If you thought I was talking about Donald Trump, guess again! The Donald of note is none other than Donald Patton. At the last Christina board meeting, “President” Patton went on a bit of a rant. Keep in mind this is in front of the public at a public school board meeting. It was also on Zoom. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again- a school board meeting is not the time for a board member to air their grievances about other school board members and a Superintendent. Especially when no one knows what the hell he is talking about!
To give some context here, in the below transcript from the meeting, Patton is railing against fellow board member Doug Manley and Superintendent Dr. Dan Shelton. This is over Manley writing a 70+ page document about Patton to support why he and some other board members wanted to vote to remove him as President of the Christina School District Board of Education. The question of Patton’s personnel file comes up in this document according to sources and Patton addressed at both this board meeting and the one in May.
During the below part of his speech at the June board meeting, he keeps saying “Stop” and “one more time”. I remember hearing those words, along with “just you wait”, when I was a child. If I left a messy room or didn’t do my chores, I would often hear those hollow threats from one of my parents. Like they were going to abandon me and send me into the woods if I didn’t listen to them! Patton kind of sounds like that. And I believe he said the same at their May board meeting. I am also providing Shelton’s response to Patton at the end of it because that was priceless!
PATTON
But I’m going to say this publicly today. Mr. Manley, you have one more time to lie and put stuff out on me and then I’m gonna do what I was going to do tonight. I’m going to honor your request. I’m not going to go backwards. But you say one more thing about me and watch what happens when I come up here for you. And that’s a promise. I’m not here for you to think that you can step on me and do whatever you want and say whatever you want about me and smile and think it’s okay. It’s not. I’m a human being. Stop. Stop. Stop right now. Just stop.
The only other thing I had- I had two other things: one was to deal with a whole bunch of issues with Mr. Manley, but I’m gonna hope he gets the message, but if he doesn’t, he will at the next board meeting for sure. I’m going to share one more thing with you, and then I’ll turn the floor over to Dr. Shelton. After the last board meeting, I went home. It was a late board meeting. And the next morning, around 9:30, I got a phone call. I got a phone call from our CFO, Mr. Bob Vacca. And I got the phone call because I had stated that I wanted to know from Dr. Walmsley what happens to a person’s personnel file. Who secures it? Where does it go when you retire? And he answered the question, but in answering the questions, he realized where I was going. I was going to Archives to find out who ordered my records. And so Mr. Vacca shared with me: Dr. Shelton asked me- told me- that your records were missing and asked me why were they missing and I knew that I was the last person that saw them so I ordered them. That’s not why you ordered my file. You ordered my file because you thought you could find something in there that has never been in there, and when you didn’t find it, and he realized the path that I was going on to find out who ordered my file, so that was the call that I got to tell me: I have your file, I ordered it, but Dr. Shelton said your file was missing. So here’s what I want all of you all out there to think. I retired in 2019. If I was the worst principal in the world, the worst person in the world, I retired in 2019. My file was in Archives. So why would a superintendent want to know where your file is in the first place? And then the second place why was someone ordered to go through it? And then third, I’m gonna say this publicly, I’m gonna say this with as much ferocity as I can. I, in the 23 years in the Christina School District have never ever had a discipline for anything. So that y’all are looking for, the reason you can’t find it, as my good friend Doug said, I can’t find it, but I think if I go back and get his twenty-six thousand e-mails, we can reconstruct it. So, we would pay the lawyer twenty-five thousand dollars to review twenty-six thousand e-mails to see if he can reconstruct something that he can’t find. Tell me that makes sense. Tell me you guys can agree with that. Cause that doesn’t make sense to me. So, I’m gonna close with this: my third item, Mr. Manley, I’m going to put on hold, and I’m gonna say this: I would love to come back, as I said to Dr. Shelton in our board prep meeting, I would love to come and do what we’ve done, do what we’re supposed to do, but none of you are sitting up here being targeted. So, you have no idea what it looks like or what it feels like. So, if you want that to happen, Dr. Shelton, I don’t know what—how you persuade Mr. Manley or anyone else. I’m not the one. I’m really not. I don’t have anything to hide. You’re not gonna find anything. But you’re certainly not going to dispar[age] my character continuously, and I accept it, and I’m okay with it- I’m not. Stop. All o’y’all stop. Tonight. Stop messing with me. Go someplace else. But I’mma tell you right now. Stop messing with me.
The last other thing: all four people—this is not a coincidence. All four people who voted for the vote last month that said we have no confidence in the leadership—all four people since that board meeting have been aggressively either intimidated or attacked. All four people. So, I’m not sure who’s thinking about what or how- we vote our conscience. I don’t have the ability to tell someone who has her own brain to vote the way I want her to vote or the way I want him to vote or the way I want the other gentleman who’s not here to vote—they vote the way they feel. They vote with the evidence that’s put in the front of them. So please understand that. I apologize for the staff for having to hear this, but I’ve had it. I’m up to here. You don’t continue taking shots at me and I don’t take shots back. So, if you want to do that, if you want to play that game, then go ahead and play that game. I would rather come to this meeting, conduct these meetings in an orderly fashion and get people out at a respectful time, without all this other stuff.
Dr. Shelton, it’s yours.
SHELTON
Thank you. So, a couple comments. The first is I have been sitting here, constantly being attacked, for stuff that I have nothing to do with, so just putting that out there. Regularly. But I just sit here and take it. ‘Cause I’m being professional.
Shelton went right into his Superintendent report after his very brief reply to Patton’s lengthy and time-consuming monologue. I find it hysterical that Patton talks about a “respectful time” when his very nature is disrespectful. And that’s on a good day! To a member of the public, be it a parent, teacher, staff member, or even a student, they would not have the first clue what Patton is talking about. Or why. But he doesn’t care as long as he gets to shoot his mouth off.
Patton is his own worst enemy. I’m quite sure that if I went back and listened to all his rants I would see how he has become a clear liability for the district in terms of talking about personnel and giving privileged information to the public. I’m all for transparency but within the right channels. This is NOT the way to do it.
Patton claims the other three board members who have been on his side have been intimidated or attacked without saying how they were. If an “attack” is something like Dr. Naveed Baqir playing hide and seek in Pakistan and getting called out for it, sure, I’ll take the blame for that!
Exceptional Delaware 