The State Board of Education audio recordings from their very long meeting yesterday are now up on the State Board website. The Wilmington Education Improvement Commission portions of the meeting take up a collective two hours and twenty minutes of the meeting. Not included are the breaks, legal or illegal, during the meeting with respect to the WEIC discussion.
As I insanely do once in a while, during contentious board meetings, I transcribed part of the WEIC conversations. The three areas I focused on were the FOIA violation I believe the State Board committed by pausing the meeting to convene with legal counsel without calling for an executive session, the Christina priority school plans, and the funding/pause conversation surrounding the words “shall” and “may”. The key players in most of this are State Board President Dr. Teri Quinn Gray and WEIC Chair Tony Allen. Others are State Board members Pat Heffernan, Barbara Rutt, and Executive Director of the State Board of Education Donna Johnson. While I would have loved to get the whole thing transcribed, there isn’t enough time in the day. And as I’ve said before, you can only replay some of these voices so many times without wanting to jump off a bridge. Key parts or words are bolded for emphasis.
The FOIA Violation
There has been well over an hour of conversation at this point about the plan and a lot of back and forth between the State Board and Tony Allen. This occurs at the end of Part 5 in the audio recordings from the meeting yesterday.
Dr. Teri Quinn Gray: So, I just gotta check out the procedural piece of that with the attorney…do you mind? Cause I’m not sure about, uhm, the timing…
Tony Allen: Could I add, offer something, Could you make a motion to approve it with the new caveats, approval contingent upon…
Gray: Yeah, that’s why I need to make sure we get all the right pieces around that. I think I heard a little bit of that. So, let me ask for, uhm, a 15 minute break to consult with counsel and get the options around that. Do you mind?
Allen: No
Gray: Miss Rutt, can she come with me, with you, the attorney? It’s 3:46. We’ll be back at 4.
31 minutes later, beginning of Part 6 of the audio recording…
Gray: It’s 4:17 and we’re back in session. So why we left and the whole purpose of stepping away is we had , uhm, a proposal to table the current motion to approve the plan as presented. But, ugh, we brought forth an amendment motion that actually puts forth a conditional approval based on the conditions of changing the “shall” to “may” in the proposed resolution. And also having a wait for the Christina School District to act on the action item on February 23rd which involves submission of grant applications to the Department of Education for priority schools. And also contingent upon approval of the Department of Education of that plan, of that grant application. Right, so that’s the discussion that has been happening for the past thirty minutes or so and the expectation around that, uhm, if the board accepts that amended motion and vote accordingly, or affirmative in that, that we would ask that we take those two conditions and act accordingly however we see fit, we would be able to close that item before us. There is no need to bring this back to the table or as an agenda item for the board. We would be able to settle that based on those conditions being met.
Pat Heffernan: And if they’re not met?
Gray: And if they’re not met then the approval is, there is no conditional approval and we do not approve it.
Allen: Can I add two things?
Gray: Sure
Allen: I’ve consulted with many of the commissioners here on both the conditions. On condition one, back to Christina and the priority school plans, I think that, I appreciate, making sure that the condition is with respect to the Department of Education approving the plan as opposed to the Christina School Board being made, maybe that’s how I was interpreting it, made to approve their priority schools plan is a better way to get that. I think the Christina School District has every intention to approve the plan but I don’t think they take kindly to the State Board as making them so that’s…
Barbara Rutt: Sure
Allen: The second issue, with respect to “shall” and “may” is, I just want to reiterate, and you will act I know, I want to reiterate that on the board level, the commission level, the word “shall” was about making sure this wasn’t becoming an unfunded mandate. We talked about that at length during our discussion. I think that would be a significant hurdle for us. The district leaders have continued to express that if the resources aren’t provided they could not go forward. And it’s my suspicion is that they will see that change from “shall” to “may” as a potential for an unfunded mandate with a cause of concern for their districts. I will take that back to the commission, but I wanted you to know that as you make your decision, that could be a deal-breaker. While I would not speak for the commission at this moment, I can guarantee you that if it does not happen, you will not see the commission resubmit a plan.
Christina Priority Schools
Heffernan: I just want to add that, you know, the approval of the priority schools plan by Christina is, is it months or years late? So I have very little patience for Christina for semantics on that. They literally refused to approve plans to help the kids and honestly, I think got us to this table where we are today.
Secretary of Education Dr. Steve Godowsky: I just want to make this clear. On January 22nd of 2016, I sent Christina’s Acting Superintendent a letter indicating that either the board or the Acting Superintendent can submit and activate the, uhm, the original application for the priority, or the MOU that they submitted a year ago. Uhm, so that is what you are suggesting. It may not require a vote from the Board but we wanted to make sure which plan they want to move forward and if it was the MOU plan, and I have talked to the Board President. Then that will be acceptable to us going forward.
Heffernan: One thing that really troubles me about this is if the Christina Board doesn’t fully support these plans then, you know, we’re back to where we always were. And this is, so I, I, we can’t make, we have no authority to make any local boards approve anything, I totally get that, but I’m just very disappointed that this continues to be hard to get them to agree to help the priority schools. That’s all I’m saying.
Godowsky: And the Christina Board did sign off on their plan about a year ago with one day difference so I think they did support that plan. And now that we know that’s the plan on the table then we can move forward, I believe we can do our due diligence and be in a position to review that plan and make modifications.
Heffernan: So they approved this a year ago?
Godowsky: As part of, uhm, the Memorandum of Understanding, between the district and others that negotiated that alternative to the original plan, as I understand it. I was…
Allen: As I understand that, the impasse was between Christina and their approved plans and the former Secretary (Mark Murphy), not that they didn’t approve the priority school plans. That is my understanding.
Heffernan: But the Department didn’t approve the plans?
Allen: Correct
Heffernan: So we’re going to take the same plans that the Department didn’t approve…
Godowsky: No, no. I don’t know the history of why it wasn’t signed off. There were a number of contingencies on that which required the principal, replacing the principal, interviewing, or reapplying teachers for their positions, and management company that, ugh, that, those requirements have changed and we’re not in a position to impose those regulations. So I think that was the stumbling block. I don’t want to speak for Christina, and I don’t have all the history that they were the stumbling block, but later on there was an MOU submitted that never got signed off on at the Department level. I don’t know the reasons in detail. But I just know what I’ve looked at, in terms of the MOU, it’s consistent with much of what we want to do with those three schools, instructionally, which we’ve talked about since October, that I’ve been here. And, given some modifications, I’m ready to move forward.
Gray reiterates much of the conversation of what just went on…
Godowsky: I’m in receipt of those plans. I just needed, in a sense I have those plans.
“Shall” and “May”
Heffernan: I guess I’m trying to understand where the unfunded mandate is coming from. The redistricting portion of the plan is going to be unfunded or…
Allen: Remember, we arranged this for resources for English Language Learners, special education, and high concentrations of poverty. Every outline of current funding, none of that has been allocated yet, say, for the Governor’s commitment for the four to six million, right, so what we’re suggesting is each year, going through these two budget cycles, everything has to show up and if it that money doesn’t show up all the districts have particular issues with having Red Clay taking on these kids, and by the way this is not just a Red Clay issue, all the districts talk about this, taking on these kids with no changes in the funding formula for how they are going to help those kids.
Gray: And we’re committed to that same delivery around, particularly to support low-income and English Language Learners so we are… (note: Gray did not say special education)
Allen: And I agree. The question is about you all interpreting, and again, this might be an (inaudible) on our part, you all interpreting “shall” as required without deliberation.
Gray: That’s right.
Allen: We don’t interpret it that way. It was meant to be deliberation in consultation with the effected districts…
Gray: Right, so let’s just make it the “may”, and if we need to, we’ll do it, right? Because without this level of conversation and intimacy that we have now, whenever this may come forward a few years from now that “shall” is a… (very, very hard to understand what she said here but I did hear the word legal. Whether that was “legal” or “illegal” I was unable to tell)
Allen: I agree, and I do not give this short shrift, if you in fact approve it this way, it will require, I believe, a full-throated (inaudible) analysis that you will give in writing and in person to the commission, so…
Gray: Absolutely. We’re committed to that. The Board is committed to that for sure.
At this point, Dan Rich (another WEIC commissioner) says something to Tony Allen. Tony asks for five minutes, and then Kenny Rivera (President of the Red Clay Consolidated Board of Education and a commissioner on WEIC) says something. I think I heard the word “non-negotiable” but it is very hard to hear. The State Board grants the WEIC folks a five minute break. This is the end of Part 6 of the audio recordings.
The break ends, and the State Board is back in session in Part 7 of the audio recordings.
Gray: So Dr. Allen, did you want to add something before we go forward?
Allen: I consulted with many of the Commissioners here and I think there is general agreement that we could, and we would like you to consider, taking out all the provisions outlined in the resolution that we take back to the commission so that it does not come back to the State Board. But in general, but moving forward, it will be contingent upon sufficient funding. Effectively, that takes you out of the process at the final implementation stage.
Gray: So you’re saying?
Allen: What we’re saying disregard all the remaining “shalls”, make it all contingent upon the necessary and sufficient funding and resources and take it off of the State Board with respect to their responsibility for this board and to future State Boards.
Gray: So is that effectively removing the resolution?
Allen: It’s more changing the resolution but excluding State Board having ongoing responsibility for suspension of the timetable.
Gray: Could I ask the process specialist?
Donna Johnson: With process of approval of the redistricting process in and of itself, and there is the caveat there that the plan would become essentially non-void if necessary and sufficient funding were not available, what safeguards would be in place if those necessary sufficient funding and supports were not at each of the milestones? Where would there be a pause that takes place at that point?
Allen: Do you mean who would authorize that pause?
Johnson: Yes.
Allen: The authorization would come from the commission and the effected districts. So we’d take it out of the State Board’s hands. There is nothing in Senate Bill 122 that prohibits this.
After much back and forth, the State Board voted on the redistricting plan and the addendums as of 2/11/16 with no amendments which failed 3-4. The State Board then voted on the plan with the amendments about the Christina priority schools plan approval and the changing of “shall” to “may” on page 10 of the official plan. The motion passed with a 4-3 vote.
The Season Of Myths 