I just want to take this time out and compliment Pandora
for truly wonderful blogging on the Red Clay Referendum over the past few weeks. She educated me and I think many others on an issue that needs more attention, and I hope she continues blogging about Red Clay and other educational issues.
Generally speaking, education is one of those issues that everyone says they care about but if you press them on it, no one knows a thing about the true troubles facing our educational systems nor do they have any ideas on what solutions are appropriate. It is only if you have “skin” in the game as a parent or teacher are you in any way knowledgeable about the issue, especially at a local district level. I am sure I just insulted someone there, but I only mean to see it is easy for people like me, who is not a teacher and not a parent, to have no idea what is going on at district level.
Delaware is blessed with wonderful and very knowledgeable education bloggers, John Young, Kilroy and Mike Matthews to name a few. We are lucky here at Delaware Liberal to have Pandora counted among them now.
The documents are (mostly) all there on the web – somewhere. But it takes a tremendous amount of work, and a long memory, to do the research and organize it in a way so normal human beings can see the relationships among the numbers. Thanks Pandora for doing that hard work for us.
Yes,
Pandora rocked this issue out!
Thanks, DD, for this post! I am blushing! Thanks also to Mike and John.
One of the reasons I know so much is because I lived through it. When we purchased our house in 1999 we researched school districts – which since my kids weren’t in school yet was limited to looking into feeders. Ah… to be that naive again!
All that has come to pass was well underway, and under wraps, at that time – a fact I discovered as I became more involved and started digging. Needless to say I learned most of RCCD’s agenda through suburban parents who were kept in the district loop. Had I known then what I know now, we would have purchased that house in Brandywine Hills in the Brandywine School District.
I plan on continuing my efforts. I want info on Red Clay’s SuperPac. I want to solve this targeted get out the “Yes” vote for referendums and school board – and if it can’t, or won’t, be solved then it’s time to move Referendums and School Board Elections to the General Election slate.
I want to know why it’s okay for teachers and staff to contact parents, telling them to support the referendum. There were teachers against the referendum. Were they allowed to call parents and tell them to vote No? Would they even dare?
So yeah, I’m not going away. 🙂
I lived through it too, but didn’t have school-age children at the time so my attention wasn’t focused. Now it is focused. But that’s the way parent involvement goes.
The idea that city parents might be getting different information from suburban parents is disturbing. That will bear some looking into.
In my own blogging, every time I thought of something that might support city schools, I had to stop myself from writing it, because I really don’t know. And I was super cautious not to impose my own views. Going forward we will need an alliance between city and suburban parents.
We’ll have to write everything down too. Too much from the last referendum debates and public meetings was lost to the Delaware Memory Hole. We wasted a lot of energy this month just looking up stuff that already happened.
I am not disappointed the new school will be built. I am not opposed to the school itself. What was lost was the opportunity to use the school as a lever to get Red Clay (and the rest of the establishment) to deal with the issues of city schools and of high-needs children in and out of Wilmington.
We have lost that lever, and now must work that much harder.
Let me dig through the boxes in my basement, Mike. I saved a ton of this stuff. I even have the phone script from Red Clay’s referendum with North Star. Oops, I should have said two separate scripts. One that was read to suburban parents telling them about the renovations and the new elementary school. The other was read to city parents telling them about renovations and… nothing. No new school mentioned.
Red Clay has played this game for a long time.
I haven’t commented much on these threads, but if I had it would have been to point out the awesome blogging going on. Awesome job Pandora.
We had a court case down here in Cape that the school board and administration lost because they provided pizza and ice cream at a get out the “yes” vote on a referendum, using taxpayer money and school resources.
Pandora, when I grow up, I want to blog like you.
MJ, can you send me info on that case?
MJ, I’ll have to keep that in mind. I remember a few years ago when Brandywine SD had a referendum, there was a pizza party at one of the elementary schools. Brandywine goes to the polls in a few weeks (March 28) looking for more of my hard-earned but not available dough. The average increase will be $188.
Sounds like a job for Tom Wagner.
I think they are pretty careful though to make the school-based campaigning plausibly look like neutral GOTV.
I don’t have much to add here except that Pandora really has done a fantastic job here. I was thinking this AM that you wouldn’t get this kind of detail from the NJ — not a slam on them because they have other goals, but this was fantastic information that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
MJ – Which Cape pizza situation are you talking about? The only one I recall and could find mention of was the 2006 incident, where the AG’s office found that Cape did *not* break the law when it offered a pizza party. There was no “court case” involved.
http://attorneygeneral.delaware.gov/office/opinions/2006/06-ib04.pdf
“Although not criminal in nature, the circumstances of the arrangement gave an appearance of impropriety. We understand that a school district seeking to pass a referendum to raise funds would naturally support the referendum and seek its passage. We also understand that a school district may be expected to engage in get out the vote activity to enhance the referendum’s prospects of passage. However, where a school district simultaneously entreats parents of its students to vote yes in the referendum and informs the parents that those students have the opportunity for a reward
if sufficient parents vote, the district creates an appearance of impropriety. Such conduct undermines the public’s confidence in the election results, as well as school officials and should be avoided.”
Gotta love Cape. Take note that no one has filed for the open seat.
Kudos to your Pandora!! You did your research well. Everybody’s a winner here–a new school will be built AND you gave citizens the scrutiny necessary to really decide the necessity of a new school.
Being around the referendum business a time or two–you showed me a new one–the state’s disregard of out-of-district choice to an area. That’s just incredulous. So much for the CN process, and population impact studies we pay for. We would have built double the schools, and not be so closed to choice maybe if we knew the state cared less about taxpayers dollars than we do. We always went groveling when trailers, and 9 periods of lunch were for our own domiciled residents. So you CAN have your cake and eat it too!!! Thanks Pandora.
Referendum numbers by school are now posted. Very interesting.
http://electionsncc.delaware.gov/Red_Clay/2012/rc_ref12.shtml
That may be it, anon. There was some sort of settlement that Cape and the contractor building the new high school agreed to fund a scholarship with about $10K (I believe that was the sum). It was just one more nail in George Stone’s coffin. I thought it had gone to court. I know the anti-referendum folks (Bill Downs, Minard, et al) were crying foul over the pizza party.
And Jen Burton has filed to run for Camilla Conlon’s seat. Claire Snyder-Hall was telling people she was going to run as late as last Friday, but on Monday decided not to run.
Amen!