … He was and still is always ready with a humorous interjection into a situation that can make the problem look a little simpler to solve.”
Bob Stwalley was elected this fall to his fifth consecutive, four-year term on the LSC school board.
“The thing that makes a school corporation run is the dedicated people who are there for students,” Stwalley said. “Sometimes, it’s hard to connect what happens with upper administration and a board and, say, a corporation’s attorney. But then we see some of the school policies that come to us, and you really can see it. Kent Moore has been through thick and thin and is very dedicated to the education of our students. …
“Kent has just been a powerhouse for Lafayette schools.”
Last week, as he left the Hiatt Administration Center – an office building named for the superintendent leading LSC when Moore started – he would have passed his name on a plaque marking a construction milestone. How many there are like it in LSC – and like the one with his father’s name that was on that school in Brookston – Moore said he wasn’t sure. These days, they serve as some don’t-you-know-who-I-am for his grandchildren, who are in Lafayette schools.
“I tell them, ‘What you need to understand is … if you do something wrong, they call me,’” Moore said, laughing.
“I put in 44 years, and I think that was enough,” Moore said. “As you look back and you get reflective, like I told the board, I feel like I finished. I hope I did some good.”
The next farewell speech from and LSC attorney could belong to Robert Laszynski, Moore’s law partner. Huddle said the LSC board will consider that appointment in January.
Whether that speech will be another four decades in the making isn’t clear. What is clear is this.
“It’s a tradition,” Moore said. “At least, that’s what they told me when I got here.”
Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.