Christina Board Member Sworn In & Resigns Minutes Later

In the oddest move I’ve ever seen in Delaware education, Katie Hegedus was sworn in as a board member of the Christina School District Board of Education last night at their monthly board meeting and resigned minutes later.

Hegedus beat incumbent John Young two months ago in the school board election.  Her platform was basically that she would resign once she is sworn in.  This would force the current board to hand-pick a replacement.  They announced at their board meeting last night they would begin this task.

This ridiculous stunt was concocted by the Friends of Christina, a small but connected group of parents in the district who basically hated the fact John Young would call out the district on, well, anything.  Whether it was right or wrong.  Their mantra of go along to get along brought forth this latest oddity in Delaware school board race history.  One for the record books, that’s for sure!  This election meant so much to their de facto leader that she is currently trying to sell her house and move out of state.

While Young is no longer on the Christina Board of Education, he has come back and relaunched his blog as Transparent Christina 2.0.  I fully expect Young, who is now no longer beholden to certain bylaws of being a board member, to come out swinging on his blog!  While this very sad attempt at silencing Young may appear to be a win in some circles, I fear all they have done is awoken an already alert dragon.  With a tagline of “Because sometimes Exceptional needs some help“, Young has written several articles of late.  Speaking for Exceptional, I welcome any help in the Delaware education blogosphere!  Unless it is some urgent sounding blog…wink wink!

The board re-elected former President Meredith Griffith to another one-year term as President while Keeley Powell was elected to Vice-President of the board.

Did Hegedus Campaign Violate Election Law In Illegal Emails To State Teachers?

A school board campaign in Delaware could be breaking the law and they are turning what should be a fair election into a disgrace.  And how could a member of this campaign benefit should her ghost candidate win?  And which legislator is foolishly endorsing a candidate that won’t serve if elected?

The Strange Case Of The Disappearing Christina Board Meeting

I see this with charter schools quite a bit but postponing a regular board meeting for a school district?  That is highly unusual!  Today, the Christina School District postponed their regular January Board of Education meeting scheduled for tonight at Bayard Middle School.  Is this a fluke or is there a specific reason the meeting was postponed?

Christina Board President’s Unprecedented Power Grab Is Fascist In Nature

A new board policy under review for the Christina Board of Education would give their Board President an overwhelming amount of power and weaken their board considerably.

Christina Board of Education Unanimously Passes Resolution Condemning Governor Carney’s Proposed Education Cuts

Last night, the Christina Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution concerning Governor John Carney’s proposed FY2018 budget for Delaware.  The resolution encourages all Delaware legislators in New Castle County to reject Carney’s proposed education cuts.  The FY2018 budget has to get through the Joint Finance Committee and will then go to the149th Delaware General Assembly in the final days of legislative session in late June.

Expect more of this in the days and weeks to come.  The reaction from Delaware teachers, educators, parents, citizens, schools, districts, and school boards is getting louder by the day.  Especially when teachers are getting pink slips.  Last night at a forum about the budget at the Delmar Fire Station, even Carney acknowledged these are bad choices.  I have to think, with all the perks inserted into the epilogue language of the state budget every year, there is room for unnecessary programs in our state to get the chopping block.  If Carney wants our state to be competitive, forcing schools into no-win situations involving less money is not the way to go.  This wasn’t a bad choice, it was a horrible choice.

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Meredith Griffin Jr. and Angela Mitchell Win Christina Board Seats

Unofficial results for Christina are in.  Meredith Griffin won 828 votes in District G.  Contenders Jeff Day got 369 votes and Kimara Smith had 170.  In District B, Angela Mitchell narrowly won in a tight race between herself and candidate Justin Day.  Mitchell had 480 votes to Justin Day’s 457.  Monica Moriak had 232 votes and Karen Sobotker had 72 votes in the District B race.  Congratulations to Griffin and Mitchell!

Breaking News Shocker: Board Member Resigns From Christina Board of Education

A Christina School District Board of Education member unexpectedly resigned from the board.  Which one?

Christina Board Race Down To Three. Is There A Concern With One Of Them?

Shirley Saffer withdrew as a candidate for the election of the Christina School District Board of Education seat today.  This leaves it down to three: Jeff Day, Meredith Griffin Jr., and Kimara Smith.  There will be no incumbent for the race since Saffer withdrew.

I’ve met both Day and Griffin before.  Smith is a relative unknown.  One of the candidates concerns me… A LOT!

Christina. Tuesday. 7pm. Gauger-Cobbs. Board. Meeting. Popcorn. Bring It.

Holy stacked agenda!  Could they squeeze anything else into this agenda?  Some more hot-button district issues?  I doubt it!

On Tuesday night, the Christina Board of Education will hold their board meeting at Gauger-Cobbs Middle School.  The fun starts at 7pm.  Bring food, and, just in case, you may want to bring a sleeping bag.  This is going to be a late meeting!

So what’s on tap?  The question is more like what isn’t on this agenda!  This is NOT the order for the meeting, but it IS the controversy order!

Now the cat is out of the bag.  In the absolute shocker of the year, board member John Young was the one to submit the action item to rescind the vote on the charter settlement.  John is always so quiet and compliant.  This is NOT like him at all to do something like this.  Okay, sorry, got hit in the head for a second there.  But seriously, I give John major props for having the guts to get this out there.  I truly hope one of the four board members who voted yes can see this settlement sham for what it really is.  If not, I hope many public comments can nudge them along.

Board member Shirley Saffer introduced this action item.  After last month’s vote to create the “Honors Academy” at Christiana High School, there is an action item to annul that vote.  Saffer voted yes for the program last month, but it appears she had a change of heart.  The board voted 5-1 the first time.  Will the districts new charter magnet NCS wannabe Honors Academy survive this time?  Expect a lot of pissed off parents for this one!

While I haven’t written too much about Christina’s Superintendent search, there has been a ton of drama surrounding it.  Which will apparently culminate in many action items surrounding this.  First item on the agenda is to approve an interim Superintendent.  Which is basically what Dr. Robert Andrzejewski has been for the past 15 months.  I really don’t know the difference between Interim and Acting, nor do I truly care.   But “Bob A” is leaving on December 31st, come hell or high water.  Even if the board does approve a new Superintendent by the end of the year, that person will most likely have to give notice at their current job.  Unless it is Jack Markell.  I heard he is going to be VERY available pretty soon.  Just kidding on that one.  I do NOT want to be responsible for that rumor starting.

Action Item #8 is the Superintendent Interview Questions.  Which the board is making public.  Because they HAVE TO.  After that there will be discussion on the final interviews for the candidates.  After the board gets through that, there is another John Young submitted action item to start the Superintendent search over.  Like I said, this meeting is going to be crazy!

We will also get a discussion on mold air quality at Christina schools.  This should be the lighter side of the evening!  Add in all the other normal stuff school boards do: honor roll, budget stuff, contracts, and so on and so forth.  For those keeping track, the rescind the settlement vote and annul the Honors Academy are the last two items on the action item agenda.

If you want to sign up for public comment, I would get there early.  You have to sign up to talk.  I plan on being there.  I plan on talking.  It will be marvelous, just wait!  I wonder if any legislators will show up at this meeting.  I wonder if they will attempt to talk to board out of NOT rescinding the vote on the settlement.  I dare Senator Sokola to try this!  Triple dog dare!

These are some fun predictions.  People from the audience will yell at least eight times to speak up because they can’t hear them.  President Paige will bring the gavel down at least 13 times.  George Evans will ridicule John Young at least four times.  The audience will laugh at least four times.  Someone will leave their lights on in the parking lot.  Someone in the audience will have a very brilliant idea of ordering pizza (bring cash in case this does happen and you plan to stick around for the whole shebang).  At least five people will wear ugly Christmas shirts and/or sweaters.  And last, but certainly not least, I predict at least three things will come out that the general public has no clue about.

Christina Board of Education Will Review Superintendent Spending Tonight

The Christina School District Board of Education will review the amount of spending their Superintendent can spend before they have to get board approval at their monthly meeting tonight.  The current limit is $20,000.  Previously, it had been $50,000 but after their second failed referendum attempt in 2015, the board lowered the amount.

$50,000 is a key figure with Delaware Superintendents.  In Delaware code, any contract of $50,000 or more has to go through the request for proposal process in the state.  Many school districts circumvent this by having contracts for $49,000-$49,999.  These kind of budgets can be controversial.  School boards lose some power when the districts write those kind of vendor contracts.

As well, the board is reviewing this type of spending for school principals with another proposal to raise that amount without a signature from $10,000 to $25,000.

With many citizens in Delaware demanding greater transparency of school district funding, this could be seen by those advocates as more continuous evaporation of schools and districts not giving crucial financial information to the public.

The board also has an item on their agenda, if approved, would give the board more ability to participate in legislation and regulations that could affect the school district.  If implemented, this would give a board member the ability to go to Senate and House Education Committee meetings as well as State Board of Education meetings and give public comment on behalf of the board.  The policy would also mandate that any board member speaking about education policy would have to state in public these are individual thoughts and not reflective of the Christina School District of Board of Education.  For the past two years, the board has declined to join the Delaware School Boards Association which usually has their own representative at these types of meetings.

The board will also discuss the upcoming implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act and what that could mean for the district.  I highly recommend board members participate and comment on this confusing legislation and make sure their voice is heard.

The board meeting will be at Gauger-Cobbs Middle School beginning at 7pm this evening.

FISCAL MANAGEMENT POLICY

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CONTRACTS & REAL ESTATE POLICY

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LEGISLATIVE PARTICIPATION

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The Real Story About What Happened At The Christina Board Meeting Last Night…

Last night, Christina Board of Education member Elizabeth Paige was elected by her peers to be the next President of the board.  With a 4-3 vote, she took the post over from Harrie Ellen Minnehan.  What happened next was very surreal.  Acting Superintendent Bob Andrzejewski was going through different contract amounts which the board had to take action on.  When one of them came up, I was absolutely shocked and horrified.  It wasn’t even on the agenda.  Their Chief Financial Officer, Bob Silber, disappeared shortly before this.  I think he knew what was coming.  Everyone was there: Acting Superintendent Robert “Bob A” Andrzejewski, Board members John Young, Fred Polaski, George Evans, Harrie Ellen Minnehan, Shirley Saffer, Elizabeth Paige, and newly elected board member Meg Mason.  There were some people I knew in the audience as well.  I don’t know if I’m supposed to be writing about this, so I will show you…

 

 

Breaking News: Liz Paige Elected President Of The Christina Board Of Education

With a 4-3 vote, Elizabeth Paige is the new President of the Christina School District Board of Education.  The prior President, Harrie-Ellen Minnehan, received three votes.  Minnehan only held the post for a year.  This is definitely Paving The Way to a New Christina!  Congrats Liz!

With all respect to Ms. Minnehan, I believe Paige will bring a transparency to this board that has never been seen before.  She is a strong voice for this board, and I can’t wait to see what happens next!