At the Delaware Academy of Safety & Security board meeting going on now, parents are screaming at Margie Lopez-Waite and students are crying. They are very upset with her about the mass termination of anywhere from 2/3 to 3/4 of the staff on Monday. They are also very pissed at her about her plans to turns DAPSS into a type of ASPIRA High School.
After the public comment, the Board unanimously passed a motion to cease and desist all terminations of staff. As well, they will not hire anyone until an “independent personnel committee” goes over all the current contracts. Usually those types of committees ARE the charter school board.
The DAPSS gym had 75 parents and students in a public comment session for the ages. Lopez-Waite did not give a time limit for public comment.
Earlier today, a student posted on Facebook that Lopez-Waite was going to change the name of the school to XPeria High School and make the school primarily a dual language school with only one public safety program remaining, Emergency Medical Technicians. I spent most of the day trying to verify this information but nothing has been confirmed.
I would imagine many parents could have a valid claim to pull their child out of the school based on that. If Lopez-Waite was truly stupid, she would do this now. It would be a violation of the school’s charter. DAPSS did try to submit a major modification request during their formal review but Delaware Secretary of Education Dr. Susan Bunting rejected the request. The school did meet their student enrollment of 200 by May 1st, but if parents pull their kids out over this proposed plan, the Delaware DOE could still revoke their charter. I did contact the DOE today to make them aware of this. They had not heard anything about it and suggested I contact DAPSS about this. I expect that kind of response from the DOE. I would hope they did some due diligence on their own about this.
On their April board meeting audio recording, Lopez-Waite talked about this possibility for the school. She envisioned a scenario where the DAPSS High School was a part of a Colonial High School, much like Charter School of Wilmington shares their high school with Cab Calloway in Red Clay.
Among Margie’s debacle of a board meeting, she not only engaged in conversation in Spanish with a parent during public comment, she also openly argued with a public safety teacher who saved a student’s life. While she was doing this, she showed no remorse or emotion during all of this public comment. She rolled her eyes at students and acted like she did nothing wrong. I would expect that at a corporate board meeting. Like MBNA. Not at a public school board meeting. One parent who screamed at Margie was escorted out of the meeting but he later came back in.
After the board passed the motion to stop the firings, they went into a brief executive session. When they came out of it, they adjourned the board meeting.
I have no doubt I will have MUCH more to write about this board meeting as information becomes available. I am not there but my information has been verified by multiple sources at the meeting. I don’t like to swear on here, but what a shit show…
The Season Of Myths 