2024-07-11

July 11, 2024

To quote from Succession, the July 9, 2024, meeting was a shit show at the fuck factory.  We'll get into that in a second.

Just a brief note: there is no entry for the June meeting because nothing all that interesting happened.  The July meeting made up for that.

The July meeting is the "reorganization" meeting, where any newly elected members are sworn in, and the position of president and vice president are elected.  From a technical perspective, from the opening of the meeting at 5:30pm until that election, the board has no president or vice president.

Roll Call

I made a point of order when Naveed Baqir's name was called during roll call as the board reconvened to public session after the earlier executive session: Naveed Baqir is not a school board member.  I don't understand why the majority pretends that he is (well, that's not true: they pretend this because they need his "vote" to jam through their unpopular and illegal actions).

Delaware law is very clear: when you cease to be a resident, you cease to be a board member.  There's no form that needs to be filled out; there's no vote that has to be taken.  It is what it is.  Naveed Baqir has been out of the country for the entirety of 2024 except for a handful of days.  He's been out of the country so long that he doesn't count as a Delaware resident for tax purposes.  So long that he's not a board member.

My point of order was:

According to Delaware Code, Title 14, Chapter 10, Section 1054, Naveed Baqir is not a school board member, and I count 6 members present.

Title 14, Chapter 10, Section 1054 states:

(a) If any school board member ceases to be a resident of the reorganized school district, that member shall cease to be a member of its school board.

Title 30, Chapter 11, Section 1103 states:

A resident individual of this State means an individual:

[...]

(2) Who maintains a place of abode in this State and spends in the aggregate more than 183 days of the taxable year in this State.

The taxable year in Delaware is from January 1 through December 31

Up until today, July 9, 188 days have elapsed.  There are 366 days in this year because it is a leap year, and there are only 182 days in which a person can be absent from the state in order to be considered a resident per Title 30

Naveed Baqir has not been physically present for any general board meeting this year, and he physically attended one policy meeting on January 4, 2024

Even if we allow for 5 days in the state for that trip, he would have still been absent 183 days, which is more than the allowable limit, and even if he were to physically reside in Delaware for the rest of the year, he would not be able to overcome that deficit

According to Delaware law, Naveed Baqir is not a resident, and is thus not a board member

Naveed Baqir has, for all practical purposes, moved to Pakistan, and he does not belong on the Christina school board.  This is plain for every board and staff member to see: he has not physically attended a single general board meeting in 2024, and the only board-related meeting that he has been physically present for was a policy committee meeting on January 4, 2024.

Following the rest of the board's refusal to follow the law regarding Baqir, I made my protests known for every 4:3 vote that was counted with Baqir in the majority.

Agenda Item 5: Approval of the agenda

The original agenda, as published, had the reorganization before public comment.  This was generally an artifact of how reorganization has been done historically, but given the number of people who had wished to comment on the upcoming vote for leadership, and the state law that says that the public should be able to comment before any votes, we felt that it was important to move agenda item 5 (approval of the agenda) to immediately following item 3 (the pledge of allegiance) so we could tweak the agenda to move public comment up.

Thus, we moved item 5 (approval of the agenda) to 3A and item 7 (public comment) to 3B.

We removed 12.01 (University of Delaware) because Mohammed Sanogo's family could not be present tonight; we'll bring this up in August (they're suing University of  Delaware for their horrific handling and arrest of Sanogo after graduation last year).

We removed 12.08 (SRO Contracts SY2025) at the request of the district.  I didn't really ask why because I was going to vote no anyway, so I can vote no next month.

In the interest of transparency, we moved 12.05 (preliminary budget) and 12.06 (tax warrant) after 8.01 (CBOC report) so that all of the finance items could be together.  I forgot to move 12.09 (new CBOC committee member) as well, so we moved that separately to be immediately after 8.01.

Public comment

The public made a big showing at this meeting, primarily because at the last minute (so, a little over a week before the meeting), Patton slipped in two agenda items: one to non-renew the superintendent's contract, and one to put the superintendent on administrative leave.

I will stress that we still have not performed a performance review of the superintendent, so it is not clear to me how any board member could move forward with these ridiculous actions.

Anyway, the staff and the teachers were pretty angry, and they wore "Stand with Dan" T-shirts, waved Dan fans, and passionately spoke positiviely about Dan's leadership and derided the board for attempting to take these actions against them.

The public also spoke out against the previous iteration of board leadership: Donald Patton and Alethea Smith-Tucker.  It was clear to the public (as it has been clear to me) that those two have been the primary cause of discord and disruption in the district this past year.

Agenda Item 8.01: CBOC report

Because it was kind of teased during discussion, we (CBOC and the district) have been working on an interactive web site where you can put in your street address and it will tell your current Christina School District taxes, show any changes from prior years, show any changes due to upcoming referenda, and ultimately show a breakdown of how your dollars are being spent by the district.  I think that it's going to be really helpful in fostering transparency and helping to educate the public on how school district taxes work.

Agenda Item 12.13 and 12.14: Can Dan and suspend Dan

Motions: No (carried illegally, under protest due to Baqir's illegal vote)

If you want to listen to the nonsense, it's at 6h23m46s into the video.

Okay, so these two agenda items are basically the same thing: Patton doesn't like the superintendent (Dan Shelton), so he's going to drive him out of the district.  The first motion was to non-renew his contract, which is up in June of 2025 (next year).  Non-renewal has to be noted by December, and is usually done around that timeframe.  To issue a non-renewal notice this early sends exactly one message: get packing.  The second motion was to suspend him, indefinitely (with pay, I guess).

I want to be very, very clear: Patton and his cronies did not list a single reason for their actions.  This is the superintendent of the school district we're talking about here.  The leadership of the school district is very much a matter of public concern and public discussion, and they listed zero reasons to do so.  They smugly said that they're going to vote they way that they're going to vote, and that was that.

(Side note: this all appears very coordinated.  To get 4 people to all vote in this way without any discussion about it?  They likely met together, or in serial, to lock down this result.)

Anyway, despite the public clamoring for an answer, despite me clamoring for an answer, despite Moriak and Trauth clamoring for an answer, none was given.  To kneecap their "executive privilege" made-up-ass argument, I read into the record the only thing that I have from any of them on the superintendent: the letter that was put into his file that they voted to do a couple months back (under protest from Moriak for it being factually inaccurate).

Here is that letter, which I read into the record during the meeting: 2024-04-12 - Letter to Dan Shelton 

Here is Shelton's response to the letter, which he included in an appeal to his suspension on July 2.

And finally, there was mumbling about "an investigation".  The tl;dr is that an employee filed a complaint about Shelton, the board approved the hiring of an outside firm to investigate, they investigated, and they found that the original complaint could not be verified, but a past incident involving a raised voice did happen.  Most importantly, it found no pattern of behavioral issues.

The conclusion of that report, which I read into the record during the meeting, was:

VI. CONCLUSION

The investigation was able to corroborate a non-specific allegation of a single prior incident where, as alleged in the Complaint, Dr. Shelton raised his voice at [redacated].  However, while the investigation confirmed that there was an unpleasant interaction between Dr. Shelton and [redacated] on June 3 that left [redacated] deeply upset, the investigation could not confirm that on June 3, 2024, Dr. Shelton yelled at [redacated] or moved into [redacated] space in an intimidating or threatening fashion.  Similarly, the investigation did not reveal information sufficient to support a finding that the alleged events of June 3 were a part of a broader pattern of conduct by Dr. Shelton.

As you might expect, both motions were "passed" by a 4:3 vote (which, I noted under protest, did not pass due to Baqir not being a board member).

As of right now, the superintendent is still employed, but he is suspended, so the district has no clear leadership.  In public, Patton said that there was no plan for what to do next, so he's trying to throw together a workshop or something where we can see more of his superb leadership abilities that involve ignoring the public and acting secretly.

As these motions dragged on, the public was incensed and began to demand an explanation (samesies).  Patton, drunk on power, threatened to clear out the auditorium if one more person raised their voice.  On the recording, you may hear a holler from me: I wanted to make sure that I was the first person who met that qualification.  Others also spoke up, and he "ordered" the police (who I think had already left?) to remove whoever it was in the audience who spoke up.  The constables looked at each other and laughed; they weren't going to disrupt a public proceeding.  Good on them.  Having been pantsed like that publicly, the meeting deteriorated, Yakety Sax got played over the sound system, and the meeting fell apart.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Christina School Board!