We can’t celebrate successful schools that don’t celebrate diversity, period.
During the State Board of Education meeting tonight, a fascinating conversation took place concerning diversity at Newark Charter School. While Delaware Charter Schools Network Executive Director Kendall Massett did not say a word during the talk, she did something that exhibited a distinct brand of white privilege that had to be seen to be believed. Lucky for me, I saw it.
These five charter schools are very distinctive in one area: they all have low populations of special education students compared to their surrounding districts. But those aren’t the only comparisons among them. Two of them have school leaders that received salary bumps over $50,000 and then resigned or are set to retire. Pension law in Delaware sets your pension based on your three highest years of salary. Intentional? You be the judge.
These five charters range from near the top of Delaware in New Castle County all the way to the heart of Sussex County with one right near the middle in Kent. All of these charters have significant student enrollment and have taken many students from their surrounding school districts. They are also in very populous, and in some cases, fast growing areas of the state.
Last night at the Delaware State Board of Education meeting, five Delaware charter schools received unanimous approval from board members. Academia Antonia Alonso, Early College High School, First State Montessori Academy, and Sussex Academy were approved with no conditions. For Thomas Edison Charter School, that was a different story. And for another, the State Board did not get a complete record.
The Delaware State Board of Education has a vacancy! Board member Gregory Coverdale resigned before the November State Board meeting and it was announced by President Dennis Loftus at the meeting. His term expired prior to that but he decided to continue his seat until a replacement was found. Coverdale was unable to continue serving due to work commitments. Chances are good Governor John Carney will wait until the new year to nominate Coverdale’s replacement. The 149th General Assembly returns in mid-January.
The State Board of Ed has their next meeting on December 14th, at 5pm. The big news will be the charter school renewal-palooza with five schools awaiting the big decision. Public comment on those renewals ended today. Academia Antonia Alonso, Early College High School, First State Montessori Academy, Sussex Academy, and Thomas Edison Charter School are all up for renewal. Delaware Secretary of Education will announce her recommendation for each school and then the State Board will vote on each school.
Other items on the agenda for the State Board meeting include an update on the State Board’s Literacy Campaign, a presentation on the DPAS Annual Report, a Regulation dealing with matching Delaware state code with Federal Law concerning visually impaired students, a Regulation about Financial Literacy and Computer Science standards, a few Regulations from the Professional Standards Board on teacher licensure, and a couple of information items about appeals between students and the Smyrna School District.
What is NOT on the agenda is Regulation 225. For those who don’t know, the Regulation received 11,000 comments which will take some time for Secretary Bunting to review. She did thank all who submitted public comment. This information appeared on the agenda for the meeting on Thursday concerning Regulation 225:
The public comment period for proposed 225 Prohibition of Discrimination Regulation closed on December 4, 2017. The Department received more than 11,000 comments, which deserve careful review before a decision is made. Secretary Bunting is asking the Development Team to reconvene in January to review the comments and make recommendations for changes to the regulation. If substantive changes are made, the regulation will be published in the Register again with another 30-day public comment period before any decision on a final regulation is made.
Secretary Bunting thanks, those who shared their feedback during the formal comment period. All comments received will be posted online so the public, as well as committee members, can review them prior to the January Development Team meeting.
I expect a full house with the charter renewals so if you plan on attending I would get there early! Good luck to Greg Coverdale in his future endeavors!
All five of the Delaware charter schools have received renewal recommendations from the Charter School Accountability Committee (CSAC). The State Board of Education will decide if they agree at their December 14th meeting. Anyone wishing to submit formal public comment must do so by December 8th. Everything looks good for these charters except for one of them. Which one?
Five Delaware charter schools will go through their charter renewal process next Fall. The Delaware Department of Education’s Charter School Office had what I am sure was a huge task of sending out reports to the schools. Academia Antonia Alonso, Early College High School, First State Montessori Academy, Sussex Academy, and Thomas Edison Charter School are all up for renewal. With any charter school renewal, the DOE goes through everything: Academics, Financial, and Organizational. No stone is left unturned. With five charters and all three Delaware counties represented in these renewals, the public hearings will be everywhere. But it looks like the Charter School Office has planned ahead and scheduled different public hearings on different days. Last year, there was only one charter school (Academy of Dover) that went through the renewal process. There would have been two but Prestige Academy opted to close their doors at the end of this school year.
In reviewing the below renewal reports and the charter schools responses to those reports, I didn’t have any alarm bells going off. I do have concerns about the demographics of two of these schools, First State Montessori Academy and Sussex Academy. At least one of these schools has some financial issues that seem to have flown under the radar for a long time now. Hopefully more will come out during this process. And one of them, I strongly suspect but can’t prove…yet, has a secret going all the way back to the origin of their school…
Here are all the schools renewal reports from the Charter School Office, their responses, and the timeline issued by the Charter School Office for this mammoth process:
Academia Antonia Alonso:
Early College High School
First State Montessori Academy
Sussex Academy
Thomas Edison Charter School
Charter School Renewal Timeline:
Delaware is missing one of the key players in transparency thanks to a deliberate campaign orchestrated by one or many. Because of this, it may have cleared the way for many charter schools to launch a lawsuit in Delaware.
Delaware State Rep. Kim Williams exclusively released the letters sent to five Delaware charter schools about their petty cash practices last night. They showed some very extreme violations of state code. As well, letters were sent to four other state agencies. These letters were sent by Tom Wagner, the publicly elected Delaware State Auditor, on June 21st to the following charter schools: Odyssey Charter School, Delaware Military Academy, Charter School of Wilmington, Sussex Academy, and Delaware Academy of Public Safety & Security. The state agencies Wagner sent letters to addressing the petty cash violations of state code were the following: Department of Education (Secretary Godowsky), Department of Finance (Secretary Tom Cook), Division of Accounting (Director Kristopher Knight), and the State Treasurer (Ken Simpler). These letters were never publicly released from Tom Wagner or the Delaware Auditor of Accounts office. Originally, this was an audit inspection and that report would have been released. But before that happened, the Delaware Auditor of Accounts top official, Kathleen Davies, was put on leave last spring. Now we can clearly see why.
Before I get into the results of the letters to the five charter schools, we need to look at motive. The key to any mystery is “Who benefits”? That benefit could be the ability to keep something hidden or being able to reap some type of positive outcome from the situation.
We have so many who could have done it: Ann Visalli, Secretary of Education Dr. Steven Godowsky, Kendall Massett, Senator David Sokola, Charlie Copeland, Nick Manolakos, and others as well. We can’t forget the potential role Greg Meece may have contributed either. State Board of Education Executive Director Donna Johnson and Kendall Massett are very tight and the DOE is in the same building as the Auditor of Accounts Office. It could be a combination of any of these people. It could have even come down from the very top, Governor Markell himself.
Out of all these entities, one of them leads the pack in Delaware when it comes to offering charter schools advice and protection. That would be the Delaware Charter Schools Network, led by Executive Director Kendall Massett. When it comes to charter schools, I have no doubt Kendall is in a key position to communicate issues to charter school leaders. Some charter schools are run by ex-legislators in some sort of capacity. Former State Rep. Nick Manolakos is the Head of School for Odyssey Charter School. Delaware GOP Chair Charlie Copeland is the President of the Board of Directors for Delaware Academy of Public Safety and Security. Both are prominent Republicans in Delaware. Many on the Sussex Academy Board of Directors are also Republican. Odyssey Charter School and Delaware Military Academy clearly had the most egregious of petty cash violations out of the five charters. I can imagine the pressure on Tom Wagner from all sides could easily have prompted his decision to make Kathleen Davies go away.
Odyssey Charter School:
Delaware Military Academy:
Charter School of Wilmington:
Delaware Academy of Public Safety & Security:
Sussex Academy:
So let me get this straight. Kathleen Davies was working on finalizing this report, showing five Delaware charter schools breaking the law, but she got put out to pasture? And all the charters got was these “don’t do it again” letters? That were NEVER released to the public, until now? And look at the cc: on the letter to Godowsky. All charter school leaders and board presidents. My theory that Kathleen Davies was put on leave for bogus purposes is actually proven in the letters to the charter schools. As the News Journal wrote, Ann Visalli with the Office of Management and Budget followed up on a complaint by unnamed individuals at the Auditor of Accounts Office. As a result, Davies was placed on leave (six months after the tip was submitted to OMB) because she failed to use a procurement card for travel purposes and went through the also-existing state reimbursement program. But in the letters to the charters, that standard doesn’t seem to exist because Wagner writes:
We also recommend using a State-issued procurement card (PCard) or direct claim through First State Financials when possible. Regardless of the method of payment, supporting documentation must be maintained for all transactions.
So by Wagner’s own advice to the charters, what Kathleen Davies did is perfectly acceptable. She followed the procedure. Maybe not a preferred procedure, but a procedure nonetheless. Which makes Ann Visali’s actions a complete and utter crock. A complete and utter lie meant to disgrace the one person at the Auditor of Accounts office who was doing their job, and doing it well. But no, instead we get these non-transparent letters from Tom Wagner. And he has the gall to ask Godowsky to collaborate with him on “an event” to make sure all the charter schools know this, even though their leaders and board presidents were included in the letter to Godowsky? How much more special treatment and hand-holding do the charters need to understand the law? Do they need circle time to get this right State Auditor Wagner? This obvious fraud going on in our State Auditor’s office is completely out of control, matched only by that of the Department of Education.
This whole debacle comes down to this: someone or maybe even a group of individuals is protecting charter schools in Delaware. They have enough power and clout to make things disappear or just focus on other aspects surrounding it to cloud the issues. We are seeing this with the charter school lawsuit and I have to wonder if the petty cash information was not made public because of that looming timebomb. One can only assume the charters were given some type of direction in their process for having the DOE review exclusions districts submit for their local funding formulas. They clearly knew the results before the districts did as evidenced by the emails between the finance office of the DOE and charter school leaders. They also had to have known there would be some major blowback from the districts and advocates for the districts based on that. If not, they are complete and utter idiots who truly underestimate the will and resolve of people in Delaware traditional school districts.
This is my new working theory: the charters knew they would wind up filing suit on the local funding formula. I think they knew Godowsky was intentionally kept out of the loop on this and when the public found out about the new charter bills going out to the districts with very elevated amounts, Secretary Godowsky would be forced by public pressure to reverse course. As a result, they would be free to sue the Christina School District and the Delaware Dept. of Education for something they wanted to happen in the first place- a big, fat, and juicy lawsuit. They knew the only thing that could happen for them to get more money would be to create the conditions for a lawsuit to happen. Which they did. Delaware is a very corrupt state. If people don’t see that in this day and age with everything I’ve written, along with many others, they need to get their eyes checked. There are good people, fighting the good fight, but they are overpowered and outnumbered by those who are either corrupt or lend their ears to those who are corrupt. If some cities get a moniker of “Sin City”, then Delaware clearly qualifies for the “Sin State”.
But the charters and their friends had to clear a very real obstacle in their road to the lawsuit. One Kathleen Davies. The same person who was doing the petty cash audit along with other charter school audit inspections. One of those inspections was a tip I sent to the auditor’s office on Newark Charter School and their failure to submit non-profit 990 tax forms to the IRS. While they met the criteria once upon a time for being exempt from filing their 990 tax returns, they knew the conditions which allowed for those exemptions no longer existed. Something the IRS issued very strongly worded guidance to all American charter schools that participate in these exemptions. NCS knew they could not look like a victim in a lawsuit against their feeder pattern district if that audit inspection came out. It had to disappear. We all know true compliance with properly making sure all our schools in Delaware are truly funding student needs is an exercise in futility, despite what the law already requires. But an audit inspection into NCS’ finances would be a much deeper probe. It could have offered a great deal of transparency with their money and what they are doing with it, far past the scope of their annual audit or what appears in their financial statements. But given the pull they seem to have, with the Delaware Charter Schools Network, the Chair of the Senate Education Committee (Delaware Senator David Sokola), to some extent the Chair of the House Education Committee (State Rep. Earl Jaques), other members of the Delaware General Asssembly, select members of the Delaware Dept. of Education, lobbyists, and companies within the Newark area, I could easily picture Greg Meece being able to rally enough force to make things happen in regards to Kathleen Davies. Once again, I stress, with utmost importance, this is only a working theory of mine and is not grounded in documented fact. I imagine a paper trail that could conceivably supporting this working theory would not materialize no matter how many FOIA requests I might ask for.
Lest we forget, as clearly documented in the above-linked News Journal article, Senator Sokola was the prime sponsor on a bill meant to give charter schools more authority over the choosing of their annual auditors as opposed to the State Auditor of Accounts office. This was in complete contrast with Rep. William’s original bill which would have had the auditor’s office doing the job.
She publicly supported Williams’s bill over an alternative proposal from Sen. Dave Sokola, D-Newark, which would strengthen the rules charters have to follow in picking auditors but leave them with the authority to do so.
Eventually, Rep. Williams and Senator Sokola compromised on a charter school audit bill but the charters still get to pick their own auditor. What the new bill also accomplished was any charter school under investigation by the State Auditor of Accounts office would also be audited for that fiscal year by the Auditor of Accounts. By making the petty cash audit turn into letters instead of a full-blown inspection report, those five charter schools will not get a full financial audit by the Auditor of Accounts office this year. There are also other stipulations in which that office can do a full financial audit on a charter, including the following, based on the text from the signed House Bill 435.
Has failed to maintain a current status with the Internal Revenue Service Form 990 filings, if said filings are required of that charter school.
All of this legislative language serves to expose charters who do not comply with the law. But discovery of something like an exemption of an IRS 990 filing not being practical based on the current conditions of the only Delaware charter school in the state to not file said return, would come from something like an audit inspection of the school. Something that is not happening from the Auditor’s office because they got rid of Kathleen Davies and my request to them seems to have vanished into the ether. Even though I provided clear documentation to John Fluharty about this. Granted, the Office of Management and Budget received a “tip” from other officials in the Auditor of Accounts office with the allegations of Davies “not following procedure” with travel expenses in November of 2015, the OMB did not act on this until the petty cash audit neared completion and the NCS 990 audit would have been under way. As well, there was the pulling of Davies’ September 30th Enrollment inspection which was reworked by Wagner and released in September. That report was released two weeks before Davies was put on leave.
At a bare minimum, the Auditor of Accounts office and the Office of Management and Budget must be made accountable for their actions regarding Davies. If she was put on leave for something as trivial as not following suggested procedure while charter schools run amok with their petty cash accounts and the results of which were not made public, even if it was switched from an inspection to non-transparent letters, we have a major conflict of interest going on here. This conflict of interest reaches to the Delaware Dept. of Education and the Red Clay Consolidated School District. As the charter authorizers of these five charter schools, they failed to even publicly broach the subject going on four months since the letters went to them, much less put the charter schools on formal review to address the financial violations of their charters, as they have the ability to do so under Title 14:
515 Oversight and revocation process.
(a) The approving authority shall be responsible for oversight of the charter schools it approves.
(b) In addition to the review required by § 514A(a) of this title, the approving authority may notify a charter school of potential violations of its charter and submit the charter to formal review to determine whether the charter school is violating the terms of its charter and whether to order remedial measures pursuant to subsection (f) of this section.
Both the Delaware Department of Education and the Red Clay Board President, Kenneth Rivera, were well aware of the situation because they were included in the letters sent from Tom Wagner. Bloggers like myself exist because of what amounts to severe issues with education in Delaware. Our state has, is, and will continue to fail the most important stakeholders in education, the students themselves, because they fail to adequately provide oversight to make sure our schools do the right thing. Instead, Delaware does its level best to cover up issues with no transparency and institutes polices and measures that have no basis in reality. They are what outside interests want. These “poverty pimps”, corporate education reformers, ed tech charlatans, and those hiding behind the cover of “non-profits” and “community organizations” should not be involved in education at all.
This is what I want to see: Kathleen Davies immediately reinstated, the original charter school petty cash audit inspection completed, and any other pending charter or district audits done with fidelity. As well, anyone else who played a role in this absolute cover-up and smear campaign against Davies needs to be named and held accountable for their parts in this. As State Rep. Kim Williams asked, who audits the auditors? I believe it is time to find out. It is past time the feds got involved in Delaware’s finances. Corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse are rampant in Delaware. If left unchecked, as it has been for some time now, the situation will only wind up costing the taxpayers of the state even more money than they have already doled out without even realizing it.
In the above picture, the people in the “Brady Bunch” format are as follows:
Top- Kendall Massett, David Sokola, Governor Markell
Middle- Tom Wagner, Kathleen Davies, Nick Manolakos
Bottom- Charlie Copeland, Secretary Godowsky, Ann Visalli
It’s hard to believe it has been almost 22 months since the Delaware American Civil Liberties Union and Delaware Community Legal Aid announced their complaint against the Delaware Department of Education and Red Clay Consolidated School District. That complaint is sitting in the Philadelphia Office of Civil Rights collecting dust. I read the complaint again this morning. There is a legislator whose name is mentioned a few times in this complaint as the author of legislation that contributed to segregation in Delaware… Senator David Sokola.
I’ve noticed in the past week that the upcoming General Election in Delaware has many wondering if Sokola’s accomplishments outside of education should give him a second chance. I’ve argued that no matter what Meredith Chapman’s stances on education are, they pale in comparison to what Sokola has wrought. To be honest, aside from a video interview with Delaware United and a citizen commenting on a Facebook thread that Chapman supports a parent’s right to opt out of the state assessment, I have not heard enough from her to get a good picture of her views on education.
Knowing what occurred in Delaware because of certain charter schools and their enrollment practices, I thought this would be a slam-dunk in the Office of Civil Rights. But that office, an offshoot of the U.S. Department of Education, has been strangely silent. I am aware these complaints take years to reach a ruling. But the complaint itself says enough about Senator Sokola that any citizen reading it should be able to have a clear picture in their mind. The complaint also talks about the ignored warnings and omens from many that came with Sokola’s legislation which led to de facto segregation in parts of Delaware. I have never heard Sokola apologize for this. I’ve never seen any indication that he understands any of this.
David Sokola is a very intelligent man. He is someone who sees data and facts. His favorite word is “heartburn” when talking about legislation he doesn’t like. I’ve heard from many about his support for non-education bills that were very progressive in nature. But as I’ve always said, if you support legislation that will ultimately harm children, that is not very progressive. Like the citizens of Delaware who offered warnings before harmful Sokola legislation passed in the Delaware General Assembly, I offer a warning to Delaware. If the citizens of the 8th Senate District vote Sokola back into another term, Delaware children will suffer. Numbers don’t lie, and even if those charter schools changed their enrollment preferences to get rid of pre-enrollment assessments, 5 mile radius, sibling preferences, employee preferences, or the many other little things that contributed to the eventual outcomes we now see, it will be years before the situation balances between those three charter schools and the districts around them.
The complaint against the Delaware DOE and Red Clay is below.
Newark Charter School and Sussex Academy, along with Dover Air Force Base Middle School, were the only public schools to win the designation of 2016 National Blue Ribbon Schools. Two private schools, religiously based, Christ The Teacher Catholic School and St. John the Beloved School also won. So what made these schools get the prize this year? I can’t answer for the religious schools, but for the public schools it was based on test scores for the Smarter Balanced Assessment and closing the “achievement gaps”, based on the very same test. Yes, let’s continue the love for Newark Charter School which seems to win every award in the state anymore based on their Smarter Balanced performance. They even got a Title I Distinguished school this year. Not that they had enough Title I kids in the school, but because they lived in the same district with a ton of Title I students. When will this love affair with this school end? Enough already! I guess all that BRINCmanship hasn’t paid off for all those school districts who joined that consortium! Interesting that the two charters have less student sub-groups than the districts they live in!
From the Delaware DOE press release:
Five Delaware schools are among 329 schools that U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. recognized today as 2016 National Blue Ribbon Schools, based on their overall academic excellence or their progress in improving student academic achievement.
Christ the Teacher Catholic School in Newark, Dover Air Force Base Middle School in the Caesar Rodney School District, Newark Charter School in Newark, St. John the Beloved School in Wilmington, and Sussex Academy charter school in Georgetown are among the 279 public and 50 private schools that will be honored at an awards ceremony November 7 and 8 in Washington, D.C. The school leaders: Sr. LaVerne King (Christ the Teacher Catholic School), David W. Santore, Ed.D (Dover Air Force Base Middle School), Gregory R. Meece (Newark Charter School), Richard Hart (St. John the Beloved School), and Patricia S Oliphant, Ed.D. (Sussex Academy) will be invited to attend the national awards ceremony with a teacher representative from each of their schools.
The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program honors public and private elementary, middle, and high schools where students achieve very high learning standards or are making notable improvements in closing the achievement gap. Since 1982, the award affirms the hard work of students, educators, families, and communities in creating safe and welcoming schools where students master challenging content. The National Blue Ribbon Schools flag gracing a school’s building is a widely recognized symbol of exemplary teaching and learning. National Blue Ribbon Schools are an inspiration and a model for schools still striving for excellence. Now in its 34th year, the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program has bestowed this coveted award on fewer than 8,500 schools.
The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program recognizes schools in one of two performance categories. The first category is “Exemplary High Performing Schools,” in which schools are among their state’s highest performing schools as measured by state assessments or nationally normed tests. The second category is “Exemplary Achievement Gap Closing Schools,” in which schools are among their state’s highest performing schools in closing achievement gaps between a school’s subgroups and all students over the past five years. Student subgroup performance for each subgroup is at high levels.
The US Department of Education invites National Blue Ribbon School nominations from the top education official in all states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Department of Defense Education Activity, and the Bureau of Indian Education. The Council for American Private Education (CAPE) nominates private schools. A total of 420 schools nationwide may be nominated each year.
A listing of all National Blue Ribbon Schools in Delaware:
Christ the Teacher Catholic School Newark 2016
Dover Air Force Base Middle School Dover 2016
Newark Charter School Newark 2016
St. John the Beloved School Wilmington 2016
Sussex Academy Georgetown 2016
Cape Henlopen High School Lewes 2015
Lake Forest East Elementary School Frederica 2015
W. B. Simpson Elementary School Wyoming 2015
Academy of Dover Dover 2014
John M. Clayton Elementary School Frankford 2014
Lake Forest North Elementary School Felton 2014
The Charter School of Wilmington Wilmington 2013
Richard A. Shields Elementary School Lewes 2013
Allen Frear Elementary School Dover 2013
Linden Hill Elementary School Wilmington 2012
Harry O. Eisenberg Elementary School New Castle 2012
Star Hill Elementary School Dover 2012
West Park Place Elementary School Newark 2011
Long Neck Elementary School Millsboro 2011
Nellie Hughes Stokes Elementary School Dover 2011
Christ the Teacher Catholic School Newark 2010
Newark Charter School Newark 2010
Robert S. Gallaher Elementary School Newark 2010
Woodbridge Elementary School Greenwood 2010
Marbrook Elementary School Wilmington 2009
East Millsboro Elementary School Millsboro 2008
Sussex Technical High School Georgetown 2008
Lancashire Elementary School Wilmington 2007
Etta J. Wilson Elementary School Newark 2007
Joseph M. McVey Elementary School Newark 2007
North Georgetown Elementary School Georgetown 2006
Lake Forest East Elementary School Frederica 2006
Fairview Elementary School Dover 2006
Long Neck Elementary School Millsboro 2005
Booker T. Washington Elementary School Dover 2005
Lulu M. Ross Elementary School Milford 2004
Frankford Elementary School Frankford 2004
Phillip C. Showell Elementary School Selbyville 2003
Corpus Christi Elementary School Wilmington 2001
Lord Baltimore Elementary School Ocean View 2001
Padua Academy Wilmington 1996
Seaford Middle School Seaford 1996
Sussex Technical High School Georgetown 1996
St. Matthew School Wilmington 1992
Corpus Christi School Wilmington 1990
Dover High School Dover 1987
Skyline Middle School Wilmington 1985
Christiana High School Newark 1984
Caesar Rodney Senior High School Camden 1984
Brandywine High School Wilmington 1983
Shue Middle School Newark 1983
Indian River School District just cut $3 million from their budget earlier this week. Where will these cuts come from? Dani Bozzini with WMDT has the answer:
And with more students means more teachers. The district wasn’t getting enough funding to continue the same allocation of their schools budgets so they made some changes.
Instead of cutting teachers and staff’s salaries, the district decided to cut the discretionary part of the budget. The District office was cut by 50 percent and the schools’ budgets by 30 percent.
Here’s the thing though… most traditional school districts don’t cut their budget unless they are having some type of financial problem. If a school district grows, the property taxes collected for local funds, as well as state and federal funds should compensate for that. The district’s Chief Financial Officer was put on paid administrative leave in April and then he was able to retire in May. The State Auditor’s office also began an investigation into the district’s finances. No report has come out from the Auditor of Account’s office concerning Indian River School District.
I believe the school district should own up to whatever Miller is suspected of doing. This isn’t the first time mysterious financial issues have come up with him. He plea bargained his way out of something similar in Brandywine eighteen years ago.
I love how Superintendent Susan Bunting makes it sound so casual in the article with WMDT.
Dr. Bunting tells 47 ABC that students or parents won’t see much of any changes and it’s just little cutbacks to help with their growing population.
Yeah, okay. You don’t cut $3 million out of your budget unless you are having some serious issues. Now I have to start looking into Indian River too. I don’t have time for this. Just come clean Bunting! Between charter-district payments, ESSA, being the non-paid watchdog for the Delaware DOE, elections, and everything else, can you just email me and show me what is really wrong with your budget? That would be super! Cause if what I’m hearing is true, you guys are going to have to come up with some new spin next month. I’ll give you a few days, but then I’m getting the shovel out.
Or does this have anything to do with the charter-district payments? How many students does Indian River send to Sussex Academy? When did the CFO get put on administrative leave again? April? Hmm…
How many inspections are going on with schools over at Tom Wagner’s office? Time to bring Kathleen Davies back Tom. You can’t handle all this work!
This is the beginning of what I hope will be an ongoing feature of this blog. Below will be several groups of statements and facts. Two will be true and one will be a lie. It will be your job to guess or determine which is fact and which is fiction! Comment away!
*EastSide Charter School and Family Foundations Academy are blaming their Smarter Balanced scores on the fact their kids are not as computer literate as their peers in other schools
*Sussex Academy won’t be able to finish their pool because of mercury in the ground.
*Freire Charter School signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the Wilmington Police Department
*Brandywine Superintendent Dr. Mark Holodick was so happy their referendum passed he was seen doing cartwheels the next day.
*Academia Antonia Alonso wants no help from the Charter School Office at the Delaware DOE with their upcoming move to property at Odyssey Charter School.
*Howard High School of Technology suspended students who were in the bathroom the day of Amy’s death and kept suspending them for weeks on end without any form of due process.
*Charter School of Wilmington held a legislative breakfast.
*Charter School of Wilmington wants an audit inspection to be released that has been on hold since March.
*Charter School of Wilmington will be allowing 20% of all students with disabilities who applied this year to be admitted to the school in August.
*Early College High School parents are not happy about the school’s grading system since the school’s scores didn’t match up with Delaware State University’s grading system
*Penny Schwinn is coming back to the Delaware DOE.
*Dr. Lamont Browne mentioned my blog post about his resignation at a Family Foundations Academy board meeting.
*Family Foundations Academy held pep rallies prior to the school’s testing window for the upcoming Smarter Balanced Assessment to pump up kids.
*A Delaware State Representative recently had a Facebook post titled “State Representative Looking For Beaver”.
*The same State Representative found some beaver and had a barbecue.
Among the other controversial and disturbing events at the Delaware State Board of Education meeting yesterday, there was a presentation by the Public Consulting Group (PCG) on the Statewide Review of Educational Opportunities (SREO) for Delaware Schools. This was a review requested by Governor Jack Markell last March to figure out which schools are getting it right. When it comes right down to it, this report was a series of graphs showing demographics of school districts and charters and which schools have things like AP classes and Career-Technical education opportunities. All of this is based in 2014-2015 data. This report cost Delaware taxpayers $70,000.00.
Last September, I worked with Delaware Liberal and Delaware First State in creating graphs of the Smarter Balanced Assessment results and how low-income, minorities, and students with disabilities fared poorly on the controversial test. It also showed how schools with low populations of these sub-groups did really good on the test.
The below PCG reports clearly show the divide in Delaware, especially with certain charters in our state: Charter School of Wilmington, Newark Charter School, Delaware Military Academy, Odyssey Charter School, and Sussex Academy. The result: complete chaos in Delaware. While the effect of this is not as clearly felt in Kent County, it has created havoc in Wilmington and lower Sussex County. If anyone actually believes the lotteries in these schools are random and fair, take a close look at the graphs in these reports. They select, hand-pick and cherry-pick. They cream from the top applicants. And many charters in our state weed out the “bad” students by using their “counseling out” technique. To some extent, the magnet schools in Red Clay and Indian River do this as well.
The reports give a well-crafted illusion that we have too many schools in Delaware. This foregone conclusion is, in my opinion, trying to please the charter supporters in our state. It talks about high demand and wait lists at certain charters and indicates there are too many “empty seats” in Delaware traditional schools. Do not be fooled by this illusion. Yes, some charters are in high demand because of the illusions cast by the State and the charter community on their perceived success based on standardized test scores. I’m going to call this the “smart flight” as many parents pulled their kids out of traditional and even private schools over the past twenty years and sent their kids to charters. This resulted in funds pouring out of the traditional districts while the state was slowly decreasing the amount they gave schools in the state. This increased the amount of local dollars the districts had to use to run their schools. Meanwhile, Common Core, Race To The Top, DSPT, DCAS, and the Smarter Balanced Assessment wormed their way into our lives causing even more funding to be siphoned from the classroom. All of this created a perfect storm in Delaware culminating into a hurricane of inequity, discrimination, and segregation. While Governor Markell did not influence these events twenty years ago, he certainly has been a major part of it for well over ten years, even before he became Governor.
This report could be read in many ways, but if I were reading as an outside observer looking into Delaware, I would be highly concerned. We have charters with hardly any African-Americans and students with disabilities. We have other charters with very high populations of the two. We have a Department of Education, State Board of Education, and a General Assembly who allowed this to happen by falling asleep at the wheel. We have the highly controversial Wilmington Education Improvement Commission attempting to redraw Wilmington school districts without guaranteed funding to support it. We have companies like Rodel, the Longwood Foundation, and the Welfare Foundation pouring money into charters and influencing events behind the scenes and right in our faces. We have key people in our state who are part of national education cabals molding education policy with the public oblivious to all of this. We have outside companies coming into our state, taking our money, and creating reports on things we either already know or creating illusions designed to brainwash the populace. This is Delaware education.
The top recognition by the Delaware Department of Education for schools that do awesome on standardized assessments are two charter schools. One is in a district that has a low population of low-income students and is in a more affluent area of the state, and the other has been named in a lawsuit by the ACLU for selective enrollment preferences in their application process that results in discrimination. MOT Charter School and Sussex Academy are the two reward schools. The recognition schools are as follows:
Distinguished Title I/Recognition Schools:
Thurgood Marshall Elementary School and Newark Charter School
Recognition Schools:
Brick Mill E.S., Dover Air Force Base M.S., Lake Forest North E.S., Lake Forest South E.S., Lancanshire E.S., Olive B. Loss E.S., Southern Delaware School of the Arts, Kathleen H. Wilbur E.S.
School of Continued Excellence 2015:
Howard High School
This is a new process for the Department as approved in their ESEA waiver submitted earlier this year.
Meanwhile, in the low-income Title I schools that have high populations of low-income, minority students, and students with disabilities, these schools have been labeled as Focus, Focus Plus and Priority Schools. There are 10 Focus Schools, 4 Focus Plus, and 7 Priority Schools listed in the below report. None of them are charter schools…no magnets…no vo-techs…just traditional school districts struggling to receive the resources and staffing they deserve. They are not allowed to pick and choose who goes to their schools. They take everyone.
Sussex Academy, the only Delaware charter school in Sussex County, was one of the best Smarter Balanced scoring schools in the entire county. This is not an accident, nor is it an indication they are the “best” school in the county. Like the Charter School of Wilmington, Sussex Academy was named in the ACLU lawsuit against the State of Delaware last December for discrimination against minority and special needs students. Or what the blogosphere collectively calls “cherry-picking”. The school is smack dab in the middle of Sussex County.
On the Delaware Department of Education school profiles part of their website, it shows the school’s demographics. Sussex County has a very large population of Hispanics. Western Sussex County is considered one of the poorest sections of the state and that trend is expected to increase over time.
In previous articles, this blog and Delaware Liberal have focused on New Castle County, Capital School District, and all the Delaware charters. Our graphs have shown the effect low-income and poverty has on Smarter Balanced performance. Unfortunately, this trend continues in Sussex County as seen below. Since Sussex Academy is primarily a middle school (although their high school is increasing, with 9th grade added two years ago, 10th grade last year, and 11th grade this year), I ran the graph with just the middle schools surrounding the school. Sussex Academy appears to be siphoning away the “better” students from their surrounding districts.
To put this in perspective, Laurel Intermediate School is currently a Priority School in Delaware, which slipped under the radar of most bloggers until recently. Meanwhile, Sussex Academy is praised by Governor Markell and the Delaware DOE as a great success. All schools would be considered awesome if they were allowed to do what Sussex Academy does with their application process and mythical “lottery”. Like Charter School of Wilmington and Newark Charter School to some extent, the veil has been lifted and these schools are not superior schools. They have merely placed themselves on that stage by picking who they want, and more importantly, who they don’t want.
While their Hispanic population seems high, 9.6%, compared to many of the other schools, it is very low. Sussex Academy is in Georgetown, the same as Georgetown Middle School. Watch what happens…
In theory then, does the same hold true for the percentage of English Language Learners in Sussex County? Not exactly. Even though a few schools have less Hispanic students, Sussex Academy has the lowest percentage of English Language Learners.
How does Sussex Academy compare to the other schools with special education? I’m sure you know the answer already, but there is a very wide margin between the school and the others.
In fact, they are in the low single-digits compared to the schools surrounding them. When I see this, it always reminds me of the scene in Forrest Gump, when young Forrest tries to find a seat on the bus and the one kids says to him “Can’t sit here.” This is what Sussex Academy does with their blatant discrimination against low-income students, Hispanics, and students with disabilities. But I’m sure they will be recognized as a “reward” or “recognition” school for their exemplary performance…
“Head of School Report: School is completed for this year. This year should go down in the history books as gone for good and never have history repeat itself. We need to learn from the past.”
The above quote was found in a Delaware charter school’s board minute notes recently. About a year ago, I went through all the charters websites and graded them on certain things: board minutes up to date, agendas for next board meetings posted, and monthly financial information posted. I will be grading each charter based on this information again this year, but I am adding in Citizens Budget Oversight Committee (CBOC) notifications and minutes. I’m not including charters that haven’t opened yet or charters who got shut down this year cause really, what’s the point?
I can say a lot of the charters have become more compliant and transparent with these in the past year. But some have not. I gave a little bit of slack on the board minutes. A lot of them had a meeting in the past week, so I don’t expect them to get the June minutes up right away. If you see red, it’s not a major thing, but they need to fix it. If it’s in BOLD red, they are majorly breaking the law and they need to fix that ASAP! State law mandates charters put up their monthly financial info up within 15 days of their last board meeting. As well, you have to have a CBOC committee and meetings. Two of the charters on here with some big dinks are on probation already so they need to get on that. Two others are up for charter renewal, so they definitely need to jam on it!
Academia Antonia Alonso– Agenda: no (only has two agendas for two board meetings in past year listed), Board Minutes: June 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: June 2015, Monthly Financials: April 2015, next board meeting: August 26th, Bonus: has meetings listed through end of 2015, Grade: C-
Academy of Dover– Agenda: Yes, Board minutes: June 2015, CBOC Meetings: Yes, CBOC Minutes: June 2015, Monthly Financials: April 2015, next board meeting: July 30th, Grade: B
Campus Community School– Agenda: July 2015, Board minutes: April 2015, CBOC Meetings: Yes, CBOC Minutes: March 2015, Monthly Financials: May 2015, next board meeting: not listed, Grade: D
Charter School of Wilmington– Agenda: Yes, Board Minutes: June 2015, CBOC Meetings: Yes, CBOC Minutes: May 2015, Monthly Financials: May 2015, next board meeting: not listed, but does indicate no July meeting, Grade: B
Delaware Academy of Public Safety & Security– Agenda: no, website gives generic agenda for every meeting, Board Minutes: April 2015, CBOC Meetings: Yes, CBOC Minutes: April 2015, Monthly Financials: April 2015, next board meeting: none listed, last shows June 2015, Grade: F
Delaware College Prep– Agenda: no, Board Minutes: April 2015, CBOC Meetings: no, CBOC Minutes: April 2014, Monthly Financials: June 2015, next board meeting: none listed, last shows June 2015, Grade F- for Formal Review
Delaware Military Academy– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: May 2015, CBOC Meetings: Yes, CBOC Minutes: January 2015, Monthly Financials: May 2015, next board meeting: none listed, states meets 4th Monday of the month, Grade: D
Early College High School– Agenda: no, Board Minutes: May 2015 (states June meeting had no quorum which is majority of board members present to approve items up for action), CBOC Meetings: no, CBOC Minutes: no, Monthly Financials: April 2015, next board meeting: none listed but states meets 4th Thursday of the month, Grade: F
Eastside Charter School– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: May 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: May 2015, Monthly Financials: May 2015, next board meeting: August 26th, Bonus: Shows anticipated board meeting dates thru June, 2016, Grade: A
Family Foundations Academy– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: May 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: April 2015, Monthly Financials: May 2015, next board meeting: August 26th, Bonus: shows anticipated board meeting dates thru June, 2016, Grade: A
First State Montessori Academy– Agenda: no, Board Minutes: February 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: May 2015, Monthly Financials: May 2015, next board meeting: none listed, shows meets 4th Thursday of the month, Weird Fact: Uses WordPress as their website, the same as Exceptional Delaware…, Grade: D+
Gateway Lab School– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: May 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: May 2015, Monthly Financials: June 2015, next board meeting: August 18th, Bonus: shows anticipated board meeting dates thru June, 2016, Grade: A+
Kuumba Academy– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: May 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: May 2015, Monthly Financials: May 2015, next board meeting: none listed, Grade: B
Las Americas Aspiras Academy– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: May 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: May 2015, Monthly Financials: yes*, next board meeting: none listed, states meets 4th Thursday of each month, *Superstar: Monthly Financial report is excellent, shows both what the DOE wants AND what state appropriations and codes are needed!!!!, Grade: A+
MOT Charter School– Agenda: no, Board Minutes: June 2015, CBOC Meetings: not sure, shows agenda for June 2015 meeting but last meeting was in May 2013, CBOC Minutes: May 2013, Monthly Financials: May 2015, next board meeting: none listed, Grade: F
Newark Charter School– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: June 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: June 2015, Monthly Financials: June 2015, next board meeting: August 18th, Bonus: board meetings listed through June, 2016, Grade: A+
Odyssey Charter School– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: June 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: May 2015, Monthly Financials: May 2015, next board meeting: August 12th, Grade: A-
Positive Outcomes– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: May 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: June 2015, Monthly Financials: June 2015, next board meeting: August 19th, Bonus: board meetings AND CBOC meetings listed through June 2016, Grade: A+
Prestige Academy– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: May 2015, CBOC Meetings: no, CBOC Minutes: none listed, website only shows members of CBOC, Monthly Financials: April 2015, next board meeting: none listed, shows meets 3rd Tuesday of each month, Grade: F
Providence Creek Academy– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: June 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: April 2015, Monthly Financials: June 2015, next board meeting: August 25th, Bonus: does have all future board meetings through June 2016 on school calendar, Grade: A+
Sussex Academy– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: May 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: May 2015, Monthly Financials: February 2015, next board meeting: September 16th (no meetings in July or August), Grade: C
Thomas Edison Charter– Agenda: yes, Board Minutes: June 2015, CBOC Meetings: yes, CBOC Minutes: June 2015, Monthly Financials: June 2015, next board meeting: August 17th, Bonus: Has all board meetings listed through June 2016, Grade A+
There you have it. The Exceptional Delaware July 2015 Charter School Compliance and Transparency Report. 8 out of 22 need to do some serious damage control quick. Because once DOE Jenny (as Kilroy calls her) reads this report, she’s going to have some serious questions for some of you!
Oh, I forgot one thing. The quote up above will be shown later today as part of another article. Because even though that school wants to forget about the past year, the past is knocking on their door! More later!
A couple weeks ago, I was hanging out at Legislative Hall with some folks, and we were discussing how Sussex Academy, the only charter school in Sussex Academy, is having a pool built on their campus. We were wondering how they could afford a pool. That would have been a huge capital expense for a traditional school district, much less a charter school. But then we found out the pool was donated by a company, so no hot story there. Some company called Schell Brothers.
It fell off my radar as those kind of things do. I was getting rid of some files on my computer, and I tend to bookmark all the charter school board minutes. I saw the Sussex Academy minutes from April, and I wondered if there was any mention of the pool in there. I didn’t see any. I did see some notes about how they were going to charge students $10 to get a permit to park on campus. When the school got the permit back, they would be refunded $5.00. I thought that was odd but nothing huge.
Then I looked up at their board members, and a name popped out at me. Joseph Schell. I immediately put the names together…Joseph Schell…Schell Brothers. Did a board member donate a pool to the school? No. His twin sons did, through their real estate company, Schell Brothers. The company was funded through a trust named after Joseph Schell.
That’s really awesome! The school gets a pool! I have to wonder though, does the donation include the planned second floor balcony and the elevator to get to that second floor? Does it include all the costs associated with the pool: water, electricity, maintenance, chlorine, insurance costs? Or is that something the state will pay for? I would be happy if Joseph Schell or anyone from the school can provide these answers. It’s a Sunday evening as I write this, so I’m sure the school isn’t open. The only mention of the pool in their board minutes comes in January 2015, when Joseph Schell announces “a local business will pay for an aquatic center which should be complete mid 2015 or early 2016.” I would love to hear the recordings of all their board meetings to get more details, but alas, the school doesn’t do that.
Sussex Academy is receiving $60,703 as per Senate Bill 160, the bond bill. The total for all charters is over $1.4 million dollars for minor capital improvements. They are allotted the same portion as a vo-cational school district based on unit funds. Apparently it doesn’t matter if the state owns the properties or not. So add in the $1.4 million the charters got to keep from the charter school transportation slush fund, whereby they get to keep any excess transportation costs over their contracted bid amount from their budget for “educational purposes”. Oh yeah, they also get $1 million this year for their performance award. That’s, let me do some non-common core math here, $3.8 million dollars for charter schools. And our budget was short how much this year before all the other cuts… $68 million?
Back to Sussex Academy. Did the board vote on this donation? Did Joseph Schell recuse himself from the vote due to a potential conflict of interest? What if something pool related comes up for a vote? Would the fact that a board member has very close blood relationships with the owners of the company that gave the pool to them have any potential for an issue? I can’t imagine it would be a problem unless Joseph Schell is the head of the finance committee for the school. Just because he speaks on all financial matters in their board minutes doesn’t mean he runs that show.
Sussex Academy received over $4.6 million in revenues as per their 2014 tax form 1099. It did mention the Sussex Academy Foundation which donated over $1.4 million to the school in 2014. This seems to be from donations. Curiously, on their 990 form, in schedule E, they wrote “The Academy is fully supported through grants and funding from local school districts, and therefore does not solicit contributions from outside organizations.” Well, that’s a relief! I’m just glad they marked no for all the areas marked in Section 5 of schedule E, especially item B. You know, the part about the organization discriminating by race in any way with respect to admissions policies. I’m sure that whole ACLU complaint to the Office of Civil Rights matter against the Delaware Department of Education and Red Clay Consolidated School District, which mentions Sussex Academy as an example of discrimination and segregation, will clear itself up…
To get a look at all of the school’s board minutes and 990 tax forms, look no further than here, all on one page: https://saparents.team-logic.com/index.cfm?teamLogic=deptPages.view&groupID=215
The Season Of Myths 