The District-Charter Funding War of 2016 has officially been declared over.
While this topic will assuredly come up again, Delaware Secretary of Education Dr. Steven Godowsky sent a letter to the Delaware House of Representatives and the Delaware Senate stating no changes will be made to choice and charter school funding this year. This includes any changes in exclusions. The Delaware Dept. of Education is putting a “hold” on what the exclusions had previously been until this blew up a couple of weeks ago in the public eye.
Please note how Godowsky frames the origin of this as “district to district” concerns. That is an absolute lie. We all know exactly where this originated from- Newark Charter School. We also know the Delaware DOE was willing to stab school districts in the back in order to please the charters by circumventing state code any way they possibly could. What they didn’t count on was the public openly revolting against them. As I’ve been telling people, if you make enough noise, things will change. We need to take this momentum and do more with it. Markell, for all intents and purposes, is a lame-duck. Godowsky will be gone in the next six months. The DOE, at least their leadership, looks more like incompetent buffoons by the day. This was a big mistake on their part. Very big. It would have been one thing if they made this a public matter. Another if they clued the districts into it instead of all this cloak and dagger drama.
While this “resolution” doesn’t completely finish the job, the non-transparency role of this saga will end. Any meetings going forward on this will be in the presence of the House and Senate Education Committees. There is still one guy at the DOE who I believe has a lot to answer for. I’m talking to you Mr. David Blowman.
The Season Of Myths 
Markell has been lame duck since 2012
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Thanks to all who helped…
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He’s suffered a defeat, yes, but… behind the walls of Mordor, our enemy is regrouping.
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So are we. And what comes next will be unbelievable…
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“The board is set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last, the great battle of our time.”
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The districts are clueless about mobilizing their forces when needed. The initial letters from DOE went out over the summer, and apparently the districts were moaning and wringing their hands until Kevin and a bunch of people on Facebook brought it to the attention of the public and thus the legislators. That’s great, but why don’t the districts have at least one liaison to reach out to their parent supporters? I guess anybody who was anybody in the district offices was at the beach when this was happening and wasn’t going to interrupt their vacation.
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