How about them apples? Turns out the much ballyhooed funding for the Priority Schools initiative in Red Clay and Christina is not even going to be granted at the full amount now. If I were a judge looking at this, I would definitely say that violates the whole Memorandum of Understanding each of the six schools had to sign. The Red Clay and Christina boards signed those with the full intention the state would cough up the money. So where did the promised money go? Is this another one of those sneaky budget moves like the one Delaware Liberal just wrote about?
This news is coming from the Red Clay board meeting happening right now. Board member Adriana Bohm just said the state should nullify the MOUs if the state can’t give the funds they promised. I completely agree. After all the angst and bullying and intimidation by both Governor Markell and the Delaware DOE, this is what it comes down to? Should any of us be shocked? I am awaiting final confirmation on how short the state is on these funds.
If I were any school designated a priority school in the future, I would never sign the MOU based on these shenanigans. And somehow, the contract for the Priority Schools Instructional Executive contract is just showing as recently closed. No bidders showing, and it’s not showing as not awarded either. So which is it? Or is this another case where the DOE can just pull contracts off this site and put them in the ether?
This is beginning to confirm my suspicion the whole priority school thing was a sham from the start. It is my contention the whole thing was designed the get the whole redistricting of Wilmington going. Because all the shouting that occurred from that announcement led right into the Wilmington Education Advisory Committee. After the priority schools anger calmed down, the WEAC group came out with their recommendations, and voila, two bills passed by the House and Senate in a record amount of time.
Delaware gets dirtier by the day. The amount of manipulation and lies told by our public “leaders” is deplorable and disgusting. The secret meetings with Rodel, Mark Murphy and members of the Delaware Business Roundtable. The things Governor Markell says a little bit too loud that others may overhear. The whole Senator Sokola comment at the Senate Education Committee when he was rushing people through public comment on HB50 to get to SB122 (the redistricting bill for the State Board of Education to carve up Wilmington) when he said “Some people have been working on this for a couple years” when WEAC came out from an Executive Order in September 2014. The whole budget bill and grant-in-aid shenanigans Delaware Liberal just wrote about. The railroading of HB186 which would give financial accountability to charters while the state pours $3.8 million to them from the budget.
It is very obvious what is going on here, which I’ve said all along. They want Wilmington to be a charter district. When I say they, I mean the following: Governor Markell, Rodel, Delaware Charter Schools Network, Innovative Schools, Secretary of Education Mark Murphy, Tony Allen, the DOE, EastSide Charter, Dr. Lamont Browne, Laurissa Schutt with Teach For America, Senator David Sokola, State Rep. Earl Jaques. The writing is on the wall for all of it. You just have to connect the dots. Look at all the “teacher evaluation” consortiums going on with the charters in Wilmington. And now I’m hearing one of their assistant principals is going to another Wilmington school that was never a part of all this. And the whole Family Foundations Academy takeover by EastSide never sat well with me. It seemed all too convenient with everything else going on. They are building their network now. The Community Education Building will fill up pretty fast. Just remember this: Red Clay has no high school in Wilmington. And if they can do it there, the rest of Delaware better watch out. Next stop will be Dover, and then down in Sussex, and they will spread out from there.
Now that the bills have passed for this redistricting plan, as well as the Committee to plan the whole thing, what happens now that they have royally pissed off the Red Clay board? Red Clay is being used by these people, and I hope they have the gumption to fight these charter lovers. And just wait until Christina finds out about this! If the State of Delaware does nothing about this, perhaps it’s time the FBI comes in and does a full-scale investigation of ALL of this.
There is going to be a huge war brewing in Wilmington over education. The priority schools was a skirmish. Battle lines are being drawn as we speak. Is this really what we need charter schools for? To squeeze local districts out while they take over? Don’t think that can happen? I posted an article last December with information I got completely wrong. But included in the article was a link written by the Philanthropy Roundtable. I called all of this then: the ultimate goal. Take a look, and even though some of the details are off, look at what’s happening. I can now see why some from that side have been coddling me lately, to throw me off their scent. Nice try, didn’t work.
The question now becomes this: What do we do about it?
The Season Of Myths 