2025-06-10

June 10, 2025

The May general meeting was held on June 10, 2025.

Agenda Item 4: Approval of the Agenda

There were a couple of items related to the agenda:

1. Moriak wanted to remove section 8.03 President's Remarks, since it is not part of the board policy (and because Patton would probably make a spectacle of it [narrator: he did]).  This did not pass.  Moriak and Trauth supported it; Lou abstained; Patton, Smith-Tucker, and I opposed it.  It was defeated.  Hey, if Patton wants to cook, let him cook.

2. Smith-Tucker, at the request of the district, removed 8.04 School Presentation and 11.02 CEA contract.  The school presentation was there as a placeholder in case the year-in-review part of the superintendent's report wasn't ready (but it was), and the CEA contract was there in case it was ready to sign (it wasn't).

Agenda Item 7: CBOC Report

Other than the normal CBOC report (which was approved unanimously), I brought up two items:

1. The addition of Katherine Bakeev to CBOC; this was approved unanimously.  She has been coming to meetings and participating for a while now.

2. A request to allow the district to investigate commercial loans in the event of an emergency.  Patton said that this didn't require board approval, so I dropped the motion, and the district will investigate as it had intended to.

As I've mentioned before, we should be good for the next year financially.  However, there are a lot of factors outside of our control that could get in the way, and we don't want to cut services to students if anyone of those factors ends up being a problem.  State law allows a school district to engage in 90-day loans with state or federal banks, and we have not done this in recent memory.  CBOC is interested in having such a tool in its toolbox, so out of an abundance of transparency, we asked the board to approve the district investigating commercial loans for emergency situations.

The obvious situation (and the one suggested in Delaware law) is the summer period where local taxes stop coming in; they typically trickle out around June and pick back up again in October.  During those months, we still need to pay our staff, so a 90-day loan to bridge the gap until tax receipts start coming back in makes sense.

However, this particular year, we are also paying attention to:

1. Federal funding cuts.  Things at the federal level have been moving quickly and erratically.  Even if the net result ends up being the same in the end, we don't want to have to cut any student services in case we don't get the money that we're expecting on time.  A loan would allow us to continue serving students until the politicians in Washington get their shit together.

2. New Castle County's property reassessment.  This hasn't happened in 40 years or so, so it's new for everyone.  The county dumped it on a contractor called Tyler Technologies, and there has been a whole lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt being spread among the public.  The public also has something like a year to get all of their complaints and corrections in, so the funding that we get through the county could easily be disrupted or delayed or wracked with errors.  We don't want the county's problems to impact our students, so if anything bad happens there, a loan would allow us to continue operating normally until they fix their systems.

Agenda Item 8.02: Board President's Report

As expected, Patton wanted to rant, and rant he did.

His "report" was broken up into three parts: Smith-Tucker's speech, praising Baqir, and making all kinds of insinuations against me.

He allowed Smith-Tucker (who is off the board as of July 1 and who will be replaced by Troncoso) to give a little goodbye speech, the highlight of which was her basically saying that she was right to axe Shelton (by name) and that standing up to opposition against tanking the district was good and brave of her.  I suspect that this public speech will be used in Shelton's case against her.

He then showered Baqir (who has not set foot in these United States in over 15 months) with praise, complaining about how I am always out to get him or whatever.  Keep in mind, I did not speak to Baqir or mention him at all before, during, or after the meeting.  My name got mentioned a lot.

And finally, he complained that we're all racist (especially me), read some letters from random people out loud (letters where people complained about me for no good reason), and then―and then!―Patton announced that Baqir would be resigning on July 15, conveniently after the new leadership vote on July 8.  He then explicitly stated, out loud, that Baqir didn't want to stay on the board after holing up in Pakistan, but Patton convinced him to, saying that without Baqir, the votes would be a 3:3 split and he wouldn't get to have his way doing whatever he wanted (such as firing the superintendent, messing with hiring decisions, etc.).  Even today, Baqir couldn't be bothered to speak up for himself and had to have Patton talk for him.

You, dear reader, must know that if a board member resigns, another one takes her place.  The board solicits applications for the position and then picks someone to fill the seat until the next regularly scheduled election, and then that seat opens up for the remainder of its term, and then it's back to business as usual.  So what Patton is admitting to is that he wanted a 4:3 majority to continue his revenge tour, and he did not want the community to have an actual representative on this board.  We could have had a replacement in a 1-2 months after a Baqir resignation, but that would mean a 3:3 vote on the replacement, which would mean that no Patton crony could get in.

Anyway, HB82 and HB83 should be moving through the Senate next week, although HS1 for HB83 in the Senate is a little softer and has a 30-day grace period, so that won't help me, so HB82 it is.  In the meantime, my court of chancery case is still ongoing, and I've appealed to the Department of Education to hear my case about the district not following the law and declaring Baqir's seat vacant.

These clowns whine and moan about not doing anything for student outcomes, but they spend all their time complaining, giving speeches, and otherwise impeding the progress that the district is trying to make.  War is peace and all that.