Last night, Capital School District Superintendent Dr. Vilicia Cade resigned effective July 22nd. The resignation letter from the board President and Cade shows the usual “good luck and well wishes”. But the resignation letter submitted to the Capital School District Board of Education, talked about in an article on Bay to Bay news, shows something entirely different. Will Cade be snagged up by another district in Delaware?
“I must submit this letter of resignation due to a hostile work environment including interference in the ability to carry out my role as superintendent,” wrote Dr. Cade in her resignation letter, which was obtained by the Daily State News.
“Consequently, this decision was prompted by several hostile actions that were taken to force me out of the district, including conspiracy to defame my character, intent to harm my professional reputation, acts of intimidation, and malicious intent to hinder my contract negotiations.” she continued.
“I have consistently asked for us to work on fostering trust, mutual respect and jointly explore ways to work more intently toward improving communication between the board and superintendent. Subsequently, my request was met with aggressive hostility on the part of some board members, including acts of intimidation and intentional misuse of authority.”
That is some serious allegations! What the hell happened? It was only three years ago that Capital announced her start at the district. Cade, previously from the Christina School District, came to the district in the midst of the pandemic. Meanwhile, the city of Dover fell apart. After the failure that was remote learning (for all schools in the country), behavior issues in Capital increased dramatically. So much so that Cade created a Trauma and School Connectedness Task Force. While behavior issues are on the rise in all schools, for schools such as Dover High School (which already had a high number of fights and discipline issues), it got to the point that parents in the district were going nuts about it (as they should). No parent wants to send their child to an unsafe school. Furthermore, when students were sent to in-school suspension, they were quickly reassigned to the classroom making teachers lives a sheer and living hell.
Did Cade take the fall for this or were there other issues going on? In the below letter to the “Senator Nation”, meaning the staff of the district, there is a key word in the letter which is “collective”. Whenever I see that word in an education matter, I think of “collective bargaining” which is basically the union language between a school district and their unionized teachers. Did the teachers demand her ouster?
This letter does not mention the words “hostile working environment” at all. What exactly constitutes a hostile working environment? According to Indeed, it is defined as:
A hostile work environment is one where the words and actions of a supervisor, manager or coworker negatively or severely impacts another employee’s ability to complete their work. Any employee can be responsible for creating a hostile work environment.
Which is a very broad range to cover. In the above-mentioned article, Cade claims certain board members made her feel intimidated through some sort of agressive actions and an abuse of authority coming from those board members. In my opinion, just her using the words “hostile working environment” is her gearing up to sue the board. It’s only a matter of time.
Perhaps the board was upset about what was going on with some of the district’s students with disabilities. According to a source, the district was using a building in Dover for adult students with disabilities as part of their STRIVE program. Unfortunately, the building at 756 South Little Creek Road is falling apart. One parent took a picture of a condemned sign with the word “DANGER” visibly etched out of the condemned sign. The City of Dover building inspector put up the sign but, according to my source, the building owner scratched out the danger part. The building, a former tire store, is used for crafts for adult students with disabilities. The district was notified of this but ignored the pleas of the parent to stop using the building. Earlier this week a ceiling in the building fell down. Students are still using this building.
For any school district to put ANY students, much less students with disabilities (regardless of their age) in dilapidated conditions is shameful at best. The worst part? The district was notified of this in December last year and NOTHING has changed. These students should be celebrated, not denigrated.
Or was it the perpetual pain in the ass known as state testing scores? For decades, Delaware and school districts around the country have relied on standardized test scores to figure education out. It has failed time and time again but everyone keeps going back to the well to determine success or failure in our schools. It always comes back to the same thing: schools in poor districts do bad on these tests.
So, what will Cade do now? If one person has their way, she would become the Superintendent of another school district in Delaware according to sources in that district. None other than the Exceptional Delaware asshole of the month, Donald Patton, the President of the Christina School District Board of Education. Will Patton attempt a coup and try to knock out Shelton at their July board meeting and attempt to put Cade in as Superintendent? He may try but I wouldn’t count on it succeeding. In fact, that board meeting promises to be one for the record books!
As for Cade, she came onboard a few months before I moved from Delaware so she wasn’t on my radar. I did congratulate her at the first board meeting after she started in a public comment.
Capital educators and community, if you have some scoop on this please let me know! If you wish to be anonymous, please let me know. You can shoot me an email at kevino3670@yahoo.com or find me on Facebook.
Exceptional Delaware 