Why Should Delaware Care?
The Christina School District is Delaware’s third largest district, with more than 13,100 students. After a year of controversy between its school board and the former superintendent, which resulted in a lawsuit and frustration from community members, the board is going back to the community to help determine the goals for its next superintendent.
After a year of turmoil, the Christina School District will hold community listening sessions to help its school board members establish what they call goals and guardrails for new superintendent, Deirdra Joyner.
The goals are a component of Joyner’s $225,000 employment contract and could include metrics for student achievement, and fiscal responsibility. They also will help the board to evaluate Joyner’s leadership of the embattled school district.
Christina Board President Monica Moriak told Spotlight Delaware that the listening sessions would begin “in the next month or two.”
The decision to hold community listening sessions comes as the district tries to emerge from a string of controversies that have left its reputation battered.
Those included efforts to oust a school board member who has been living in Pakistan, and a wrongful termination lawsuit filed in December by former Christina School District Superintendent Dan Shelton.
Four months after Shelton sued the district, the Christina school board considered three finalist candidates to become the next superintendent. During a candidate forum in April, Joyner said that, if chosen, she would push an initiative that would highlight the school board’s role of creating long-term goals for the district.
Her job, as superintendent, would be to create “interim goals” that would serve as steps to reach those larger goals.
“And then we all agree on the difference between board work and superintendent work,” she said at the time. “And we agree to hold each other accountable for that.”
Later that month, the Christina Board of Education selected Joyner to become the next superintendent. It approved her contract the following May.
Then, just two months later, the Christina school board voted to amend her contract in a way that shifted the responsibility for setting the goals and guardrails from the superintendent to the school board.
Moriak said during a meeting in August that the amendment would not decrease Joyner’s accountability to the board.
Still, it sparked another backlash for the beleaguered district, with board member Shannon Troncoso claiming in the subsequent weeks that the change would lessen Joyner’s accountability to the district.
Troncoso told Spotlight Delaware she believes the changes to Joyner’s contract does lessen her accountability, “otherwise there would not have needed to be a change.”
“I believe it’s important that any reduction in responsibility be accompanied by a corresponding adjustment in pay,” she said.
The changes to Joyner’s contract were recommended to the board by consultant Rodney Jordan, according to internal emails reviewed by Spotlight Delaware. Jordan serves as a coach to both the school board and to the district administration through a Texas company, called Effective School Boards.
The district awarded Effective School Boards the $90,000 contract last December.
