Wilmington City Council Meeting re: Priority Schools Part 2: “Schwinn”dler’s List, The Heckling of Mark Murphy, & DOE Denial @KilroysDelaware @ed_in_de @dwablog @TNJ_malbright #netde #eduDE

 

Part 1 of the Wilmington City Council meeting recording transcribed by me, from the October 9th council meeting discussing the priority school plan, with guests Delaware Secretary of Education Mark Murphy and Dr. Penny Schwinn, is  found here: https://exceptionaldelaware.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/wilmington-city-council-vs-the-de-doe-murphy-schwinn-the-qa-part-1/

Gregory: Could you dispel the rumor, there’s a strong rumor there’s a federal list of school leaders that would be picked from and brought into Wilmington to head the schools.

Murphy: The school leaders are picked locally, the school communities choose the school leader. We will approve the school leader to ensure that that person meets the quality bar. But that person comes from the district.

Gregory: So you set the rubrics, and then you accept the school leader, and if the school doesn’t perform as you think they should, based on the standards, they will be closed, charterized, or given to a management company?

Wilmington City Council vs. The DE DOE, Murphy & Schwinn, The Q&A, Part 1

I’ve watched the Wilmington City Council meeting from October 9th a couple of times.  But I got that insane idea in my head (again) to transcribe the question and answer part of it.  This was when the councilmen asked Delaware Secretary of Education Mark Murphy and Dr. Penny Schwinn questions about the Priority Schools designation for six “failing” schools in Wilmington.  This q & a lasted about 45 minutes, so I’m breaking it up into two parts.

Doing this allowed me to see how many times Murphy or Schwinn never really answered certain questions or danced around them with their very wordy answers.  If you are a stakeholder in the priority schools, I would highly recommend reading this.  Watching Mark Murphy try to sell this insane idea is actually kind of fun.  Even more fun is watching Murphy stumble through certain answers, or he would just start mumbling incoherent parts of sentences until he could collect his thoughts.  Without further ado, here is the cast, followed by Part 1.

Wilmington City Council Members: Theopalis Gregory (President), Nnamdi Chukwuocha (1st District), Ernest Congo II (2nd District), Darius Brown (3rd District), Hanifa Shabazz (4th District), Samuel Prado (5th District), Sherry Dorsey Walker (6th District), Robert Williams (7th District), Charles Freel (8th District), Michael Brown Sr. (Council Member At-Large), Maria Cabrera (Council Member At-Large), Loretta Walsh (Council Member At-Large), Justen Wright (Council Member At-Large)

Questions Presented to Delaware Secretary of Education Mark Murphy and Proficiency Officer Dr. Penny Schwinn by the Wilmington City Council.