High Noon For The Delaware State Board of Education On Tuesday
We can do it better ourselves but we won’t tell them that.
The Delaware State Board of Education could be shut down as of Tuesday. They face the Delaware Joint Legislative Overview and Sunset Committee. The State Board was put under review by the committee last year after some very rough years under former Governor Jack Markell. Many of the complaints circulate around their Executive Director, Donna Johnson. As well, many citizens and education organizations in the state feel the State Board has outlived their usefulness and just seem to perpetuate agendas brought forth by corporate education reform organizations such as the Rodel Foundation of Delaware and the Delaware Charter Schools Network. I wrote about their last meeting with the committee over a month ago. But I was able to be the sole attendee at a meeting yesterday where the State Board discussed their final meeting with the Sunset Committee and boy was it a doozy!
The committee issued their recommendations to the State Board last week. On Friday, the State Board met to discuss recommendations and their strategy for the meeting on Tuesday. This was a public meeting but I was the only member of the public who attended the meeting. The recommendations to the State Board can be seen below. But after you read those recommendations, you must read the lightning rod comments made during their planning session. To clarify, the name Bunting will come up a lot in what I write below. In Delaware, we have Secretary of Education Dr. Susan Bunting and State Board member Nina Lou Bunting. They are not related. When I mention Bunting below, it is the State Board of Education member, not the Secretary of Education. Executive Director Donna Johnson and State Board of Education member Pat Heffernan did NOT attend this meeting. The recommendations from the committee are below.
As I wrote above, I was the only person who attended this meeting. No one from the Delaware Dept. of Education attended, no legislators, no school personnel and no outside education organizations. It was an eye opener. The committee found multiple instances of State Board duties not covered in Delaware statute. One of the recommendations was to have other High Noon For The Delaware State Board of Education On Tuesday – Exceptional Delaware 2017:
