Why Should Delaware Care?
The Christina Board of Education selected Deirdra Joyner, its current deputy superintendent and chief academic officer, to replace interim Superintendent Robert Andrzejewski. The decision comes after a longstanding controversy between the school board and its former superintendent, which has resulted in legal challenges, new legislation in Dover, and frustration from community members.
With a 4-3 vote on Thursday, members of the Christina School District Board of Education chose their deputy superintendent, Deirdra Joyner, to lead the district’s embattled operations as the next superintendent.
Their choice followed a public forum earlier this month where Joyner outlined her suggestions for the district, including recruiting teachers from beyond the mid-Atlantic, maintaining more of a presence at Legislative Hall, and creating an online suggestion box for parents, teachers and students to submit comments to the superintendent.
She also said that, if chosen as the next superintendent, she would push an initiative that would, in part, highlight the school board’s role to create long-term goals for the district, and the superintendent’s to create “interim goals.”
“And then we all agree on the difference between board work and superintendent work. And we agree to hold each other accountable for that,” she said.
In selecting Joyner, school board Member Y.F. Lou joined what in the past had often been a minority voting bloc on the Board of Education of Monica Moriak, Doug Manley, and Amy Trauth.
Outside of her role in the district, Joyner serves as the president of the Delaware Association of School Administrators and the Delaware Association of Assistant Superintendents.
She is also a member of the Wilmington Learning Collaborative Council and co-chair for the Redding Consortium Operations Committee.
Joyner was chosen over two other candidates, Harold “Brian” Yearwood, the former Columbia, Missouri, superintendent, and Kendra V. Johnson, a lawyer and former Baltimore County school principal, who is not related to state Rep. Kendra Johnson.
The Christina Board of Education will formally extend an offer to Joyner and finalize the terms of her contract. She will assume the role after she accepts the offer and goes through contract finalization.
The vote for Joyner comes less than a year after the board voted by the same 4-3 margin to terminate then-Superintendent Dan Shelton this past summer.
The district has since found itself involved in a litany of controversies, with Shelton filing a long-awaited federal lawsuit in December against the district and four board of education members, arguing that he had been wrongfully terminated.
“[Shelton] is happy for the staff and the students that [Joyner] has been selected,” Shelton’s attorney, Thomas S. Neuberger, told Spotlight Delaware last week.
Delaware lawmakers have also introduced several bills in a response to dysfunction at the Christina School District.
Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton (D-Bear) said her two bills are intended to address Christina Board of Education member Naveed Baqir’s absence from the district. Baqir has only attended one Christina School Board meeting in person during the past 13 months.
He has said he lives in Pakistan to attend medical school and care for his family.
Wilson-Anton’s bills would require that school board members live within their district’s footprint, and would require them to attend meetings in person, with exceptions only for health reasons or military deployments.
Separately, the Christina School District will hold candidate forums starting next Monday in advance of school board elections on May 13.