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“For some reason, the parties running the Delaware DOE this year, have decided to ignore 14-17 years of legislation and DOE precedent, and change the rules to force more money to flow to charters.”
“Desperate”, I believe is the word we’re looking for… “Desperate” as in the last days of the Third Reich, as in the last 2 minutes of a NFL playoff game, as in the final day before election day.
They know their time is up! They are using these last four months of this lame duck session to make permanent changes they hope will benefit them later when they get kicked up into the private sector… If they don’t act now, it will be too late… someone else will be controlling the money…..
In case you don’t know what happened, here is a refresher…
The DOE surprised every public school by changing the formula on how charters were to be paid… Pay them more was their decree.. What they are proposing is unconstitutional… For when you ask the taxpayers for taxes, and they first say no, and so you tell them exactly what it gets spent on, and they acquiesce and say….”ok this time, here, but spend it only on those items”.… and THEN you do NOT spend it on those items which are part of the contract,…. you have an illegal use of tax money that cannot stand up in court...
Example: when Brandywine School District passed a referendum to put turf on their field, you can’t send all that money to charters and leave the field in its original condition… Yet that is exactly what rogue elements in the DOE conspired to do…and frankly, almost got away with.
After giving them the benefit of the doubt up to now, today we found out the trickery involved is not accidental…
Today we found that they held onto all notice of the changes affecting public districts right up to the deadline, then sent them bills telling them that they must pay more but refusing to give any reasons as to why. You’d expect that in Communist Russia. Isn’t it odd for somewhere here in the USA?
Today we found that they had meetings with a few select Superintendents, not all, and specifically told them: DO NOT TELL YOUR boards or business managers. You’d expect that in Communist Russia. Isn’t it odd for somewhere in the USA?
Today we found they sent over-inflated charter bills to the districts, threatening they immediately be paid in full. You’d expect that in Communist Russia. Isn’t it odd for somewhere in the USA?
Today (although we suspicioned it) it was proven that certain Charters are really trying to gut all public education in this state and they don’t care about your children. The idea that they just want more money, does not back up the precise use of hurtful tactics used to achieve it. The standard methods to get more money work well enough. Trying purposefully to destroy public education, is the ONLY explanation that can explain their timeline. And the reason they picked on Christina? Because it is full of black people … White people vote.. but kicking blacks again and again has become acceptable to the Delaware Way because Blacks don’t go to the polls in high enough numbers…. This was designed specifically to implode Delaware’s poorest public schools by stealing large amounts of money from them…Again, You’d expect that in Communist Russia. Odd for somewhere in the USA.
“All that stuff you committed to the voters” they told all the school districts…. “Pfffft… voters are just scum. We’re not going to pay attention to any of that crap… That money is not sacrosanct. Pay the extra $3 million to Newark Charter, NOW!!!!! “
An injunction forbidding any payments from Christina or other districts to Charters until this can be sorted out… would be the proper course of action…
Violating public trust to enrich ones own pockets puts people in jail…. Or at least gives them a big fine to pay…. Pursuing this should be step two.
This proposed action by the DOE, if carried out, will hurt 15,000 children… It will help none… Not even the 2000+ students at Newark Charter School! None of the funds stolen from the basic necessities required to teach 15,000 students, will go to assist any of the kids at Newark Charter… All this money, and I mean ALL of it, is to pay for their two new buildings that they royally screwed up and are on the hook for their financing …….
No matter of how well we comport ourselves, we are only masters of ourselves in a vacuum. With no outside influences or outside winds of change, we can choose the effect we wish to impart and can sort through various possible actions to affect them….
(Damn Facebook memes comparing “effect” and “affect” have gotten to me, I guess)….
But often in the real world other forces move in with tidal waves of change and we simply out of necessity, choose where on the wave we will ride in…. Hopefully we read the wave correctly and do not have the curl collapse upon us…
So with the Christina School Board.. and hence the election we face today, May 10th.
As anyone even remotely knowledgeable about education and politics, well knows, today’s wave is Corporate Control…. Or better explained in meme by: how can corporate make money out of education?
The easiest, cheapest, and first step, is to control the school board, and that is what is up today… The worst thing for corporate, and the best thing for your child, is to put Elizabeth Paige on the school board.
The reason is thus: if Corporate has a good idea, she will help put it in place… if corporate has a bad idea, she will fight it… That is opposite of what a Corporate placed candidate would do… They would have no qualms supporting a either a good or bad idea as long as Corporate handlers, told her it was a good idea.
Now there is nothing wrong with ‘Bad Ideas” as long as you are willing to discount the bad results those ideas set in motion. Bad results in public education, equal lost learning opportunities which can never be replaced. On the scale of 1 to 10, damaging our children, probably sits at a level 10…
To prevent us from reaching such a crises level, you need someone not necessarily who hates Corporate and vows to fight them every step of the way, but you need someone who loves children more than the praise from powerful people.
Those who know politics, or the unsavory side of politics, can see the evidence as clear as one sees a lighthouse on a crystal calm night. The stupid smear -comments of one Lisa Matos which were obviously pre-written in the halls and the language of Delaware’s Chamber of Commerce, then dispensed. The collection and disposal of only this one candidate’s campaign signs. The brutally ugly cringe-worthy gotchu questions sprung at Meet-and-Greets of which even a Kevin Ohlandt would have tremendous difficulty knowing their past details and fabricating, points to a large campaign of political research done in depth to stir up any dirt and finding none, throwing some hoping some may stick…..
There is a longterm unwritten rule in Delaware…… When one candidate is obviously being smeared…. your best bet is to vote them in… For there is a good reason that candidate is being smeared (no one smears a candidate who is tainted/ one just tells the truth) and that smear-reason is that they are predicted to win because they are the best candidate, unless of course the correctly-timed smear takes fire and changes many people’s minds……
All signs last night pointed out that corporate evil is at work in the Christina School District’s election. Today, before tonight’s darkness snuffs out day’s light, your best bet to stop this evil is to vote for Elizabeth Paige….
If you value transparency, intellectual curiosity, courage, independent thinking and a reasoned, systemic, analytical approach to policy then you probably should vote today for Elizabeth Paige.
If you don’t, go steal more signs and throw them in the dumpster……..
| Many of you are being told the school taxes you pay are for nothing. Though you pay taxes to your school district, none of that money comes back to you in any form.
That was the line-up leading to 1776 when our taxes were going to Britain. It is the line-up in this anti-school campaign. It is a disruption campaign by special interests. And I am confident that once more—in 2016—democracy in taxation will win. Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to the need of society to levy them. If you need to levy taxes, you do so. If you don’t, you refrain from levying them…. Before the Republican-caused Recession in 2008, Christina School District fought the corporate war (Joe Wise/Broad Institute) and that war put Christina $17 million dollars in the hole. We borrowed to pay off that war. Then, as now, the designated levies set decent levels of sufficient taxes to eventually pay off the entire debt and maintain those schools. Those taxes had been levied according to the value of ones property which for the most part, is based on the owner’s ability to pay. But the opposing top-down run Republican Party players do not believe in that principle. There is a reason. They have political debts to those who sat at their elbows. Across the entire Federal government’s spectrum to pay those political debts, they reduced the taxes of their friends in the higher brackets and left the national debt to be paid by later generations. Because they evaded their obligation, because they regarded the political debt as more important than the national debt, the Repression of 2009 which they started, gave us a seventeen-trillion-dollar handicap on us and our children. Now let’s keep this little drama straight. The actors are the same. But the act is different. Today their role calls for stage tears about paying pennies more to fund the necessary function of schools. But in the days of George W. Bush, they played a completely different part. The moral of their play is clear. They got out from under taxes then, they would get out from under taxes now—if their friends could get back into power now and if they could get back to the driver’s seat. But neither you nor they, think that we are going to allow them back in and so they apply their efforts to defeating necessary referendums which we need to continue schooling our next generation. As before the Republican Recession of 2009, we have again attempted to create a tax structure to yield revenues appropriately adequate to pay the cost of this war against ignorance of our children in this current generation, as well as the next. New or increased taxes ARE needed to enable us to provide the most basic service. Christina, one of the most efficiently run districts in the nation, is struggling with a poverty inherent in its population. Educational recovery is with us, but funds are not. Federal revenues are decreasing; State revenues are decreasing; emergency expenditures are increasing. A balanced budget is outlayed every year. This year another one is on the way. Does that sound like bankruptcy or moral decay to you? Why this increase in this district’s assessment of revenues? Because the very large property owners who lease or rent out the majority of the land in Newark and Bear, now earn more money and now spend more money. Though they are asked to pay more money in taxes, they have so much more money left for themselves and their families… For the average property owner we they can expect minimal increases. Only those who OWN property will pay the increase… Those who own bigger properties will see a small increase; this is a small referendum. Those who own small properties will probably not even notice unless they actually look to compare one year to the next. Those who pay rent, and that is many of you reading this, will pay nothing. That means that less than 11% percent of the heads of Christina’s families will pay $50 dollars more than they did; and more than 89 percent will, if they pay at all, see increases between 0 and 50 dollars. If you want the answer to this talk about high taxes under this current school board administration—there it is. Taxes are higher for those who can afford to pay high taxes. They are minimal for those who can afford to pay less. That is getting back again to the American principle—taxation according to ability to pay. You would think, to hear some people talk, that those good people who live at the top of our economic pyramid are being taxed into rags and tatters. What is the fact? The fact is that they are much farther away from the poorhouse than they were in 2009. You and I know that as a matter of personal observation. A number of my friends who belong in these very high upper brackets have suggested to me, more in sorrow than in anger, that if this levy is passed, they will have to move to some other Nation because of our high property taxes here. I shall miss them very much but if they go they will soon come back. For a year or two of paying taxes in any other country in the world will make them yearn once more for the good old taxes of the U.S.A. We have the lowest taxes anywhere on our wealthy. Far too low if you ask me. One more word on recent history. Not only did this district inherited from the current state Administration, the full cost for imposing an expensive governor’s testing regime into every school, a mistake which placed a revenue burden on providing lower-income economic families living in this district with the very basics of education, but it has also been fraught with an unfair burdens by the governor and DOE, designed not to improve the quality of student’s knowledge, but to flip it over to a zone primarily ripe for the influx of schools FOR-PROFIT. Christina’s local operating tax receipts are reduced by payments to Charter Schools and to other districts providing educational services to resident students. Local revenues provide 41% of the district’s budget. Before the Republican caused recession of 2008-9, fifty-eight per cent out of every dollar of the districts cost came from the state as per our General Assembly. That is now down to 51%… In order to make the top echelon and friends of the Republican Party pay less in state income taxes as the economy recovers, you, the lower level citizens are now being asked to pay more just to maintain the minimum level of expense…. Before asking you to pay more, the district has cut all fat out of their budget. Christina has 98% of all salaried dollars directly impacting students either in the building or transportation. It is running two principals short. It has the lowest level of administrators to student in the nation. Due to last year’s defeat by special interests, 90 teachers were cut and average class sizes swelled from 20 to 30 per room. This year we had to find new revenues to meet the immediate educational requirements. This new tax increase is merely an extension of the old property tax law and a plugging-up of the loopholes in it, loopholes which could be used only by men of very large incomes. I want to say a word to you average homeowners who are being flooded by propaganda about this tax—propaganda, incidentally, paid for by your money. It is being disseminated by those who have used corporations in the past to build up their own economic power, who seek by holding back your vote to raise the levels, to keep down their taxes. It is a fact that 89 percent of all those assessed will suffer less then a 50 dollar increase. Some none. Some a dollar. Some two. Some more. It is a fact that the new revenue only returns the district back to the basest minimum required level necessary for complying with the standards of education set by the state and Federal government. What we are concerned with primarily is principle, and the principle of this law, taxing local property to fund their local schools, is sound. If in its application imperfections are discovered, and they have been over time, they must be corrected for the good of American taxpayers and America’s students. I am certain that the average of our citizenship is not taken in by the amazing amount of tax misinformation which has been turned loose in this political campaign. People tell you the district is top heavy. But stop, look and listen. You will find what the propagandists do not tell you: is that this district is the most efficient in the nation. You will find that this district loses $20 million per year in payments to Charter Schools. Though the allowance of Charter-Schools is bad policy, unfortunately special interests have kept them still legal. That cost has to be made up. You will find this district is forced to jump thorough more hoops required by the DOE than any district outside of East Los Angeles. You will be surprised at the unbelievable pressure put on it to fail, just so private for-profit companies can swoop in and collect all the money you currently pay, without giving back different results. You will find these propagandists are not up-front with the truth. You will find they are purposefully trying to discredit your district’s schools to purposefully deflate your property values so they can buy you out when you leave for a song. . They are against good schools for we all know, good schools inflate property values… Hence backers of the Republican Party at its very top, have something to do with defeating this referendum. Whether in Greenville, Kent, or Sussex County, far from the actual district itself, they have flooded your zip codes with false and misleading propaganda (often with made-up names invoking “Liberty”), both in print and robo-calls calling for the defeat of the referenda. If it fails, it WILL make it easier for them to take over your schools and pocket your property tax money in the process. .. These referenda are at the request of those local districts for whom the local revenue burden has become too heavy. Voters upon looking clearly at the costs of either a YEA or NAY action, should assumed the cost of paying small amounts in the immediate future, outweigh the entire district’s financial collapse, outweigh its inability to fulfill their function,and outweigh the plummeting property values of everyone affected. For the most part, the overwhelming majority of small time business men are like the rest of us. All of us whether we earn wages, run farms or run businesses are in one sense business men. All we seek and all they seek is a fair assessment based on the greater good for the greater number—fair play on the part of our Government in levying taxes and fair play on the part of our Government in protecting our children against financial abuses by those with large pocketbooks.. It is the special privileged who have no concern for your children, your property values, your well being. It is the special privileged who are behind this propaganda to scare you into playing right into their hands. Like Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life, they keep their heads while you lose yours.. Once more this year we must choose between true democracy in taxation versus capitulating to the special interests in taxation. Are you willing to turn the control of your school’s taxes back to special privilege? I know the American answer to that question. Your emails, mailboxes, and texts may be loaded with suggestions of fear, and your party’s official line of communication may be filled with propaganda. But the American people will be neither bluffed nor bludgeoned. The seeds of fear cannot bear fruit in the polling booth. Inside the polling booth every American man and woman stands as the equal of every other American man and woman. There they have no superiors. There they have no masters save their own minds and consciences. There they are sovereign American citizens. There on March 23rd they will not fear to exercise the sovereignty.of the American People over special interests. |
Christian Hudson at 30045 (Eagles Crest Road, Milton, Delaware 19968; (302) 729-2178; info@FirstStateLiberty.org) is responsible for the robo calls now dialing off hate-lists compiled out of zip codes undergoing the Chrisina Referendum.
If you go to the beach, the above property is that old airport that has always been just north of Lewes…
If you’ve been here very long you may remember it as the location when as a child you looked out your window and saw this….
It was also one of the early fields featuring Pumpkin Chunking….
Today it is headquarter for Hudson Management, a wide ranging assortment of investments scattered across the winds, some of whose seeds have drifted close to home. Some of which include the wooden Fairfield Inn, Rehoboth Beach, Sam Yoder and Sons, Village of Five Points. Other investments include:
- 300MW Wind Farm and Solar project in northern Ontario, Canada (under development)
- 150 unit ocean-front luxury residential development in San Juanillo, Costa Rica
- Video commerce network- TV Page in San Diego, CA
- Leading digital news and information network in Dallas, TX
- Self-storage investment firm with 12 locations in the US, and 2 locations in Ontario, Canada
As would any investor, zeal against taxation would become a cause celebre because taxes sap some of the return off investments… And Christian Hudson has almost zealfully crusaded against any form of taxation….
Any form of taxation…. as would any zealot I could imagine.
Here is one of his ads on removing all taxes. Here are his ideas of cutting the state budget instead of raising taxes. Here is why they are against “smart” growth, advocating for its opposite instead. Here is him as a plaintiff trying to remove Delaware from the Regional Gas Initiative.
Those of us who have sparred with Christian Hudson across DelawarePolitics.net and Delawareright.com are familiar with his single-mindedness whenever anything interferes with the personal accumulation of money. Nothing wrong with that; were I raised differently it would make sense to me too.
But why would someone with no bone to pick in Lewes (Milton), employee his Robo-tax-cop machine to bother people in a district far-far away?
The first and simple reason: it costs nothing for him to do so.. The apparatus is set up; calls are free; and all it takes is 5 minutes to leave a greeting on tape, and then off to the Sussex Country Republican Convention while voters in Christina drop what they are doing when the phone rings, rush to their phones, only to hear a taped message telling them their taxes (but not their time) are wasted and they need to vote no on the upcoming increase….
For whether your taxes are or not wasted, here is a first rate breakdown of their funding… Basically Christina District is one of the most efficient districts in the entire NATION and if it weren’t for the abject poverty endemic in both Wilmington and the Route 40 Corridor, they would be considered one of the best districts in the United States… For the real fact is, those who are paying school property taxes across that small swath of state, are carrying the bulk of the weight for up to 90% of its students…. The real fact is that all the bad press being used to smear that district, is strictly because of the poverty that district bears; from the DOE website, we see one student in every two lives in families making less than $16,000 a year. Here is a quick succession of charts from the above Delaware-Liberal article.
Over 98% of all salaries go directly to people in the buildings or bus drivers. From a quick search over multiple educational funding sources, that seems to be the highest of any United States of American school district….
When you don’t vote FOR a Christina referendum…. you are voting to kick children in the teeth… Those lies of being too top heavy may apply to other districts INCLUDING CAPE HENOPLEN WHICH ENCOMPASSES CHRISTIAN HUDSON’S DISTRICT, but it does not apply to what is probably the most efficient school district in the entire nation:… Christina.
Of course. We understand there may be personal legitimate reasons, (such as living on limited pension income that is being too-quickly drained by ever-increasing corporate fees), which could push you not to want even one more dollar of money taken from you which you can’t spend on absolutely necessities. It’s just like there are reasons you don’t always put money in the collection plate as it’s passed by you in your church. You are entitled to vote and that is why we put it up to a vote. But be advised. Outside influences spreading mis-truths to achieve a certain outcome from which they are completely insulated, such as Christian Hudson and everyone who votes his way solely on ideologically grounds…. are putting loaded guns to the heads of children and pulling the triggers, especially in a place where one out of every two children comes from an under-$16,000 income family.
Just thought you all should know that…..
It is pretty simple. It is how people learn…
The way our thoughts are gathered is like a crystal of sugar in a solution of sugar water. A molecule touches another in close proximity and they join. Together they touch molecules closest, and they join too. Knowledge like sugar crystallization, forms from a center point outward. One molecule on one side of the jar does not join with a molecule from the other side of the jar.
Often we can cause sugar to return to solidity in solution by putting an object into the solution which initiates this process. Several molecules adhere to the surface object and the crystallization begins.
We learn the same way. We take what we know, and add to it. We don’t learn foreign languages as our first language for example. We learn objects in one language and that becomes our central core or language template… Then we can catalog another tongue by learning how their words and structure compare to our words and structure…
Across America, today’s learning process has become scattered. We are required to put so many tiny pieces of a smörgåsbord’s item on a sampling plate, that it becomes very hard for the child to describe what the food would look like in its natural form… All he ever sees is tiny bite sized pieces… Describe a roast beef you ask them… It’s small, about a half inch square, it’s meat, and is chewy, and has juice that squirts out when you chomp down on it… Is that big thing at the end of the table a Roast Beef? Oh, no… they respond.
We learn incrementally on what we already know… which makes it hard to teach people who really don’t know anything, something.
When you take children from their environment and put them into someone else’s environment, they are going to take what they know and carry it to that environment, because it makes them comfortable and feels more like home.. They bring drugs, violence, more drugs, and more violence because in that environment, they control the dynamics and it is not as intimidating or scary anymore.
You break that by having children go to school in their own neighborhood. Now because they are “black” we have imposed legal restrictions on allowing them to be treated as children. Restrictions that did not apply when Poles lived in that neighborhood.. Restrictions that did not apply when Italians lived in that neighborhood… Restrictions that did not apply when Irish lived in that neighborhood…. The only difference between the violence and crime then,… versus now? Is that the NRA didn’t supply them with handguns back then.. Rifles were hard to get as well. But you had switch blades.. brass knuckles… billy clubs…. baseball bats… and instead of heroin… you had boot-licker alcohol often made with methyl alcohol instead of ethyl..
But we taught those Poles in their Polish neighborhood… And Italians. And Irish.. Are they incapable of getting good jobs today? No. They are highly capable today as White Anglo Saxon Protestants of filling in for an employer. So will our blacks be if we let them go to school in their own neighborhood.
Because of their familiarity with the neighborhood, and close proximity to all they know, learning will process faster (as long as the disruptions are removed), just as were Polish, Italian, and Irish disruptions removed probably in the exact same percentages…
How it went wrong… Let us take Glasgow High School. It once had a bad reputation. All would agree that Glasgow’s problems were imported from the city. All of Glasgow’s problems..were imported.. from the city. The drug conduit was established. Lots of money available in the suburbs led to a high demand for recreational drugs whose economy depended on individuals shuttling the contraband and payments up and down the 95 corridor. The net result was violence which like Wilmington today, is 97% cause by fights over economic turf…..
The greater legal issues created inaction by administrators. They could not be seen to have a mostly white staff discipline and suspend only blacks because flat out, that appeared racist… and so you did not effectively make positive change. You discussed, tried to look tough in case anyone was watching through the door, and then you let them go right back into their old environment with absolutely no real consequence….
Only after one time of showing the entire school you would back down to black thuggery, the entire control over discipline in that school broke down.
This would not happen in an all black school. It does not happen in an all black school. If a black principal in an all black school, suspends an person who is all black,,, it is not racist. It is disciplining a thug so the rest of the children can learn… Which we all agree is what needs to happen… 99% of our children enter the school system excited to learn… when you let 1% stop that process, the entire school becomes disillusioned and soon, no one else wants to learn either.
We’ve always had reports of immigrant bashing… gangs of one white subgroup would maraud against gangs of another white subgroup. I’m sure it happened in the Roman Times as well. But when you had Polish schools in Polish districts, you had Polish discipline in Polish districts, and for the most part, you had normal schools even though they were in impoverished neighborhoods just as are black schools now….
Imagine though, if you had Italians going to school with all Irish teachers, or Polish children going to school with Italian teachers… When one of those children misbehaved and were disciplined, would not wars erupt? Absolutely….
So we need to get over the idea that all black schools in black neighborhoods is a bad thing… It isn’t… Disrupting a child’s learning process by flipping the familiarity of their environment upside down, however is a bad thing…. I’m sure every parent of 30 to 24 year olds today remembers the trauma and learning problems that occurred when Christina District sent its suburban white children up the 95 corridor into the black neighborhoods surrounding Bancroft, Bayard, and Pyle, I believe…
Familiarity is necessary for learning. And what we are most familiar with as young children is our home. If we can count on that being unchanging, then as students we are free to have much more time to actually focus on what we are in school for… learning….
And when it becomes perfectly clear, that the sole reason blacks are in that all black school run by all black highly trained professionally trained educators….. is to learn… and that no unruly student is going to disrupt that process…. then we will have turned the corner.
(Anthology courtesy of John Young; printed by Exceptional Delaware.)
LIES
• Test scores show we perform poorly.
• America performs poorly compared to international students (other nations do not test poverty).
• Schools are failing.
• Teachers are lazy.
• Teachers are incompetent.
• Lack of Grit is an obstacle to success.
• Lack of Rigor causes failure.
Truths…..
• Policies of merit pay and bonuses are creating turnover not stabilizing it.
• The constant shifts in staff based on test score accountability create understandable teacher inertia to meaningful policy change.
• Our schools have been subject to veritable unending policy change since 1983 (Nation at Risk).
• Testing is misused to label and destroy the profession of teaching.
• Testing is used to inappropriately measure schools of education (SB51).
• Testing is used to label schools and fuel a choice law that shifts funds and creates economic chaos in our schools.
• Property tax funding base is unstable.
• Special education is dramatically underfunded and frequently violated ….School boards can help, but honestly are largely an exercise in petty ego wrapped up in pseudo-authority.
The opposite, that only Red Clay pays more, needs nipped in the bud… Because they are trying to feed this now to the Public: that Red Clay already supports three districts… We have it from Christina’s Budget liaison that such is not so…
Both Christina and Red Clay pay more into the tax pool than they get back…
Brandywine and Colonial can take that to the bank…….. (and do.)
it is very easy when everything begins to unravel to express frustration on those closest to you. It is so natural. It is so human. We see it every Sunday in teams that begin to lose it. Fights. Bad mouthing teammates to reporters. and coaches not stepping in to control it, more or less letting the team just fall apart.
And some of it is to be expected.. When you are tired. When you’ve tried so hard. When a whole season was on the line and now is no more…. you expect that… At least we’d expect that within ourselves.. I know I’m guilty, and I know everyone else I know, is also guilty… Because we are human…
But.
There are some teams out there that never unravel. They usually win. They sometimes lose. They never pick fights. They control their frustration. They remain professional.. And for the most part, that is not human. That is something higher and above humanity. But many teams, and people, excel at that….
Two of Delawares largest blogs have already reported on the infighting alleged to have gone on. And on both pages, commentators have weighed in as well to send their characteristic blows towards their favorite targets. And like a fight on the sidelines that spills out into the playing area, to spectators it may not have looked the nicest and they have commented as such, that it makes the entire team look unprofessional and bad.
I have looked into the cause of the infighting and as usual when things get tense, have found it was really over nothing. When stressed, any insult is debilitating to a football player.. But when the game is going his way, he just smiles at it.. Meaning the triggers of any confrontations are not worth an explosion on their own. Only when bent to a breaking point, can a proper flip of the finger, snap the twig in two.
It is important here to see this.. When someone rubs you the wrong way, smile and understand they are just speaking their point. You will have your turn and you will rub them the wrong way and they too, smile and understand you are just speaking your point.
This board has been through a lot. Now with the failed referendum, they have the odious job of cutting payroll. This means putting people out of work. Good people. Family people. People better than you or I. On top of Common Core, Smarter Balanced Insanity, a DOE ruled by idiocy, schools being closed to become charters, and redrawing district lines, this is a tough time to have to fire people; especially very good people. That is the hardest thing one could possibly do.
But they have to do it. So whereas a team can hold together as long as one touchdown can put them over.. when the other teams field go goes through, and negates that possibility before the buzzer sounds. they give up hope.
And that is what cannot happen on Christina’s board. For some inexplicable reason, these six have been chosen to be here in this spot right now. It could have been others, but it wasn’t. Out of all candidates across various elections, these are the ones chosen for this hour. The task that fall on them, is not more than they can handle; that is if they stick together. And effective boards do not always get along. Au Contraire. Often there is very strong opinions expressed on both sides of an issue.
But that is how it is suppose to be. When both sides argue with all stops pulled out, if their arguments have merit one side wins out as the more applicable. Choosing a plan of action after it has been vetted out in the open, is far superior than choosing a plan based on intuition or a flip of a coin. Which is exactly what happens on a board that rubber stamps, and will not rise or fall in defense of anything….
Like killing meat for the table, if you see politics in action it is ugly. But it is effective. My caution is that if observers are too quick to criticize, they may find dinner has no meat on the table. And when we are speaking of one of our state’s largest districts, too much is at stake not to have meat at the table…
My advice is to continue to argue but do it all based on facts. Use facts and shy away from all opinions. Remember that one is never guaranteed to win everything one tries.. Only champions can do that…
And champions have to discipline themselves. Knowing that in real tight games, the win or loss could come on a penalty. and they discipline themselves in order NOT to have the penalty fall on them. That is what the Christina Board needs to do.. Simply say to the world, we are playing our championship level right now so all hands must be disciplined. We will argue. We will vote. We will decide. We will not attack ourselves or any other member. We are a team…
Our kids want this team to win.
The real question is where will this team go from here? Remembering the tragedy of the T.O. and McNabb era coming off an almost SuperBowl Win. I can hope that is not the course Christina will follow. I’m sure it is the course the DOE and Markell wishes it would follow… But before signing off I should mention that there is another course to take. and that would be represented by the Giants who lost 5 games of 2008 season and suddenly found themselves in the Super Bowl and were able to out-Belichick Belichick… They finally believed in themselves is what happened.
This board has a lot piling on it. but that also means they have the opportunity to show the entire world, just how great a school board can be if they forget themselves individually and focus on their game, which is our children…
It’s really about the children… and if what you do distracts from that, then you really shouldn’t do it. If what you do augments that, then you shouldn’t let anything or anyone stop you.
This board was picked just this way for a reason… I hope that reason was so it could rise to the occasion, and not be those ones who sell out the game for a piece of personal pride…..
This is unprecedented. $21 million… Remember the casinos who were $12 million in the hole? Oh, its a tragedy they whined; we’ll lose jobs, we have no choice but to reimburse the profits being lost by the casino owners…. Remember when they asked for $37 million the next year? Again…. We have to do it…
Well, guess what… Jobs are being lost at Christina too. And it is solely because of Charters…. Minus $21 million!
We pay tax money to fund our public schools. Privateers bribed our legislature (piloted by Sokola (see Exceptional Delaware) into allowing charter schools steal money from public schools…
If we paid taxes to New Castle County and as an example, one fifth of then were being sent to Sussex County because Sam Wilson was a friend of Charlie Copeland and needed a welfare hand-out… we would have a legal case on hand. Our money is collected for our district. If we paid the state that same money then such would be legal; it would be in their jurisdiction.. But we don’t pay the state… We pay our district….
From the 2015 Budget conveniently provided by Those In Favor, we see that Current Expense Tax Receipts for the Christina District is pegged at $76,856,000 out of which is immediately stolen by Charters: $20,146,672…. So the Charters take (20,146,672/76,856,000) or 26.21% of every tax dollar you give.…
For every $500 you are assessed in Christina……. $131 IS NOT GOING TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS… It is going to Charters…..
Which means that for every $12,000 required to teach each child in your school…. there is only $8854 dollars going to your child’s education….
This is Dave Sokola’s fault (again, see Exceptional Delaware)……
Now, compounded to this dilemma is the fact that with the absence of any Race To The Top money those programs pushing Common Core are still costing the district close to $14 million per year… (which incidentally is close to its shortfall… Getting rid of both Common Core and the Smarter Balanced Assessment could make the Christina District financially solvent as is…
But adding the Common Core costs upon to the Charter School costs compounds the problem yielding a loss of $35,000,000 dollars or 45.45% of your local tax dollars…
So those who complain that they aren’t getting the bang for their buck are correct… they are getting exactly 55% of the bang for their buck…
If we simply cut charters off of district funding… and if we simply dropped the Smarter Balanced Assessment, this District would instantly have back $35,000,000 of its lost money to plump down into making its school system one of the best in the state….
The problem is not teachers. The problem is not schools. The problem is not poverty. …. .The problem is not the district…. The problem with education in Delaware all comes from the Corporate Reform movement which is trying hard to bankrupt public schools so they can put in charters and be paid royally for doing so….
The even bigger problem with that, is that only 17% of charters are better off than the schools they replace. 37% are actually worse!!!!! And the balance sort of muddle as the same…. Building charters only gives you a one in six shot at improving the education of those children, while guaranteeing the demise of every one of the 79% remaining in public schools because of the local lack of funding which you can plainly see here in Delaware
We need a class action lawsuit that seeks an injunction of continuing any charter school in 2017… Next it needs to be up to the individual legislators to throw out the lobbyists and listen to real people for a change, and remove all charters from district funding… All the tax base goes to the feeder school’s district And we need to remove the Smarter Balanced Assessment as our state albatross…. (Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner reference)
We can fix Christina’s problems without more taxes….. if we unite to rid ourselves of all charter schools and the Smarter Balanced Assessments…
But you see… the problem of the shortfall is plainly not that of Christina’s District… it is all Dave Sokola’s (see Exceptional Delaware)
Being a superintendent is not easy. Many people think if you are the boss, you just tell people what to do and it gets done. Yet they never do all that their boss asks them to do? So why would they think other people would act differently?
Being a superintendent or any boss really, means that for every decision you make, someone is going to fight you over it… You order vanilla; someone thinks it should be strawberry… You pay $80,000; someone thinks it should be $50,000.. and so on.
There is a very bad tendency to rate people on how well they are liked, and not on what they accomplish. This is a giant American problem; not one found in just one district, of just one state…. No. Measuring how someone is liked is good for movie stars because it translates into movie tickets… But measuring an executive for anything other than what he get done, is superficial… Often a brusque conversation can give great results. Amazing results. But we hear only “how rude.” The results coming from that “rude” moment never hit the radar.
As Americans with gadgets, we for the most part have become intellectually lazy.. When something pops upon our screen, we as if inside a video game, make a decision immediately and move on to the next one… In other words our internal world, a very dangerous place, is in the process of restructuring our physical world into its own self image…
We think Immigrants are rapist as stated by Donald Trump? We never ever again challenge ourselves otherwise to see if it is true… It is. because we think it…
This is nothing short of psychosis. Many of you growing up under the threat of LSD (what a joke) were warned of people thinking they could fly and throwing themselves off of buildings. Or, my favorite, thinking the blue flame on the stove was a flower and sticking their nose into its heart to smell the nectar.. Those are blatant forms for psychosis, which in a very loose general definition, would probably mean steadfastly believing something inside your head is true because after all, it wouldn’t be in your head if it wasn’t true….
Lazy people never challenge themselves.
And that is what is happening to Dr. Freeman. The phrase: “I’m offended” should always be responded to with: “Good, it’s about time someone told you the truth…” Being offended is part of life. It is like open carry. If everyone has their gun out in the open, no one is going to try to pull their gun out and shoot someone first. If I offend you, it is because you are a douchebag… Pure and Simple. You need being offended. On the other hand, if I feel offended, I seriously have to look and see if I am a douchebag, or if I play one on TV, or if the person making the claim has any ground to make such a claim. And occasionally I’ll learn something new from that experience…
But for someone who is a douchebag, to respond to a true characterization of his personality with the words: “I’m offended.” and then take action against the person speaking truth, as we did back when duels were fought over alleged breeches of honor, sets civilization backwards by centuries.
Even allowing dismissal over alleged slights or slants, creates stalemate and chaos. For all one has to do to stop a very effective leader, is say they don’t like them… One doesn’t even need to say why… I don’t like him, and leave it at that, smears a very good person when all know the reason the person not liking him doesn’t like him, is because they want his spot.
If we would just make it a point of automatically firing the accused and the accuser every time there was a flash in the pan, instead of taking sides, flashes in the pan would cease to be an issue. What’s the point of accusing for personal gain, if you lose big?
Now for those of you skimming, this article is not about Mr. Freeman or the Christina Board. They are being used theoretically to illustrate a bigger moral point. Seriously, this is important stuff; you shouldn’t skim.
But when Christina needed a strong superintendent they got one in Dr. Freeman. Him and the board became one against Governor Markell, against Race To The Top, against the buying of an school board election; against Common Core, against the Smarter Balanced Assessment.
When Hollodick folded.. Freeman did not… When Merv folded… Freeman did not. When Appo folded… Freeman did not..
And that is his legacy.. The students come first… not as a political slogan spouted by Heffernan, Markell and Murphy. We can tell political slogans by the actions behind the words… When you say student come first but all your work is to bolster business takeover of publc schools, you cannot be taken seriously…
But when you say students come first, and you fight the business takeover of public schools, you are a man to be trusted…
And anytime one is removed for personality reasons… it is always, always, always, always, always, corporate behind it.. Forget that everyone loved him. It takes just one person in today’s age where we only judge by how well like we are, to say they don’t like him, to overrule years of solid good works…
Good works last, long after Freeman is gone and some corporate douchebag is put in his place…
kavips 
