Educators Who Needed Rescuing Part 1: My Story

So glad to see Natalie writing again! Get better Natalie!

E.R. +Educators to the Rescue+

This is Natalie, and I’ve been neglecting this page for an awfully long time.  So many things have happened in a year’s time, that it’s been difficult to concentrate my passion on educational issues.  I feel like you need an explanation, so I’ll try to be brief.  I’ll start with myself, and then I will fill you in with what happened to Laura, my educational partner who ran this page with me.

In December 2016, on the first day of Winter Break, I carried my then 15-year-old geriatric Pug down our back porch steps to go do his business, because he was too old to navigate them by himself.  On about the third step, I fell down in severe pain and threw “Bob” down the rest of the steps.  I crawled to the door screaming in pain.  Luckily, my husband was home, because I could not lift myself up to…

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Bloodbath At DAPSS As Two-Thirds Of Their Staff And Herb Sheldon Were Fired Today

Delaware Academy of Safety and Security will look very different next year.  After surviving their formal review and getting their enrollment up to an acceptable level, the culling began today when 2/3rds of their staff AND Principal Herbert Sheldon got their walking papers.  They will still be there until the end of the school year, but many aren’t happy.

The Dean of Students and Discipline, Dakevis Matthews…gone

Director of Public Safety, David Wainwright…gone

Operations Specialist, Lisa Flynn…gone

Office Manager, Tara Williams…gone

Behavior Interventionist (listed on their website as a Behavior Interventionalist), Marcus Bazemore…gone

The odd part is that Sheldon did the firings.  But when he wouldn’t accept a lesser position, he was on the chopping block as well.  We ALL know where these firings are coming from.  That would be Board President Margie Lopez-Waite.  A few months ago, she dropped their Academic Director, Erica Thomas, like a bag of hot potatoes after the school got reamed in their formal review meeting at the DOE.  But if Margie is still involved in a year or so I would be shocked.  And this is why charter schools need to be unionized.  So this kind of bloodbath doesn’t happen.  Many of the staff that were fired were directly responsible for getting their enrollment to where it needed to be.  Their reward?  This.  So if you EVER want to be a teacher at ANY charter school Margie Lopez Waite is involved in, you might want to put body armor on your back so the knife doesn’t penetrate too deep.

And to think I actually congratulated Margie on DAPSS surviving their formal review… it’s going to take a lot of mouthwash for me to erase those words!  Had I known THIS was what she planned, those words would have never come out of my mouth.  You see, these are people’s lives here.  Their jobs, their income, their security.  What happened to all that extra training and support Colonial was going to give these teachers?  Where are the new teachers going to come from? TFA? Relay?  We all know Colonial has been boasting about their relationship with Relay.  Not cool, not cool at all.  For Margie… a school (even a charter school) is not the same as the banking world.  DAPSS is not MBNA.  You can’t run a school like a bank.