If you missed the Education Forum Monday night at Newark High School, you missed a really good …show(?). It’s tense right now in education, more so than normal at this time of year and tensions overflowed Monday night. Answers were demanded. Evasive action was taken (by some). And the raw passion our educators have for our teaching showed last night as several times toward the end of the forum, audience members (students, teachers, parents alike) interrupted the prepared Q&A to ask their own questions.
Representative Paul Baumbach hosted what was more of an interview session than a forum with 5 education panelists: Greg Meece, Principal of Newark Charter, Dr. Susan Bunting, Secretary of Education, Senator David Sokola (D-SD8), Elizabeth Paige, Christina School District Board of Education President, and Richard “Super” Gregg, Christina’s new Superintendent of Schools.
Cassandra alerted me to this thing called Storify that can aggregate all your tweets on a given topic in one long timeline…story (clever name). So below is the collection of last nights live Tweet. (Thanks cassandra!)
Kevin Ohlandt also did a bang up summary over on Exceptional Delaware and he pulled some quotes I missed! Give his post a read too.
It’s important right now, with just 13 legislative days remaining for the General Assembly, that you get some face time with your Senator and Representative. The GA is in recess right now, so you can find them in your district. YOU NEED TO TALK TO THEM about this absurdity being touted as a “Budget”. It’s unacceptable.
Shivers. Not good shivers. 13 legislative days.
Everyone should read the Storify post. It’s quite enlightening.
I can’t get past this from… Greg Meece: We do not participate in the referendum process. Yes, yes you have. You choose not to participate. #eduDE
That boggles my mind. Charter schools have every reason to support a referendum since it’s their revenue stream, and the way charters are always trying to get more money from districts you’d think they’d be front and center in their support for a referendum. So why do many of them not participate? I have my theories…
And then there’s this: Sokola: 5 mile radius idea was about controlling transportation costs. #eduDE
I have trouble reconciling controlling transportation costs and support for choice. That said, we could address this by treating ALL choice students the same. Only charter choice students receive transportation. Every other choice student must get to and from the choice school (or the already established bus stop for that school) on their own.
I can’t believe Sokola suggested another committee. Actually, I can.
And this one is a doozy: Meece: Just take the amount of money we have for education and divide it by the number of students. #problemFixed #WTF @eduDE
Is he serious? IS HE SERIOUS??? This cannot be a serious statement?
In fairness to Meece, he followed it by saying more funding should go to kids with higher needs, like special ed. Which is, you know, the system we have now. (with the exception of K-3 basic special ed)
This is exactly why we can’t trust the districts. The referendum should have been rescinded.
@delawareway- “Shivers” because the status quo of continuing to spend without responsible and reasonable controls has finally ended?? “Shivers” because tax and spend policies hurt when there is no real effort to be efficient with public dollars?? “Shivers” because the blue representatives who were entrusted to manage the state finances have managed to put us 400 million in the hole?? “Shivers” indeed.
@ pandora- Charters do NOT participate in heavily pimping referendums because there are laws which identify exactly how much money is supposed to follow each child. That is the amount the charters have to work with. The districts depend on and base their referendums on operational and capital expenditures which are not the charters’ burden. Subsequently, while the charters might receive slightly more per student if a referendum passes, they are not getting some monumental amount if it passes. In addition, the charters, and most thinking people, do not want to be affiliated with the districts’ games of referendums or be tainted by pimping for another Christina referendum . Credibility for district management and administration is woefully low. Like supporting a political candidate who clearly violated the Federal Records Act. To support her meant being tainted by the criminality of her.
Furthermore, Taking the pot of education money and distributing per student is the only democratically fair method of distribution. (kind of like one person one vote). Given some of your comments about weighted choice or weighted transportation funding, you must have thought the 3/5’s constitutional clause was a great idea. Any other method, is an effort to socialize the funds and apply Karl Marx methodologies to engineer what only some consider “fair”. ‘Seriously’, applying moralistic views of who deserves funding or who ‘needs’ the funding has resulted in our current educational chaotic funding system. How’s that working for everyone? Not so good. Serious statement: Redistribution will inevitably lead to running out of other people’s money. How much are we in the hole? How did we get here? Unions, Prevailing wage capital expenditures, fairness tests of who is more deserving, transportation gyrations, food subsidies, laundering services, counseling services, violations of NSA….. Where’s the money go to pay teachers? I have no idea (tongue in cheek) I’m too busy trying to figure out who deserves to be educated and who is socioeconomically too privileged to receive taxpayer funded services.
The budget situation has focused a bright light on why socialism, transfer payments, selective redistribution and tax and spend policies don’t work. Once you entitle a group to special consideration, you create a contract that prevents rational discussion and objective analysis. The educational system has created so many circuitous methods to redistribute funds, they no longer have a method to effectively manage themselves. Social Justice ‘Equity’ has price and when entitlement mentality has taken hold, it’s very hard to retract as evidenced by those who don’t want educational budgets reduced or districts to be consolidated.