A Decade of Exceptional Delaware! Bonus: Where Are They Now?

First off, I have gone back to the original name of this blog, Exceptional Delaware. It was the original and it stood the test of time. I didn’t have a lot to write about the past few years but I always kept my ear to the ground to see what was rumbling underneath. When the dirt started to come up I knew I had to write again.

Ten years ago, I embarked on a journey of unknown waters. I wanted to write a blog about Delaware education. It was Friday, June 13th, 2014. I had finished a 14-part series over on Kilroy’s Delaware talking about my son’s time at a Delaware charter school. Kilroy suggested I do my own blog, so I took him up on it. At that time I trusted no one. There were so many people involved in education and it took me some time to find out who the good guys, bad guys, and the idiots were.

It started out as a mouthpiece on Delaware special education but very soon I found myself writing about ALL aspects of Delaware education. Which brought me to the legislative side of things. My free time was spent either researching or attending board meetings or going to Legislative Hall in Dover.

In the past decade many things have changed not only in Delaware education, but my own life. To whit:

Governors of Delaware: 2 (Jack Markell, John Carney)

Delaware Secretary of Education: 4 (Mark Murphy, Steve Godowsky, Susan Bunting, Mark Holodick)

Charter School Office Directors: 4 (John Carwell, Jennifer Nagourney, Denise Stouffer, Leroy Travers)

Delaware Charter School Network Directors: 1 (still Kendall Massett)

State House of Representatives Education Committee Chair: 2 (Earl Jacques, Kim Williams)

State Senate Education Committee Chair: 2 (David Sokola, Laura Sturgeon)

Since I started this blog, many of the legislators, Delaware Department of Education staff, and State Board of Education members I met back in the mid 2010s have come and gone. Some still remain. The children of Delaware are still subjected to the God-awful Smarter Balanced Assessment. Opt-out is, sadly, a ghost of the past. Far too many schools and districts still don’t get special education and parents cry out on social media while their children just kind of drift by.

The biggest difference between 2014 and 2024 is politics. When parents banded together about opt-out and state standardized testing 10 years ago, it was very bi-partisan. The 2016 election changed all that. And the more laws passed protecting students, especially transgender students, that bipartisanship evaporated. It quickly became an us vs. them mentality which still exists to that day. The shadow of Trump has spread over everything and you are for or against him. I will always be against him.

Another gamechanger was Covid. For years, organizations like Rodel were touting personalized learning as the wave of the future. The only good thing to come out of Covid was the realization that personalized learning was a colossal failure that caused children to get further behind than they were pre-pandemic. It stopped a lot of corporate education reformers dead in their tracks. Those shady outfits, including Rodel, are still around. And some of the same folks still run them (like Rodel’s Paul Herdman).

This week, it was announced by the Annie Casey Foundation that Delaware is 45th in education based on their test scores. While everyone gets in an uproar over this, it is important to remember that reports like this are based on, yawn, test scores.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Every single school district in Delaware is still the same as it was ten years ago. Some charter schools have come and gone. A new generation of kids is roaming the halls of these districts and charters.

The best part about writing Exceptional Delaware was the people I met along the way. Some have disappeared from the scene, some are still in it, and some moved onto greener pastures. Sadly, some died along the way.

Mike Matthews: when I met him he was a fiery school teacher. He still is. He had a rise and fall but he is where he wants to be now- happily married and still teaching. I still believe he was targeted by certain folks in Delaware because he was a gay President of the Delaware teacher’s union, DSEA. Some would have called it quits after that, but not Mike!

Jackie Kook: one of the biggest voices in Delaware for teachers, she pushed to get the Smarter Balanced scores the hell away from teacher evaluations. She got out of teaching but loves her current profession and is also happily married with an even bigger blended family.

John Young: he sort of disappeared. After his tenure on the Christina School Board ended, he began to fade away from education debates. He still had a presence on social media (when you weren’t blocked). From what I hear he moved to Indiana. Young was filled with a clever wit but he pissed off a lot of people. God forbid if you didn’t agree with him.

Yvonne Johnson: she went from President of Delaware PTA to President of the National PTA. Always a cheerleader for Red Clay, she never stopped cheerleading!

State Representative Kim Williams: when I met her she was the vice chair of the House Education Committee. Now she is the Chair. Kim was the driving force for getting basic special education funding for students in K-3 in Delaware.

Kathleen Davies: the one who should have been the State Auditor elect in 2018. It would have spared us the McGuiness debacle. This woman went through hell because of McGuiness and didn’t deserve any of it.

Steve Newton: one of the smartest people I know and one I admire a great deal. The man knows his stuff and he knows how to speak it with harsh truths. A historian at heart, I still enjoy his writings to this day, as he went from a blogger to one of my go-to voices on Facebook!

Ashley Sabo: the first person I ever met on Twitter! She was a new voice in Delaware education, involved with the Delaware PTA, and she was on the Red Clay board for five years. She went on to become a nurse in the midst of the pandemic. Sadly, Ashley passed away earlier this year. She is very missed.

State Representative John Kowalko: he retired from being a legislator a couple of years ago. He can still be seen commenting on Delaware Liberal about charter schools and what an idiot John Carney is. We never did get that opt-out bill passed!

Kilroy: the King of the Delaware education blogs. He is happily retired now and living in Slower Lower. Once in a blue moon he will put out a blog post.

Kavips: when I started blogging, Kavips was the go-to blog for legislative dirt. No one knew who Kavips was. We all had our guesses but no one could confirm anything. I still miss Kavips and his writing. Kavips disappeared from the Delaware blogging scene when Donald Trump became President.

State Representative Sean Matthews: when he was elected to the Delaware House in 2014, he was a true voice for education. A few years in that voice just kind of disappeared. What started out with so much promise just sort of fizzled away. Not sure what happened there. I do know Matthews has always been a family man and perhaps he is just tired of the needle never changing in Delaware education.

Liz Paige: another former Christina board member. Like Young, she fought against stupid stuff like priority schools and bad policies. But she also was a very vocal supporter of helping immigrant children in her district after Trump initiated some very bad immigration policy.

Laurie Howard & Natalie Ganc: the Caesar Rodney duo who got involved with the Delaware PTA, pushed for opt-out, and railed against the Smarter Balanced Assessment. They were a force to be reckoned with! Sadly, Laurie passed away in 2017. Ganc is still a teacher in Delaware.

Jose Avila: I didn’t meet Jose until a few years into blogging but he was a force! He was elected to the Red Clay board and still serves.

Tizzy Lockman: I can’t think of anyone who has pushed more for the students of Wilmington than Tizzy Lockman! I was very happy when she was elected to the Delaware Senate. I saw her grow from an advocate to chairs of various groups to a Delaware Senator. Also happily married with two children!

Devon Hynson: always a mixed bag with this one! One of the fiercest advocates for special education in the state but he is very combative. We worked together on a few situations involving kids with disabilities. But, like Young, if you disagree with him- watch out!

State Representative Paul Baumbach: he was one of the first representatives to reach out to me when I went off the rails about Delaware special education. I didn’t always agree with Paul but I respected him. His legislation was almost always for the good of Delaware and to move us towards a more Progressive age. Paul announced his retirement as State Rep today!

Jenn Cinelli: She just called me out on Facebook for missing her and she is absolutely right! She pushed for very strong education reform involving school resource officers, seclusion & restraint, and students with disabilities. A warrior mother first and a super strong advocate for students, Cinelli is still in Delaware pushing for what is right for Delaware students!

Elizabeth Scheinberg: yet another former Christina board member. Only she wasn’t on their board in the past ten years. But we shared a lot of thoughts and stories about Delaware education over the years. She is a good mother, who, like so many of us, fight like hell for our kids.

There are countless others I could mention but these were the folks that I probably worked or associated with the most back in the day in one form or another. I have fantastic memories of them all!

What about the “enemies” of Exceptional Delaware? They weren’t really enemies per se but I disagreed with them on policy more often than not.

Mark Murphy: he was the Delaware Secretary of Education when I started blogging. The man behind Race To The Top, Smarter Balanced, and more Delaware charter school approvals then you can shake a leg at! His downfall was the priority schools shenanigans in Red Clay and Christina. He now lives in New York and is still the founder and CEO of an organization called Grip Tape which does something with developing school leaders and driving change…

Jack Markell: the former Delaware Governor faded out of the limelight after his 8 years as Governor ended in January, 2017. President Joe Biden appointed Markell as the US Ambassador to Italy. Markell’s legacy lives on in horrible accountability tied to test scores and the charter bonanza that cropped up in Delaware under his reign. With that being said, his biggest accomplishment (in my opinion) was getting gay marriage legalized in Delaware.

Donna Johnson: I’m not sure where she is these days, but the former Director of the State Board of Education now lives in Maryland I want to say and is happily married.

Jennifer Nagourney: the Delaware Charter School Director during the tumultuous time when fraud and embezzlement made its way into the headlines of this blog. Family Foundations Academy and Academy of Dover both had leaders wind up in prison for their theft. I always felt Nagourney helped bring these things to light. Other directors there might have looked away. She is also happily married, living in New York, and has beautiful children!

Chuck Taylor: the former Providence Creek Academy leader eventually retired after getting a bump in his pay for the last three years of his tenure there. Which also allowed him to get his pension based on that raise. I always saw him as a bully of sorts, personally and professionally. Glad he is out of the Delaware education scene these days!

Kendall Massett: the head of the Delaware Charter School Network. Was back in 2014 and still is to this day. A forever thorn in the side of Delaware education. Her charter school antics have made a lot of bad shit disappear.

Penny Schwinn: after serving up a priority schools cocktail that tasted like piss, Schwinn attempted to punish schools with high opt-out rates in her Delaware School Success Framework. While the Every Student Succeeds Act kind of killed that, Schwinn continued her destructive public education rampage to Texas and Tennessee, where she got into some hot water over special education issues. According to her Linkedin she is now a VP at University of Florida and an operating partner with some outfit called The Vistria Group.

State Senator David Sokola: he is still around, leading the Delaware Senate. While he isn’t as involved in Delaware education, such as constant perks for the Newark Charter School, he has led the Delaware Senate on some crucial progressive legislation. This is what always got me about him. He helped with some very progressive legislation but when it came to Delaware education he pushed actions that would only hurt Delaware students and teachers. You can’t always get what you want!

State Representative Earl Jacques: he was finally ousted as State Rep in 2020 and replaced by a great legislator! Earl had a big mouth and disrespected students, parents, and teachers all the time. I was very happy to see him go!

State Representative Pete Schwartzkopf: the desk veto king, Schwartzkopf finally stepped down as Speaker of the Delaware House a couple of years ago. He always served the bidding of the Governors and not the people he was supposed to represent. His biggest mistake though was the next person…

Kathy McGuiness: the disgraced former State Auditor of Delaware who was the first state office holder to get convicted in Delaware. She is just a nasty, bitter woman who thinks she is the second coming of Delaware politics. Loyal only to herself, she is now running for State Rep in District 14. I hope Claire Synder Hall kicks her ass in the primary!!!!

Governor John Carney: when I look back at Carney’s eight years I can’t think of anything he really did. He was just there. Doing nothing. Maybe some “budget smoothing” that was about as useful as a fart in a spacesuit.

Susan Bunting: the former Delaware Secretary of Education during Carney’s first term was a mixed bag. She pushed regulations that would protect transgender kids which was good. But she never could escape her past as Indian River Superintendent on this blog. She was tied to their former CFO Patrik Williams and I never trusted her because of that. When Carney picked Holodick as the new Secretary, Bunting retired.

State Representative Mike Ramone: while not truly an enemy, I still remember Ramone railroading the reversal of Markell’s veto of the opt-out bill. He is now running for Governor of Delaware as a Republican.

Chris Ruszkowski: the teacher destroyer! He was the bane of existence for Delaware teachers. This reject from Teach for America and The New Teacher Project or something like that loved him some test scores and he wanted to nail teachers to the wall if their students didn’t ace the state standardized assessment. Fortunately, Delaware Secretary of Education Stephen Godowsky didn’t agree with him so he went to New Mexico to be their Secretary of Ed. Nowadays he is the CEO of Meeting Street Schools, some mumbo jumbo down in South Carolina.

Atnre Alleyne: the above Surfer Boy’s partner in crime at the Delaware DOE. But when he left the Delaware DOE, he stuck around the First State causing mischief in DelawareCAN, an organization with some very conservative ties. I still think Alleyne was the catalyst behind some shady shit involving Mike Matthews. The last I heard of Alleyne, he was getting out of Ukraine after the 2022 invasion by Russia. Thankfully, he and his family made it to Poland. He still runs TeenSHARP in Delaware and is involved in an organization pushing diversity called The Proximity Project. He is a complicated guy. I always believed that if he got his head out of corporate education reform’s ass he could have been a strong figure in Delaware and could push some much-needed reform there.

Publius: he was mainly a commenter on Kilroy’s Delaware. We went back and forth for years on there, disagreeing on pretty much everything. While his identity was anonymous, I revealed his identity on here. He denied it to many and would never admit it. Everyone knew. He left tons of hints, especially when he served on an education committee. He eventually tried to get on a school board but lost. I didn’t hear from him for years, until earlier this year. What he did actually touched me because it was a very graceful thing for him to do. I’m going to keep that one close to the vest because it was a personal thing that involved a lot of honor.

Those were the main antagonists of this blog. Most of them don’t hold the influence they once did, thank God!

As for me, I don’t live in Delaware anymore but I still keep a close eye on things. I miss blogging like I did but age, time, location, and work prevent me from doing what I once did. Someone on these lists said something to me last week that I’m in New York and I should play in my own state. I told that person that boundaries never stop someone from caring. And for all its faults, the students of Delaware are the best and deserve the best future possible. If only we can figure out what that is… Hopefully, when I’m writing a 20 year post of this blog, we will have come much further than we did.

Updated, 9:15pm: I added some new names on the good and bad list. A couple folks asked me about Jon’s loving son. He is doing well. He graduated from high school in 2022 and is forming a future now!