2024-03-29

March 29, 2024

During the March 12, 2024, school board meeting, we continued fucking with the district administration (that's not good for anyone).

Here, I'd like to go over a few things that I think are worth discussing.

Agenda Item K4: Administrative Recommendations

All of the shitty stuff happened under "Administrative Recommendations".  The primary purpose of this agenda item was to correct an oops from February: in February, we approved the Delaware School for the Deaf's new Statewide Coordinator under "Personnel Recommendations", but since the position is administrative, it should have been done under "Administrative Recommendations".  The first motion properly corrected that; the second and third motions punished the superintendent for perceived grievances.

Motion 1: Yes

The first motion was to correct the administrative oops from February.  Welcome, Erin Kline!

Motion 2: No

This motion undid the superintendent's contract extension that was done as part of "Administrative Recommendations" back in December.  In favor of this motion is the fact that the superintendent is special and has a contract unlike that of any other employee in the district, and the board evaluates the superintendent at the end of the school year.  Against this motion is the fact that President Patton crafted a weird motion in December that extended everyone's contract (except the constables) so he could ignore all administrative recommendations (especially around not renewing a particular principal); the list of names in the administrative recommendations was plain as day and the later claim that various board members did not actually read the list is not my problem.  I was fine with extending the superintendent's contract back in December.

(Side note: my memory is a bit foggy on this, but my understanding is that the original list of administrators was the complete list that included all administrators, their current contract end dates, and the proposed change, if any.  The motion back in December was not to accept the district's recommendation, but rather, to renew all contracts in that list.  Was that a good motion?  No, that's why I voted against it back in December. )

Motion 3: No

This motion punished the superintendent by suspending him without pay for 3 days.  What was he punished for?  I honestly have no idea.  The executive session meeting where this was discussed was a collection of random grievances and complaints about past board votes.  I view this as part of President Patton's stated agenda of removing the superintendent by making his life as miserable as possible.

For Lou's vote, he required that the superintendent be put on a performance improvement plan to correct whatever behavior they think needs correcting (again: I have absolutely no idea what they're talking about), but I'd be willing to bet that that never happens.