Red Clay Superintendent Race Down To Three

In the coming months, Red Clay Consolidated School District will have a new Superintendent.  All indications are pointing to three final candidates.  Who are they?

Coup D’etat Attempt At Red Clay Board Meeting Tonight?

One way or another, the Red Clay Consolidated School District Board of Education will have a new board President tonight.  Mike Piccio is gone.  Usually, the President-Elect would naturally assume the role.  Which would be Martin Wilson.  But apparently some folks involved with the district are throwing around a very old allegation that Wilson doesn’t live in the nominating district he was elected from.  I reached out to a few other folks who said this old chestnut is completely false and there are other factors at play.

My question would be “why is this coming up now?”  I was directed to an old Kilroy’s Delaware article that is well over a decade old.  I couldn’t find it.  I believe Kilroy used BlogSpot before WordPress so they were purged a long time ago.  But I did find an article from 2010 where Kilroy endorsed Wilson for his second run on the board.  Wilson is African-American and with all the movement by this board about equity, it would be good to have an African-American President of the board.

It appears there are others on the Red Clay board who desire the President and President-Elect roles.  And they haven’t exactly been quiet about this fact.  I would say to these board members that if they want me to go after someone, they had best be able to provide proof of their allegation and contact me directly instead of sending someone else to do it.  I don’t appreciate being used to stir up trouble where there is none.  Cause that makes me wonder about the motivation by the person sent my way.

I don’t like political games like this.  While a district school board isn’t exactly a big deal in the long run, in a state as small as Delaware and the fact this is coming from the largest district in the state which does wield a significant amount of influence on education, it makes me wonder why I would endorse these two members to have a leadership role on the board when they resort to petty parlor tricks like this.  In the end, a district board president or vice-president simply leads the meeting and in some cases sets the agenda.  It is a title role that looks pretty on paper and you might get a gavel depending on your district.

Oh, and if you want me to do a hatchet job on someone, do some homework first.  This was already brought up in court and the judge ruled that Wilson could serve from this nominating district.  Not that it is anyone’s business but Martin Wilson himself, but did any of these busybodies attempt to ask Wilson himself why he went before the court to get a ruling on this to begin with?  Not my business to get that information out there because it is not their business.  There is a fine line I will not go over with blogging and this is one of those situations.  Wilson did his due diligence and that is ALL that matters.

If you are going to serve on a school board, I would stick to what school boards do: oversee a district in the best interests of children.  Not this… never this.  I might be a lot of things, but I do have integrity and I will not bury someone so someone else gets a little bit of power on a school board.  If this destroys a friendship or an association, so be it.  If you valued me in any way to begin with you wouldn’t have attempted this stunt so no loss on my part.  And an FYI: I smelled the piranha in the kiddie pool immediately.  Just be grateful I’m not saying YOUR names.

Red Clay Mom Takes On Red Clay’s “Zero Tolerance Policy Against Bullying”

With Maya Paveza’s permission, she is allowing me to share a Youtube video she released today.  I will let the video speak for itself.  But it is a horrifying story about one student’s personal journey through hell in Red Clay schools over the past eight years.  No student or parent should go through this gut-wrenching hell at all, much less over eight years.  I hope Katarina gets the peace and healing she deserves.  I will post the other videos in this series.  I did the same thing three years ago, albeit in a different format.  Only fitting I help another Delaware student tell her story.

Red Clay: Your Inclusion Plan Is NOT Working. This Needs To Stop…NOW!!!!!

Last year, the Red Clay Consolidated Board of Education approved an inclusion plan for students with disabilities.  Instead of paying for students with severe and intense difficulties in their own educational setting, as required by federal law under IDEA, they decided to stick them with all the regular students.  The results have not been kind to these students.  I’ve been following this story for a while now, but with everything else going on I haven’t been able to give it the attention it deserves.  This changes now.  If I have to fight multiple fronts, I will.  This post put up by a sister of a Red Clay student with Autism was put on Facebook.  This should not be happening at all.  I am begging the Red Clay board to put a stop to this now.  If it means you don’t have funding for WEIC, so be it.  If you can’t handle your own, than you definitely shouldn’t be taking more.  I like some of you as people, but if you can’t get your act together as a whole for students with disabilities, all bets are off.

Today, my mom got a call from one of my sister Juliana’s teachers at Conrad. Her teacher told my mom that Jule was being horribly mocked and teased because of a pair of boots she liked and decided to wear to school today. Juliana is bullied and tormented every single day that she goes to school because she is autistic and she functions differently than other 7th graders. However, today was especially hard to hear about because she came home saying it was “one of the best days of her whole life.” When we asked her why, she said it was because her boots caught everyone’s attention, they were “complimenting” her, and even taking pictures. This honestly broke my heart because anyone would know that those kids weren’t really trying to make her feel good about herself in any way, and those pictures most likely ended up on Instagram or snapchat for everyone to mock. I just don’t understand how kids can be so cruel, especially to someone with a learning disability that doesn’t recognize sarcasm and thought all of their comments were serious. It breaks my heart to see her go through this every day of her life but today really struck something. If you have kids, please teach them kindness. It can be all someone like Juliana needs to know they’re not alone. My sister is a 12 year old girl living with autism, and she’s fucking amazing. Any kid that wants to at come for her, has to come through me first.

Is this really the environment Red Clay wants in their schools?