Glasgow High School & Christina School District In Big Trouble With Delaware DOE Who Fell Asleep At The Wheel And Let It All Happen

In the wake of the IEP scandal at Glasgow High School, ALL of Christina School District is at the mercy of the Delaware Department of Education when it comes to special education.  Following the events concerning fake IEP meetings at Glasgow High School that I published in October, the Delaware Department of Education was forced to act.  But questions linger about how and why the Delaware DOE was unable to find out before they did.

My Email To Glasgow High School Principal Butch Ingram, Richard Gregg, & Christina’s Board of Education

I expected there to be some fireworks over at Glasgow High School today.  There were.  District officials came rushing over at 8am and met with Principal Harold “Butch” Ingram.  Ingram then held a staff meeting to let folks know what was going on.  Cue some Spin Doctors music here readers!  I sent an email to Butch to let him know he is more than welcome to come on here and let the fine people of Delaware know what happened.  I sent this to Ingram, Superintendent Richard Gregg, and the entire Christina Board of Education minutes ago.

Glasgow High School In Middle Of Scandal With Fake IEP Meetings & Loss Of Funding

The quickest way to lose special education funding is to lie about holding IEP meetings.  Such is the case with Glasgow High School in the Christina School District.  If this were one or two IEP meetings that would be one thing.  But sources are telling me this could be upwards to 70 IEP meetings.  The situation is so bad that the school lost a ton of funding for these special education students.

How does a school hold up to 70 fake IEP meetings?  You set them up in the system, set up a date for the meeting, and then do NOTHING ELSE.  Who gets blamed for this?  Is it Principal Butch Ingram?  The education diagnostician for the school?  The school psychologist?  The teachers?  *Was the then head of special services for the district, Michele Marinucci, aware of this situation?  (Marinucci is now the Head of School at Academy of Dover.)  Did the IEP team members actually sign off on IEP meetings that never happened in the first place?  Tons of questions here folks!

Sources for this horrible news are laying very low.  The situation is playing out but the September 30th unit count report is going to look very different for Glasgow H.S. compared to previous years.  That report usually comes out in November courtesy of the Delaware Department of Education.  Speaking of the DOE, how long have they been aware of this mess?  Why has NONE of this been made public until the scrappy little blogger from Dover had to stick his head out of the sand to write about this?

While I’m sure Christina’s CFO Bob Silber and the other fine district folks are scratching their heads and trying to figure out how to do damage control over this latest debacle, I would hope someone in the district is considering the impact this will have on the actual students with disabilities.  How many services will they go without this year because the adults screwed up?  For a school that had a little over 15% of its population listed as students with disabilities, that amounts to 114 out of the 753 kids that attended the school during the 2018-2019 school year.  That’s a ton of funding for the school to be losing!  What say you Superintendent Richard Gregg?

Chances are good this story is going to keep on growing.  I’m just breaking the ice here.  I have no doubt there is much more going on here.

Updated 3/30/2023: I have recently been advised that former Christina School District Head of Special Services Michele Marinucci was the party that let the Delaware Department of Education know about this debacle.  Thumbs up to Marinucci for doing the right thing!

Rep. Paul Baumbach To Christina: “Keep Moving As Fast As You Can”

At the end of the Christina School District Board of Education meeting last week, State Representative Paul Baumbach spoke before the board.  He thanked the board and the district for the changes they implemented in the past year and “strongly encouraged” them to keep doing it.  There was a specific reason Baumbach did this.  He admitted the General Assembly doesn’t help.

How Many Christina Teachers Or Students Have Been Seriously Sick From Mold?

Adam Duvernay with the News Journal wrote on article for today’s newspaper.  It was the same article that appeared on Delawareonline last evening, but it had a very shocking addition at the end of it.

I apologize for the fuzziness of the picture.  But that is very serious.  Why should a teacher have to sue a school district when they were poisoned by conditions at the workplace?  Is that really what this boils down to for the district?  A profit/loss statement?  Why wouldn’t they have just offered to pay for her treatment?  I have no doubt this won’t be the last I hear about something like this in Christina, much less Delaware.  There is something seriously jacked up when our schools can’t provide a healthy environment for our students and teachers.

Pulaski.  Downes.  Glasgow.  Newark H.S.  Kirk.  Gallaher.  Brennan.  Gauger-Cobbs.  How many more schools are going to come out in this mess?  How far back do those go?  How big is the cover-ups surrounding Christina’s toxic schools?  This is going to be one hell of a board meeting on Tuesday night!

Christina Backs Out Of Referendum Promise As Trust Evaporates

Last night at the Christina Board of Education meeting, it was announced the district would not rehire librarians laid off after the two failed referenda attempts last year.  The district passed the third referendum attempt on March 23rd, and one of the promises made was the district would restore positions cut as a result of the budget cuts last year.  Included in that was school librarians.  While there is no specific mention of librarian positions on the actual Christina website, it does appear on the CSD Paving the Way website which was run by the steering committee for the referendum.

Even the Newark Post had an article in February where Glasgow High School principal Dean Ivory quoted:

Glasgow was one of many secondary schools that lost their librarians and though classroom teachers can still sign up to take their classes to the library, it’s not the same, Ivory said. A teacher in the school’s PATH program, whose class meets in the library, has taken on the extra responsibility of coordinating these class sign-ups, he added. If this year’s referendum does pass and schools can start adding staff again, Ivory said the librarian is one of the first positions he’d bring back. “That was a very painful cut,” he said. “But if it comes down to it, do you want to lose a math teacher or a librarian?”

So much for keeping their word!  So where will the funds promised to librarians go to now?  I gave First State Liberty a very hard time for how they handled the last referendum.  But it looks like I should have been putting some pressure on the district as well.  This news is very disappointing to say the least.  What purpose does it serve to betray not only the librarians that were cut last year, but also the taxpayers in your district?  This is why the referendum process needs to go.  It has become like a Presidential election: all sorts of campaign promises that never happen.  Social media comments regarding this broken promise are not being kind to the district.  Shame on Superintendent Robert Andrzejewski for making promises he had no intention of keeping.

The district has already been under the microscope for immediately hiring outside vendors immediately following the referendum, including Demosophia which is helping the district to create a Strategic Plan in regards to their behavior and climate.  Some felt hiring a former Title I administrator from the district as an outside consultant was a bit too much.