2024-02-15
February 15, 2024
During the February 13, 2024, school board meeting, we were able to get closure on the remaining administrative recommendation that was omitted from the December 2023 meeting; for more context, see my recap of the December 2023 meeting.
Here, I'd like to go over a few things that I think are worth discussing.
Agenda Item F: Public Comment
We recently had a workshop on school safety that got a little rowdy at the end, concerning the board's stance on constables in the schools (remember: constables are not cops). Anyway, Frank Burns referenced what may have been on people's minds during that meeting: an article from December 23, 2022, that quoted Don Patton (then a school board member, not the president) as saying, "I'm against that and I’m gonna fight vigorously against [constables in secondary schools]". During his report, President Patton was able to clarify his position and statements for everyone.
Agenda Item I: Changes to the Consent Agenda
This isn't all that interesting on its own, but I did want to outline how the consent agenda works. The school board is ultimately in charge of approving a large number of boring, routine transactions: contract renewals, new hires, various reports, schedules, etc.). Anything that's super regular and isn't really worth spending the public's limited time discussing goes in the consent agenda. Any board member can pull an item out of the consent agenda and place it on the regular agenda; this happens somewhat frequently.
On this night, board member O'Neal pulled item J9 from the consent agenda. The superintendent just received a note that that particular item wasn't ready and should be removed. The superintendent does not have the ability to make motions or vote, so he requested that O'Neal pull the item.
Agenda Item K2: Administrative Recommendations
The board voted to renew the head constable manager position. This had been pulled out of the administrative recommendations back in December after the vote to accept the recommendations as-is failed. At that meeting, President Patton stated that the matter would be brought back up for a vote later, and at this meeting, it passed. His initial stated opposition was due to the salaries of our head constables (management level), and later the focus became, ultimately, a typo on the recommendation that the board voted on back in 2022. The board's legal counsel was able to help with any concerns about renewing the position.
Agenda Item K3: DataWise
I believe that we've talked about DataWise here before, and it was a big thing on the board back in July of 2023. The tl;dr is basically this:
DataWise is kind of like Agile but for classrooms.
DataWise is trademarked or whatever.
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe there's no other company that can provide training/consulting on that kind of thing, and the district got an exemption to allow Koru Consulting as a sole source for it.
The deputy superintendent also happened to be on the board of Koru Consulting.
Oops.
The superintendent called Delaware's Public Integrity Commission and asked how to proceed, and they said that the deputy superintendent needed to resign from Koru Consulting.
The deputy superintendent resigned from Koru Consulting.
Whatevs; all good.
So, the deputy superintendent oopsed and probably should have resigned from Koru Consulting way sooner, but that's water under the bridge. She made the necessary correction and we moved forward.
The motion here was to remove the sole source exemption for Koru Consulting to allow the district to go out to bid for DataWise (or equivalent) consulting. I am in favor of that; like I said, DataWise is basically Agile for classrooms, so there should be plenty of companies that could provide comparable services. The district should evaluate its options and choose the best one. If that happens to be Koru Consulting again, I'm fine with that.
Board members O'Neal and Moriak abstained from the vote (an "abstain" is basically a "no" as far as counting votes is concerned, since motions must be positive and require at least 4 "yes" votes to pass). My understanding is that they were not so much concerned with the DataWise sole-source waiver as much as this being a continued attempt to undermine district leadership. They are right to be concerned; President Patton expressly stated, with regard to Superintendent Dan Shelton, "Not me. I'll never trust him. I'll never vote for him to continue to be the superintendent, and I'll make that as public as it needs to be made. Because I don't trust you [Dan Shelton]. You have shown over and over where we shouldn't trust you."
However, even a broken clock is right twice each day, and while their concerns are valid, this particular motion was also the correct thing to do for the district. The district should be free to find the best providers for its needs, and by removing the sole-source waiver, the district has the full strength of the state's purchasing requirements behind it for transparency and due diligence.