2025-04-17

April 17, 2025

The special superintendent selection workshop was held today, April 17, 2025.

Over the past few months, Ray and Associates (which was selected by the board to perform the superintendent search) narrowed down the search space from 50 candidates to 11.  Last month, the board interviewed them and narrowed the candidates down to 6, interviewed them again, and limited it to 3.  Those 3 interviewed in person, and tonight, the board briefly met in executive session to perform the final scoring.

The final scoring would determine the order in which motions were made to approve the candidates for superintendent.  After the final scoring, the order was: Joyner, Johnson, Yearwood.

Agenda Item 1: Selection of Superintendent

Motion: Select Deirdra Joyner as the next superintendent (my vote: yes; carried: yes)

I think that I've talked about this before, but this district has churned through superintendents over the years; I think that the average lifespan for one is 2-3 years.  In order to make any progress, the district needs stability and clear goals.  This board has provided nothing of the sort, and we will be changing that starting in July.

After the board axed Shelton last year, Joyner (the deputy superintendent) would have been the clear choice to lead, but Patton's majority clearly wanted nothing to do with her, so they brought in Bob Andrzejewski to be the interim superintendent and kicked off this whole superintendent search process.  Over the ensuing months, Joyner has really stepped up, identified her weaknesses and worked to correct them, made tough decisions and took tough actions.  I witnessed her grow from someone I viewed as timid and unready into someone who is strong, bold, and ready to lead this district into becoming exceptionally effective.

Joyner is what the district needs, and the district is ready to work with her to move forward, past all of the bullshit that this rogue board has piled onto the district.

I made the motion to select her as the next superintendent.

My little speech was:

As expected, Deirdra Joyner came out first out of a crowded field of candidates from across the country.

While I disagree with how we got to this point, I do agree that Joyner is the best person to lead this district into becoming the greatest school district in this state

WIth Joyner as superintendent, there will be no down time, no delay, in getting her office up to speed and working hard to improve student outcomes

The students cannot wait any longer

I will be voting for Deirdra Joyner to succeed Dan Shelton as superintendent of Christina School District and move us forward toward a bright future

Joyner was accepted as the the next superintendent by a vote of 4 to 3 (in favor: Lou, Manley, Moriak, Trauth; opposed: Baqir, Patton, Smith-Tucker).

Note that the motion should have been for contract negotiation, but Patton wanted some strange acceptance of winning as the motion, so we did that, and then we did contract negotiation.

Motion: Replace Andrzejewski with Joyner immediately (withdrawn)

Patton immediately made a motion to replace interim superintendent Andrzejewski with Joyner, which seemed like a really reckless move.  Our lawyer was not present, our business people were not present, Andrzejewski was not present, and Joyner was not present.  Joyner had not even accepted the position yet, and the legality of this worried me.  We already had one superintendent that we suspended who was suing us, and while I know that Andrzejewski has a contract, I don't know what it says.  I don't know what Joyner's contract says.  Shuffling around the administration without the administration's recommendation is just more of Patton mucking up the district for no good reason.

Enough people complained that he withdrew his motion.

Motion: Begin contract negotiation with Joyner (my vote: yes; carried: yes)

The district's lawyer recommended that the motion that we make be for our legal counsel to enter into contract negotiations, so that's what we did.  I made the motion:

I move that we direct counsel to enter into contract negotiations with Deirdra Joyner for a contract containing terms, provisions, and compensation comparable to those of other Superintendents in Delaware with similar experience, and of a similar duration to other initial contracts

This motion carried unanimously.