Dr. Dan Shelton Milks Financially Ailing Christina School District

The mysterious contract for Dr. Daniel Shelton, the Superintendent for Christina School District, was finally released today in an article by Amy Cherry over at WDEL. Considering Shelton started out at Capital five years ago in the $150-$160,000 range he sure made a windfall moving over to Christina School District. Because he is now making $199,000 a year (for the first year, read further to find out how that could drastically increase).

Among Dr. Dan’s many perks, he received $15,000 for this school year as a “transition” stipend to cover his costs of relocating to the district. Because, yes, it apparently costs $15,000 to “transition” when you live in the Red Clay School District all the way to Christina School District. I would love to see the justification for this exorbitant fee (and that’s exactly what it is). But luckily for the taxpayers of Christina, Delaware, and all of America (because his contract is paid through local, state, and federal funds), it will only cost us $9,000 a year to cover Dr. Dan’s automobile expenses to the tune of $750 a month.

Even more egregious and insulting to the taxpayers of Christina-Delaware-America, Dr. Dan gets an automatic step increase of 2% a year ALONG with whatever percentage of raises the local teacher unions get for their increases. Because hell, why not? No apparent conflict of interest here given that HIS OFFICE NEGOTIATES TEACHER CONTRACTS.

What confuses me though is the fact that the Zoom meeting to vote Dr. Dan in took place on 6/4/2020. All the board members were in different places at the time. So how in the world did they all manage to sign this contract on 6/4/2020? Furthermore, the contract had zero public input which would have been helpful given that the district was going out for a referendum at the time. And four out of the seven board members were elected by the board and not the public.

While everyone is figuring out what to do with Covid-19 and schools, it looks like Dr. Dan took FULL advantage of the chaos to get himself a contract that benefits him immensely.

To read the contract between Dr. Dan and Christina, feast your eyes. It is QUITE a read. Thanks to WDEL for doing all the legwork on this!

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Breaking News: Mike Piccio Resigns From Red Clay Board of Education

Effective August 28th, Red Clay Consolidated School District Board of Education President Mike Piccio resigned from the board.  Sources within the district have confirmed there is no controversy, just a citizen moving out of the district at some point.  But what makes this interesting will be the makeup of the board going forward.  The current Vice-President Martin Wilson, in most situations, would just slide into the President role.  But knowing Red Clay, I am sure other members will want to vote on changes to the board.  Not to mention the whole special election for his seat on the board.  Interesting times up in Red Clay…