I touched on this last week, but it is essential that the citizens of Delaware not believe the final recommendations of the Senate Joint Resolution #4 Education Funding Improvement Committee. Their report is due to the General Assembly by Thursday, June 30th. In a public meeting, one of the members of EFIC (as it is commonly known as in the halls of power in Delaware) stated the committee could not agree on any of the recommendations brought forth at their final committee. No formal vote was taken on any specific actions.
I learned this by attending the meeting of the Governor’s Advisory Council for Exceptional Citizens (GACEC) last week. GACEC Chair Robert Overmiller was a member of EFIC. Along with all the other DOE special education shenanigans at that meeting, there was also this tidbit culled from my recording of the meeting:
The Senate Joint Resolution 4. We had our meeting yesterday and the reality is they have approved zero motions and zero recommendations for the unit count. Because they spent the whole year trying to convince the committee to throw out unit counts and put in what the DOE and Governor Markell want. And they were totally unsuccessful in convincing the committee to do so. So I don’t know what the report is going to look like when it comes out. At the end of the month it will be turned in to the legislators but they definitely approved zero recommendations and zero anything. Nothing was ever voted on for approval or exception. So that committee produced nothing this year.
That sounds like a very clear statement to me! I expect the Delaware DOE to post the final report any day now. Like the Assessment Inventory Committee final report issued yesterday, I do not expect this report to be a complete record of what really went down at these meetings. I still don’t understand why former State Rep. Darryl Scott is allowed to run committees like this and have a seat on the Southern Regional Education Board when he is not now an elected official, but this is Delaware. If we see a weighted funding formula recommendation for education coming out of this report, it is a lie. This is what happens when a committee is stacked with Markell sympathizers coming out of Rodel and the charter sector.
The Season Of Myths 