2025-04-09

April 9, 2025

The April general meeting was held on April 8, 2025.

Agenda Item 1: Roll Call

Well well well, look who decided to dial in from Pakistan: Naveed Baqir.  Baqir hasn't shown his dial-up face in months, but now that it's almost time to do the final votes to ram through the new superintendent before Patton loses power, Baqir is back.  This time, he didn't duck roll call (on previous occasions when he's dialed in, he's skipped roll call, probably to avoid what I did next), so I made a point of order about Baqir, since he is very clearly not a resident of the state and thus very clearly not a board member.

Naveed Baqir has not set foot in this country, let alone this state, in over 14 months.  He is clearly not a resident of the State of Delaware, and thus not a resident of the Christina School District.  His lack of residency means that he is not a board member, per Title 14, Chapter 10.  As such, I request that he not be counted, and that the district send the appropriate documentation to the Department of Elections outlining the vacancy.

To this end, I have sent a letter to the district demanding a hearing with regard to this matter.  This board must hold itself accountable for its failure to address this problem.  The board does not have the authority under Title 14 of the Delaware Code to allow a member who is otherwise clearly unqualified to participate on the board.

As I discussed on Highlands Bunker last week, I filed a complaint with the district that was delivered before the board meeting.  The crux of it is that Baqir is very clearly not a resident and is thus very clearly not on the board, and the board does not have the authority to allow an unqualified person to serve.  Patton claimed that the lawyer said "nah-ah", but I wasn't there to hear it, since I left the meeting where it was discussed because that legal matter also concerned me.  In any case, the we expected that the district wouldn't do the right thing, so we'll be appealing to the Department of Education.

If you'd like to read the complaint, Exceptional Delaware posted it here.

Agenda Item 11.01: Wilmington Learning Collaborative Presentation

Laura Burgos gave a presentation to the board about the Wilmington Learning Collaborative.  My primary takeaways were that the WLC is sad because they don't get access to all the data that state agencies get because they're a 501(c)(3) non-profit and not a state agency, and that they don't care about the outcry over the principal searches at Bayard and Pritchett.

During the public comment period at the beginning of the meeting, there was a strong show of force in favor of retaining the current (interim) principals at Bayard and Bancroft, both of whom seem to be doing good work (and making real, measurable progress).  Similar to my stance on the superintendent search, my stance on the principal search is that we need continuity and stability for the students, and if we have school administrations that are working, then why would we tear them out and replace them?  A new principal will take six months to a year to get a handle on things and start making meaningful change; continuing the interim administrations will allow for that change to start (continue, actually) immediately.  I can't justify the students losing an entire school year while a new principal gets acquainted.

Agenda Item 11.02: Douglass ESC program: Update

Last month, we had a presentation about the Douglass ESC program.  As a reminder, the short version of the story here is that we have a program at Douglass for students who have been expelled or otherwise removed from their normal school where they can continue their education.  At this location, we have two vendors (contractors) that provide service to those students.  We received reports of arrests of students at that location, and we ordered an investigation from the district.

This month, we were supposed to get the results of that investigation.   However, it would appear that Patton had previously received the results of the investigation and then grilled Deputy Superintendent Joyner on the matter.  The tl;dr from the grilling was that the number of students arrested was 17 (which was less than the 22 that was announced last month) and that Douglass ESC appears to be run almost entirely by a private vendor.  I definitely have questions about that setup and how many other, similar setups we have in the district, but this whole thing appears to be Patton setting up a rationale to tank Joyner's chances of getting the superintendent spot (she made it to the top three so far), and possibly set up the head of special education for getting fired.

Agenda Item 11.03: 2025-2026 Calendar: First Reading

Motion: Yes (carried: yes)

The 2025-2026 calendar was unchanged from the previous month; it was approved unanimously.