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I (Referencing Kevin from Exceptional Delaware who may or may not take down an article he wrote which would be a travesty to our job of maintaining a historical record of educational issues in this amazing time of change) .… had an email forwarded to me this evening concerning an incident at Newark Charter School earlier this week. While checking to see if something happened, I found the News Journal already covered this. But what the News Journal didn’t publish was the email Newark Charter School’s Greg Meece sent to the parents about the altercation between a teacher and a student. You can see that below. But I have several dozen questions about this incident which didn’t even come up in the article. While I respect the fact that Meece can’t talk about the incident because it involves an employee, the comments on the News Journal article spin many different tales…
He said the incident was in a classroom earlier this week and involved a female high school student and teacher in a physical altercation over a cell phone. He added the cell phone did not belong to the student. Meece said neither was at school Friday, but no formal disciplinary action has been taken at this time.
Excuse me? A teacher has a physical altercation with a student and NO arrest was made? Seriously? Since when can a teacher have ANY type of physical altercation with a student? Has the student and teacher been out of school all week? Where is the due process for the student and the teacher if NO formal disciplinary action has been taken at this time? Was “informal” disciplinary action taken?
This is the definition of a physical altercation, with certain words bolded for emphasis:
A physical altercation is defined as being an argument, dispute or altercation that involves force or physical aggression. Physical altercations differ from verbalaltercations because physical contact is involved. These types of disputes are sometimes referred to as fights and may legally qualify as battery.
A peaceful gathering? Maybe for the students, but according to this commenter on Facebook, the school wasn’t too happy about it…
That is a very different yarn than the one spun by Greg Meece in his email to the parents and the News Journal:
“The principal of our building spoke to the students and thanked them for their voices and being heard,” Meece said.
What happens at Newark Charter Schools stays at Newark Charter School… until a student and a teacher have a physical altercation that is. I don’t know why Newark Charter School treats itself like it is an isolated school cut off from the rest of the state. How much goes on there that the public has no clue about? If someone didn’t tip off the News Journal or myself on this, who would have known? But we see teachers getting arrested in Delaware. For more egregious things than this, but it happens. Perhaps the teacher was defending herself. But according to the above commenter, it was all a lie. If there was any physical force involved, were the police notified? The Senate Bill which minimizes when the police are called, Senate Bill 207, passed in the Delaware General Assembly this year, but it was very specific in its language to specify “between students”. It did not mention staff members. Which means Newark Charter School, if they did not notify the police, may have broken the law. Whether it was a student or a teacher, if the matter became physical, they are legally obligated to do so. Why didn’t the News Journal question that aspect of the story?
Scandals? Sweeping things under the rug? I thought NCS was this model of good behavior and nothing happened there…
It is hard to believe this particular commenter in one aspect. If this happened Monday, there is no possible way the parents could have sued the teacher in four days. They may have talked to an attorney, but nothing moves that fast. But they are absolutely right that students should have a voice. The threats coming out of the administration when students were having a peaceful sit-in could have been treated with more respect if the above commenter’s comments are true.
What does Newark Charter School’s code of conduct say about this kind of incident? It doesn’t reference this specific type of situation, but it does say this:
Referral to Police Agency is required for students who intentionally and offensively touch a staff member who is attempting to break up a fight or who is attempting to keep a student from injuring him/herself or others. Recommendation for expulsion may be considered.
But they do reference House Bill 322, which the Delaware General Assembly passed in 1997:
In addition to any action taken by school officials, the school will comply with the notification requirements of H.B. 322 which includes notification of police.
This was in a section that talked about fighting. I hate to keep beating on the same drum, but if this was an incident that was so minor, why would Meece refer to it as a “physical altercation” which has a very definitive legal meaning?
Are parents allowed to discuss this incident? On the closed to members only NCS Parents Facebook page, it was a huge topic of discussion this week until the moderator deleted all the comments about it to protect the identity of the student and the teacher. Even though all the parents already knew about it. This was reported to me by a few parents of students who belong to that page.
Newark Charter School needs to be more open and honest with parents about situations, instead of putting on an “everything’s fine” face with the News Journal. There was a lot Meece could have talked about with this article, but I’ve always been told Meece is a very smart man and chooses his words very carefully. But no public school receiving taxpayer dollars should think they can isolate themselves from transparency. They aren’t North Korea.
I’ve heard of many teachers at NCS getting fired with no form of due process whatsoever. Delaware charter schools do not have teacher unions which, in this case, would have given the teacher protection if they were fired over this. But we will most likely never know because of the isolationist mindset coming from this school…
RELATED READING
One thing that is important this election season is to find out who is for charter schools and who is against them… Then vote for someone who is against them….
Recently some regulations were changed deep inside the DOE to allow more money to go to charters and be taken out of public schools… They supposedly were stopped by loud noises from legislators. But such will keep coming again and again as long as Charter School law remains open and charters still remain an option….
Did you ever wonder why they always have to “sneak” charter school changes through? Why do YOU sneak things, like past your wife or husband, like past your boss, like past your children? Is it because you don’t want to get caught? Exactly… So why are we “sneaking” changes to charter law in the dead of night?
Because it is bad legislation for Delaware’s soon to be one million people, and it benefits probably 5 friends of those players pushing it forward…. The only way to pass something that will piss off one million to make 5 people happy, is to keep it hidden from those million people…
When someone says at any forum that they are FOR charter schools…. if you can, ask them in public this question:…. Since only one in five children go to charter schools in Delaware, and since Charter Schools take money away from those other four…. how do you propose re-compensating those Public Schools who get hurt by having a Charter take their money, so the levels of educations for 4 out of 5 Delaware children, can remain the same??
And that’s the rub… When they say we are going to improve education for one fifth of our children by great charter schools, what isn’t said at all, is that 4/5ths of our children now have to suffer educational losses due to funding cuts!
How can that even make education better?
If you have a +1 and then add a -4 to it, Common Core or not, you still get a -3 compared to zero change if you did nothing at all….
So ask them, in public, out loud, how if they promote a charter, what is their plan to fill the gap of funding in the public schools system caused by those very charters they support….
Then, don’t vote for them. Vote for their opponent…
Because in all campaigns leading up to this year…. there has been deep silence on that other side of the issue…..
But that other side, the harm they do to the MAJORITY of students, is exactly why charters in 25 years, have never adequately functioned to improve education across any wide area….
Delaware is very amateurish when it comes to smearing people. No one takes smears seriously anymore and the consequences usually fall back on those pushing the smear forward.
Kathleen Davies works for Tom Wagner’s Auditor’s office. She supports better control of charter school wastefulness and has been behind some of the very scary reports the Auditor of Delaware’s office has recently released, showing the blatant corruption and disregard for all taxpayers dollars, an illness that continues to run rampant throughout Kendall Massett’s charter school conglomeration…
We find she was put on administrative leave and her reports pulled from the website… Kevin has a copy of one (more?) of the pulled reports…
Her being put on administrative leave is very reminiscent of shutting down a casino because one is shocked, shocked, that legalized gambling is going on there….
Her alleged violation was “not following required procedure”. Something we all do at work, usually for our own self interests, but in her case, she was doing it for both our state’s interests, the We, The People taxpayer’s interests……
Here is how it works. If you work for the state in a high enough capacity, you are given what amounts to a charge card which you use for state associated expenses. If I’m required to go to Los Angeles to gather information on a national charter school network responsible for many of Delaware’s charter school accounting errors, and have to do so undercover, then I would use my card along the way and those expenses would be charged to the state and those who monitor whether expenses are spent wisely could immediately see that they were….
Charge cards are new. The old way was to pay it from ones personal account and then be reimbursed back at some later time…. This was standard through most of our lives and is still allowable under law….
The charge is that Kathleen Davies used step 2 instead of step 1….
Now. Why would anyone working undercover to root out corruption of state funding not want to be immediately traced to the minute where they were or what they were doing? This action does not make sense to me… You see, if I was going to investigate something that was above the law, that required me to walk in and say I auditing your office today as required by law, show me your records…. I would WANT that office to know beforehand that I was enroute to their city, that I was staying overnight in a hotel close by, that I would be in early the next morning JUST SO THEY COULD WIPE OUT ALL INCRIMINATING DOCUMENTATION, DISPOSE OF ALL DAMAGING EVIDENCE, SCRUB ALL FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS, just to make my job so much easier…
“Well, all looks good, nothing wrong here… Keep up the good work.”
Why would any auditor want to hide where they were, when they were coming, or what they were up to? I just can’t understand such thinking….
Btw, this standard procedure probably should be corrected and allowed specifically by future legislation because there are certain arms of our democracy that do need secrecy in order to accomplish their jobs, which primarily is to hold people who can’t be trusted, accountable….
If you don’t want advanced knowledge of your whereabouts, you had better not use your credit card. One should not be punished for helping the state catch hardened criminals (which Charter School operators under Kendall Massett are rapidly becoming)
Here is what happened……
A phone call: I need Kathleen Davies fired today… Do it.
Auditor Tom Wagner: But she’s a great investigative employee, one of the best we’ve ever had? How can I possibly fire her?
Phone call: Find something, or else; anything you can, just take her down today…...
The only thing they could find on a squeaky clean employee was this legal but secondary method of reimbursement for state caused expenses… The state would of course prefer the use of the credit card just so they could have instant knowledge of her whereabouts, and that she did not give them….
And so, she gets a surprise ongoing 2+ month paid vacation courtesy of the person who made that call to Tom’s office. There is no savings to the taxpayer in all of this. Instead we get continued corruption plus paying the expense of an auditor who is doing nothing for which she is being paid….
But they bumbled… They made it public thinking that the smear would simply go unnoticed and all would assume she was guilty as charged… Well, guess what? It didn’t work… Because far from being corruptible like Dave Sokola, Charlie Copeland, and Earl Jaques, she is a fighter for Delaware’s taxpayers and particularly those too young to pay taxes, Delaware’s students….
(Corruption in Charter Schools is rampant (95%) because under their charters, they are given carte blanche to do anything they want; that hurts all students.) Kathleen Davies was one undercover guardian and benefactor of all little children in Delaware…
So realizing their mistake, they garnered the News Journal to do a piece to taint her further…. But the evidence present there is a joke….
Listen to this comic and misguided attempt to smear a courageous fighter for little children…
“At issue is about $7,700 in reimbursements Davies received over four years for expenses she attested were work-related, like hotel stays, meals and mileage while traveling on state assignments.”
4 years is (365.25 X 4) = 1461 days…. That averages out to $5. 27 cents a day. Really? Dismissing a prime state investigative employee for $5.27 cents a day done in reimbursement form instead of credit cards? (The reality being that Delaware on average spends $10,958,904 every single day (compared to $5.27)… They laid her off so it would then only spend $10,987,899 each day….
Which brings up a valid point. Why do we have two state employees (now whistle-blowers) costing us each $68,987 a year, spending inordinate amounts of time looking over $5.27 cents average-per-day forms to find if something, if anything is wrong? Was it for the benefit of all Delaware’s citizens for which they searched for that averaged $5.27 cents in error? Or was it under someones orders to find something, anything, that made them dig through $5.27 cents a day to paint a dirty picture?
Laughable? OF COURSE. Bumbling? OF COURSE.
Just curious if we read this the same way. Does this following sound like a smear to you, exactly the way the News Journal painted it?
“$517.54 for an out-of-state hotel stay and $25.50 for out-of-state meals. In December 2013, she was paid $558.28 for several categories of expense, including private car mileage, travel both within and out of Delaware, and meals. Then, after a break of several months, Davies was reimbursed $260 in May 2014 and $586 in June 2014.”
Oh My Goodness… Such Graft! Such Corruption! So much money being profligated!
But is it? In a city, rooms cost $150 on the cheap (hooker prices) but one should expect to pay $250 to be deemed respectable. That amount quoted would be 3 days on the cheap, and 2 days at normal. I must assume meals were included because I’m outraged I just spent $29.42 in one drive-thru visit buying cheap-ass McDonald‘s for just 5 people in my car…. Private car mileage reimbursement at close to the IRS figure is .445 cents per mile… In a normal day’s drive I’d be paid $44.50 each day… a day trip to DC would be $106; a day trip to NYC would be $89.00. Throw in parking, meals, you are talking only about a 2 or 3 commuted day stints across a year, done quite frugally.
Math completely vindicates her… there is no crime here! So why is she laid off?
Her testimony before the House Educational Committee KILLED future Charter School development in this state, the pet project of Dave Sokola, Senator from the 8th District… Totally killed it. Zero. Nada… Today’s Private Charter Schools in Delaware are gasping their last breaths.. and no more will be built. Only those school district-run Charter Schools such as in Red Clay’s district or Newark’s WHITE ONLY Charter School, have any hope of surviving past the next governorship….
She told the truth and for that ….. her boss got the dreaded phone call…. (see above)…
Directly lifted from the News Journal is all the evidence required to vindicate her… She is innocent of all charges and with a good guess we can conclude she was removed solely to stop her from digging further into Charter School malfeasance whose scope is so large, it is currently beyond Delaware taxpayer’s ability to imagine it…..
Bottom line: here is how to help her….. If you want change, this is how you begin it…
Support Dave Sokola’s opponent, Meredith Chapman, this election cycle in the 8th Senatorial District… It means voting for a Republican but unlike her opponent, that Republican is a good honest decent person…
Or if you don’t really care about auditors, charter schools, skull drudgery, but do care about Delaware overall, this is the one state legislative campaign you will need to watch closely…. and if you live in upper Newark, you need to vote to unseat your incumbent!
The evil leeching out of Delaware’s 8th Senatorial District has been oozing long enough….. It needs plugged.
Just looking at tonight’s headlines popping up around the state, tells the whole story….
OMG did Moyer really miss their DE DOE charter modification application meeting 1/29?
Unbelievable! New charter school board member starts of with LIES
Delaware Libertarian kicks NJ’s Jimmy Olsen in the nuts..
Those aren’t sensationalized News Journal headlines, usually having the ring of those of National Enquirer. Instead, these are the real news happening off of news feeds, public notifications, and task force meetings. All with no spin.
The Charter Organization is falling apart in Delaware. It is frayed. It has no idea what it is doing. It is fractured. it is a classroom being run by the kids when the teacher has left the building…
How could this happen?
Well for one, putting all hope for Delaware’s educational needs in a ex-Maryland gym teacher, may just have been the beginning. No district experience. No charter experience, No legal experience. No business experience. Only some grooming by an out-of-touch think-tank… Repeat after me: Charters are Good… “Charters are Good”…. Teachers are bad….”Teachers are bad”…. Bust Labor Unions… “Bust Labor Unions”… Perfect score there buddy, you are ready to … implement policy… Go get ’em Tiger…
if someone asked you, I mean you personally, who do you think would be the best candidate to carry Delaware’s schools forward into the future… would your first choice be… a gym teacher?… Really? That would be your first choice?…
I am told the interview went like this….
Markell: So, Mark Murphy… You want to be a Secretary of Education? What’s your experience?
Murphy: Sir, I was a gym teacher once… for about 3 years…
Markell: Gym teacher, eh? Was it high school? Did you coach? Get any school championships?
Murphy: Uhhh. No Sir… it was an elementary school; they don’t compete at that level over in Maryland….
Markell: Oh, I see.. So why do you think you can be a great Secretary of Education.. then?
Murphy: Well sir. What is your biggest concern? Not with me, but education in general?
Markell: Darn it, Right now I’m caught up dab-middle in this Race To The Top thing… Trying to get a little Federal cash, and this thing is a nightmare… All these new parts, I need someone to take the reins and giddy-up, know what I mean…
Murphy: I’m good at teaching people to race. I did that in gym for 3 years.
Markell: What, you know how to race; Even better, how to teach it? Can you like Race To The Top?
Murphy: Well, Sir, usually our races were on the horizontal plane but once I had my kids do an obstacle race and the finish line was on top of the monkey bars… i guess that could qualify as a Race To The Top, Sir…
Markell: Brilliant.. Someone already experienced with Race To The Top. I’m always amazed at my good fortune. Mark, I’m hiring you, When can you start, right away? Go tell Lillian she needs to be out by Friday… This is awesome, A leader who’s done Race To The Top…
=====
And thus, we inherited a gym teacher as the head of our state’s education department… Sadly, there are many other parts of running a state school system that do not require such implicit gym teaching knowledge… One of which, is how to run a school system. Fortunately the bureaucracy of the district public school systems can hold themselves together through any vacuum of leadership at the top. However, Charter Schools are often run by people unfamiliar with running school, who are winging it themselves; they don’t have that bureaucracy…. It is easy to pretend to run things by picking up a phone and yelling into it… Saying things like “You’ve better figure that out and get it done, pronto”… Anyone can do that, even an ex felon off Spruce Street. No talent required for that. But when they don’t know what to do, and have no mentor to answer their questions, and it is all equally new to the person yelling from the top, then you have a situation ripe for disaster…..
And that is what we are seeing. Pencader…. Moyer….. Reach…. Tomorrow we will see that Newark Charter is failing. The inner city boondoggle will be teaching in a giant building, with no soap for students in the bathrooms… (There are inner city; they don’t need soap) simply because unlike public schools, no one in the Charter organization has a checklist. or the experience to develop one.
And this is why Charter Schools fail children. Newark Charter School has a rigid application process, and only those with “a certain bent” are allowed in its doors. The public schools still have to teach everyone. But when they have certain classes also with “a certain bent”, those classes get so much more than anything a charter can offer…
It all comes down to experience. If Charter Schools were ever rated internationally on their dodge-ball skills, Delaware might have some of the finest in the world…. Alas, but they aren’t……..
kavips 
As a student at Newark charter for 10 years who participated in the sit in, I can attest that this article is greatly flawed. Newark charter certainly does not “isolate” itself and frankly, it’s evident that the author is not in any way connected with the school. I think the manipulation of the school’s emails and the conclusion based on inaccurate information is simply a low blow to not only Newark Charter, but charter schools everywhere. Contrary to what you may believe, the police are involved in the case and Newark charter has no intention of hiding any information from the law. In fact, Newark charter administration has little power in this situation; lawyers have been hired to deal with this situation legally. Please leave this situation to Newark charter admin, the family of the student, and the police. We certainly don’t need nor want misinformed commentators (who have no connection to the school whatsoever) to form inacurrate conclusions.
I’m a citizen of the state. When you guys get some of your rewards, part of my tax dollars pay for that. When you get to keep all the transportation money over your budgeted amount, who helps pay for that. I do. So you can be charter strong all you want. I’m up for transparency strong.
That is an argument that people who lost use. You have no idea of the exact place that your money goes and if it bothers you that much, you can leave delaware! So stop this bullshit please
Whoever you are MB, learn your place. When it comes to NCS, you are absolutely right. I have no idea where anyone’s money goes. How about making all that student body activity money fully transparent. That would be a good place to start. How about filing IRS 990 tax returns like the other 25 or so charters in the state already do. And don’t tell me to leave Delaware. What you are doing is perpetuating the perception most people already have about NCS around the state. It’s not about winning or losing, but I guess you wouldn’t know that MB.
As well, be ABC or Charter Strong. You can’t be both. Pick one and stick with it. Thank you.
Clearly these are different people. But since you just love assuming things based off of limited and bias knowledge, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
I actually find it hysterical you are telling me who this situation belongs to and yet you freely offer information that others may not know. I believe that is called hypocrisy!
You need to look up the definition of hypocrisy. This student said that they don’t want misinformation leaked, so here they are trying to inform. While I don’t agree with the fact that they gave specific information, I do agree that you should not pretend your opinion matters on this topic and that this should be left to the people it applies to. We wanted people to know that we are not perfect students who don’t rebel. That’s why we were okay with the other article. But we had no intention of having others look into personal business.
I think MB belongs on the hood of a small car….. Oh, my bad…I was thinking of MG…..
I would like some clarification.
The teacher was fired. Correct?
The students were protesting the firing of said teacher. Correct?
If, in fact, there was no physical altercation, what were the grounds for firing?
(I fully recognize that, legally, GM needs no grounds – just asking)
(Like GM, I too need no grounds…. just coffee extract…… )