Indian River Said There Were No Complaints Against Patrick Miller. Susan Bunting Lied.

As part of their audit investigation with the State Auditor, the Superintendent of Indian River School District and the Director of Personnel told the Auditor of Account’s Office there had never been any formal complaints against their former Chief Financial Officer, Patrick Miller.  They lied.  Warning: some of the language used by Patrick Miller in the parent’s complaint is NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

Cape Henlopen Under Fire For Failure To Report Employee To State Police

Rob Petree with Delaware 105.9 reported Cape Henlopen School District lied about an offensive touching incident three years ago.

The incident, where an employee grabbed a female student’s pants to see her rear, was shocking enough.

“…and before she knew it he had stood up, grabbed the back of her pants, pulled them away from her body to get a look at her rear-end.”

But the school district told the student’s parent they reported it to the Delaware State Police.  Turns out they never did.

“The alleged incident was not reported to the Delaware State Police in May 2015 and handled by the Administration at the school,” said Sgt. Richard Bratz, Director of Public Information for Delaware State Police. “The school advised this did not rise to the level of a mandatory school report and that the school district resolved it.”

If the man was still at the school years later it doesn’t sound like the district “resolved” anything.  They made the employee work after hours when students were not present.  They openly lied to a news organization about reporting it to the police.  How is that okay?  In a way, this makes the original offense even worse for the victim.  It is saying “we don’t care, we stand by our employees”.  It is not okay for an adult to do that.  It is not okay for the same adult to walk around with racist comments and innuendos.

The response from the district sounds like one I’ve heard before when all of a sudden they are in the hot seat:

The Cape Henlopen School District said “due to the nature of the allegations made by the family and privacy rights of individuals involved, the district is not able to provide specific comments about the concerns.”

Yup, time for the game of say nothing, do nothing.  Sorry, they should have spoken loud and clear three years ago!  Should Superintendent Robert Fulton resign over this?  Any adult in a school is a person of trust.  By keeping an employee that does what he did, lying about how you reported it, and failing to protect students, Fulton allowed this erosion of trust.

Did Prestige Academy Lie In Their Major Modification Request?

It is modification mania at the Delaware DOE this month!  Prestige Academy submitted a major modification request to reduce their enrollment to 240 students, and two minor modification requests: one to drop 5th grade and the other to decrease their instructional days from 194 to 184.  In the Charter School Accountability Committee initial report, the DOE flat-out says information they provided in their major modification request is not true.  Also included are parent complaints.  There aren’t as many as Delaware Met 2.0 Delaware Design-Lab High School, but the main one troubles me quite a bit.  Where is the due process for suspended students at Delaware charter schools?  Does it even exist?  Students should not have to face over a month of suspension.  That is ridiculous!

 

Delaware DOE Up To Their Usual Tricks With Outright Lies

Today, the Delaware Department of Education issued a press release about the upcoming school report card launch.  Apparently they want help in getting the “right” design picked, out of two whole possible choices.  Of course they don’t want actual feedback of the content of the report card, just how it looks…

For immediate release

 

Contact Alison May (302) 735-4000

PUBLIC INVITED TO VOTE ON SCHOOL REPORT DESIGN

Parents, students, educators and other community members are invited to help choose the look of the soon-to-be-launched Delaware School Success Reports.

The Delaware School Success Reports will improve the presentation of information on the state’s schools, making it easier for families and other members of the public to find the information they need about schools across the First State. Launching in October 2015, they eventually will replace the school profiles on the state’s web site. In addition to the online accessibility of all reports, families will receive a snapshot report on their children’s school mailed to their home beginning in 2016.

Development of the reports comes after months of community engagement and feedback. In partnership with the University of Delaware’s Institute for Public Administration and the Delaware Academy of School Leadership, the Delaware Department of Education hosted nine focus groups across all three counties to solicit feedback on the online and paper School Success Reports currently under construction. A hundred parents, teachers and community members participated in these facilitated, in-depth conversations about school performance. Demographics of the participants closely mirrored Delaware’s diverse communities, and most focus group members had students enrolled in the state’s public schools. Of the 100 participants, more than 70 percent were parents, 30 percent were educators and the remainder identified themselves as community members.

Beginning today, the public will be able to vote to choose their favorite School Success report design.

“While the focus groups informed what parents and the community want to know about their schools, this additional feedback is important to ensuring that Delaware’s School Success Reports significantly improve the presentation of the information on our schools so families have intuitive access to the information they need,” Secretary of Education Mark Murphy said.

Voting is open through 11 p.m. on Sunday, September 13. 

Email questions and other feedback to engagement@doe.k12.de.us.

Okay, I’ll bite.  When were these nine focus groups?  I know they had the four town halls groups last fall.  They had their Survey Monkey crap as well.  But now we find out there were 9 meetings nobody knew anything about?  Who were the attendees?  Where are the minutes? The agendas?  What came out of these meetings?  They are such filthy liars.

And why are they only giving this until 9/13?  Are they planning to have the State Board approve this monstrosity at their 9/17 meeting?  With the participation rate factored into the roficiency portion of the report card?  You know, punishing schools for opt-out rates, that whole thing.  Meanwhile, absolutely NOBODY from our General Assembly has done a thing about contacting Pete Schwartzkopf or Patti Blevins about calling for a special session to override Governor Markell’s veto of House Bill 50.  Even the sponsors!!!!  All I hear is, “They will never do it.”  Did anybody ASK them?  I’m just getting tired of excuses.  That’s how the DOE gets away with everything, because the General Assembly LETS them.  They sit back and expect someone else to do it.  No more.  They voted Smarter Balanced into law, so this is all on them!  I’ll bet Governor Markell just sits back and laughs at the puppets he controls.

I

Academy of Dover – Don’t Blame Me For Your Failures Leading To YOUR Formal Review!!!

Seriously?  You are telling staff the formal review is going on because I have a vendetta against charters?  I didn’t cause your former head of school to pillage state funds.  I didn’t cause a teacher to kick a student who SHOULD have an IEP.  I didn’t draw up the documents to make you pay a judgment against Mosaica for $2 million dollars.  I didn’t cause your standardized test scores to go down.  I didn’t cause your board to fail to post minutes of their board meetings for years.  I didn’t make you not have a Citizen’s Budget Oversight Committee.  And I certainly have NO power over the DOE to put you under formal review in the first place.  Do you want to know who can take full responsibility for all of this?  Your board and your past and present heads of school.

Accountability starts with yourself.  Perhaps you wouldn’t be in this predicament if you weren’t so busy trying to blame others for your own colossal mistakes.  Get your special education department some training.  Make sure all your teachers are certified.  Stop being cheap with your funding.  Stop lying to the DOE and the Charter School Accountability Committee.

I only write about ANY school that jacks things up so bad I can find it.  If that means the DOE, or even your own website shows things that are jacked up, I will write about it.  Don’t like it?  Don’t mess up.  There are mistakes and then there are careless errors.  You excel at both.  But don’t think for one minute I will give you the ability to think these are all just mistakes.  Some of what you’ve done is intentional.  You may think you can pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, but if not Thursday, one day your cockiness and arrogance will be your undoing.  Only you can change that.