Regulation 225 Coming Back On January 31st, Better Get There Early!

11,000 Public Comments.  Huge PDF files.  It must be Regulation 225, the very controversial regulation dealing with transgender student discrimination.  Today, Delaware Secretary of Education Dr. Susan Bunting announced the Development team will reconvene on January 31st to discuss what to do with the regulation going forward.

UPDATE: Friday, Jan. 12, 2018 – The Development Team will meet from 6 to 8 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 31 at the Del-One Conference Center on Delaware Technical Community College’s Terry Campus, 100 Campus Drive in Dover. (Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017 – Secretary to reconvene Development Team to review public comment on proposed antidiscrimination regulation)

I tried to read all the public comments.  There is not enough time in the day.  I can say those “against” the regulation are much higher than those “for”.  The PDF for Delaware residents in the “for” category is 17 megabytes (mb).  The one for “against” is 136mb.  That is a mammoth pdf file!  There is another huge file for out-of-state residents.  That PDF is 21mb.  They are all against and seem to be put in a format where all you had to do was put your name and where you are from and that you are “against” the regulation.  Yet another file with unknown residency is over 3mb, and a file described as “other” is only half a megabyte.  Most of those were blank emails or asking the Secretary questions about when the vote was.

Last week, I was listening to the Rick Jensen show on WDEL.  It was when they were doing their “Weasel of the Year”.  Of course it went to this controversy with a huge amount of votes.  But during the show, Jensen made it sound like Delaware Governor John Carney had some problems with the wording when it came to parental rights.  Which I find interesting since he never mentions the words “opt out” when it comes to standardized testing or the Smarter Balanced Assessment.  But I digress.

I am predicting a HUGE crowd for this.  Probably why they are using the conference center at Del-Tech.  But with the amount of public comments, they might want to consider renting out the Dover Downs Speedway.

WDEL’s Weasel Of The Year: The Department of Education led by Donna Johnson and Dr. Teri Quinn Gray!!!

The Rick Jensen Show on WDEL just announced their Weasel of the Year for 2015, and by a very wide margin, the Delaware Department of Education led by Executive Director Donna Johnson and State Board of Education President Dr. Teri Quinn Gray took the award!  Other nominees were Bloom Energy, Paul Ryan, Governor Markell, and more.  But the DOE won by 27 votes.  Congratulations to the DOE, Donna Johnson, and Dr. Gray!  You certainly worked very hard all year long to get this prestigious honor!

Once Rick gets the podcast of this on the WDEL website I will definitely put it up on here!

Knowing the power structure down at the Townsend Building down in Dover, I have no doubt Donna Johnson will be very irate at being called the leader of the Delaware DOE.  I let Rick know this on the air as well, but I also said they are essentially the same thing.  Maybe not in the formal Delaware State Code, but you know what I’m saying.  The best part?  Even though Governor Markell didn’t win, this is reflective of him because he appointed all of the key personnel at the Delaware DOE.  So this is a double victory in my book!