What Delaware Isn’t Being Told: The Failed Police Attack, Hidden Costs & Wilmington’s School Overhaul

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, Brian, did you want? Me to click go live or I was
waiting for you. We had the wrong.
Ground media, we're taking back the sound, lifting up the truth
until the walls come down. Voices for the Kingdom Hope in
every town. This is where the lost get found
or reclaim ground. Hey, good evening everyone.

(00:35):
This is Brian Shoop. I know you're used to seeing
Katie and myself. Katie is actually at the
hospital with her mother now. I feel comfortable saying that
because she is actually sharing her journey online, her mother
sharing her journey online. She's going through chemo right
now and Katie is at at the hospital with her mother.

(00:56):
And of course, right here on Reclaimed Ground Media.
Our three FS here are faith, family, and freedom.
And we want to make sure that Katie is with her family, she's
with her mother, and she's making sure that she's having
those moments and those experiences and making sure that
she is with her every step of the way.
So she may be joining us later. We told her, don't worry.

(01:18):
If it doesn't happen, doesn't happen.
Be with your mom tonight. I also want to thank our
producer Greg Bolden for that song.
Greg, my son absolutely loves this song ever.
So I'm scrolling through my Facebook page and it comes on
and he he starts singing it. He knows the words.
He knows all the words by now. And he loves the part that goes
whoa, he starts singing that. I like this is so cool, man.

(01:43):
So thank you for creating that. I mean, Greg, Greg plays the
guitar. He the entire song himself.
So you have, you have at least one person who absolutely loves
that song, my son. He he thinks it's the greatest
song. He starts singing it in the car
now like so it, it has a good hook to it.
Thank you so much, Greg. So tonight we are going to talk

(02:03):
about the Reading Consortium. I'm told that is pronounced the
Reading Consortium and how it's going to impact individuals in
the Newcastle area, specificallyWilmington and the surrounding
areas. But before we get into that, I'm
going to first of all ask you guys and Greg, would you help me

(02:24):
out? I don't think we needed that big
to be on the screen. But as you know, we are a
Kingdom LED business. This is something that we are
faith, family and faith, family and freedom.
This is a private business that is run by you, for you.
And I'm going to talk about someof the things tonight that we're

(02:46):
working on and why it is so important that we have you as
part of our our investment. Now I want to talk before we
talk about that, I also want youto know that 10% of everything
that we bring in, not 10% of profits, but 10% of everything
that we bring in actually goes to the Kingdom, that we actually
push it out to churches and local initiatives in order to,

(03:10):
to help the, the Kingdom of God.And that is part of the tithing
that we celebrate and that all Christians celebrate.
And we wanted to be part of our business model as well.
This is the QR code and these are the things that we're
working on. This is why, you know, we don't
just get on here and start talking about stuff we're
working throughout the week. I think I've talked more to Greg
and Katie this week than I'm, they have my wife,

(03:31):
unfortunately. I'm sorry, honey, I will talk
with you. We have a, we have a trip coming
up. I promise I won't pick up my
phone, but some of the things that we're working on that are
incredible stories going on. I want to share with you before
we start talking about the writing consortium.
Of course, all of you know aboutwhat's going on or hopefully you

(03:54):
do. I ran into somebody today I ran
into my pastor today and he didn't know the story about what
is going on at the University ofDelaware and the I can't bring
up the second there you thank you so much Greg.
The suspected terrorist Lukan Khan.

(04:14):
He was arrested by the New Castle County police and found
he had not only a armored plates, not only weapons in his
vehicle, not only weapons in hiscar, but he was found with a
manifesto that outlined his attack.

(04:35):
His what he wanted to do was attack the University of
Delaware police station and inside of this notebook, he had
not only an outline of the University of Delaware police
station, the entrance, the exit,how to evade police if if they
came after him, but he also in his own writings were the words

(04:58):
kill all martyrum and also that martyr.
Martyr is one of the greatest things you can do.
Now I'm 41 one years old. I was in, I was a senior in high
school when 911 happened. That was the event that opened

(05:19):
my eyes to geopolitics and open my eyes.
So there was more than America. And I've never seen any type of
terrorist threat in in this sortof of of environment or this
sort of threat since, you know, since I've been an adult.

(05:40):
So this is a big deal And and AB6 news and out of Philadelphia
and also spotlight Delaware out of Wilmington had this manifesto
in there. But a lot of local a lot of
local news are not carrying that.
This is part of the news. They're just saying that this
guy got arrested, that he wantedto attack the police station and

(06:02):
that there were guns in his car.They're not talking about what
was in his manifesto that it talked about Martra.
They're also not we don't see the the the leaders, the the
governor of Delaware, We don't see the AG, the attorney General
Kathy Jennings of Delaware coming out and thanking the New
Castle County police about the work that they did to apprehend

(06:25):
this individual. And and we're sitting here
wondering why isn't this a bigger deal?
Why aren't they talking about these things?
There could be national implications for this, national
security implications for this and, and this needs to be
something that needs to be talked about more.
It needs to be taken more seriously.
And this is something that we'reworking on.

(06:45):
This is something that we FOIA. I got a e-mail back this
afternoon right before I came onhere.
That's from the Newcastle Countyfor the officer that does for
you for them that the public information officer saying that
she is going to help me with theinformation that we FOIA.
We FOIA this document as you seeon this this manifesto to see

(07:08):
what else is in here. These are from the court
documents that were that were acquired by ABC 6 out of
Philadelphia. But we want to see what else is
in here as well. It once you say the word
Martrum, of course it has. It has the potential to have
religious leanings and there there is there.
There's a lot of stuff that are unanswered here.

(07:30):
So we're going to continue to bring that to you.
That's why it's so important that you support us.
Another thing that we're going after as we are starting to get
this podcast up and rolling, we're, we're actually looking at
another podcast that's going on in Delaware.
And I had an interesting interview with Delaware Business
Times about what Governor Myers is doing on his podcast and his

(07:54):
media. And we want to know exactly
where the funding from this is this is coming from.
You know, we're, we're funding this privately as as we go on,
but we foyed what, how is this being funded?
Is this funding being funded through taxpayer money?
Who is is it being monetized? And where's that monetization
going as well? This upcoming week they're

(08:16):
hosting a trivia, a history on, on the history of Delaware and
somebody's going to win $1000 incash.
So we want to know where this where this money is coming from,
where it's going and is taxpayermoney going to kind of
circumvent the press here in Delaware to push a narrative
that is strictly from the governor's office.

(08:38):
So we're bringing that to you aswell.
Two more I want to talk about before we get to the red and
Consortium very quickly. There has been a number of
policies or excuse me, lawsuits where the attorney general has
been suing the Trump administration and they are
documented online. You can see the documentation

(08:59):
and we we've seen that, but we want to know what the cost has
been to the Delaware, Delaware residents.
Now, whether you agree with it or not, whether you agree with
all the lawsuits or you agree with some of them and not
others. This one is, is from Spotlight
Delaware talks about the Delaware AG challenges Trump
policies about restricting gender affirming care.

(09:20):
If you agree with us or not, we should know what the cost is
from the taxpayers for these lawsuits.
And there is, there is quite a few of them.
There's over a dozen of them that have that have gone on to,
to challenge the federal government.
And hey, we, we want, we're, that's what we do, We challenge.
So we want to, we want to know where the challenges are.

(09:40):
We want to know what money is being spent or what money do
they think that will be that will be spent in the future for
your taxpayer money. And, and the last one which I
don't have a picture for of it just came out recently is the
SNAP program. So we all know about the SNAP
program. The fight that's been going on
in in Washington, but there is anew fight that is about to begin

(10:02):
or has been has been going on but will be coming up in the
news about the federal government trying to find out
information from the States and trying to dig into their
information about who is eligible and who is not eligible
from their SNAP programs. Now there's many states who have
have given the data to the federal government of their

(10:24):
state level data to the federal government.
And among these states, they've literally saved hundreds of
thousands of dollars from fraud of their their SNAP from their
SNAP programs. But there are many, there are
several states, including California, including Delaware,
including Maryland that will notshare that local data.
And what is that going to mean for you?

(10:45):
Are they going to be cut off a SNAP?
Are they going to be? Is this going to be another
round of a fight between the federal government and the state
of Delaware? And that's going to be
interesting to see and, and we want to hear from you.
Or do you want that those snap benefits to be looked at to see
if there is fraud or there there's not fraud.

(11:06):
So these are the things that we're working at.
So that's why we asked for, for your support.
That's why we asked for you to to go and log on to Tony dot URL
URL slash RGM support. You can also go to our website,
reclaimgroundmedia.com. You can click on this QRR code.
We're submitting FOIA's. We're doing our work.

(11:26):
We're doing our due diligence toinvestigative journalist.
Katie was on the Rick Jensen show and Greg was on the Rick
Jensen show this morning as welltalking about the the foiled
terrace plot in Newark today. So we are working hard for you
and we're committed to it. And and we just want to bring
you the latest news of what's going on.

(11:47):
Now to get to the main subject tonight is the reading
consortia. Thank you, Robert Ray, for
saying about the SNAP program. Yeah.
But you know, I believe that it should be looked into as well.
And any program really, it doesn't matter if it's for for
social causes or it's for taxes.It should be looked into to see
if there's any fraud. There's any way that we can we

(12:10):
can improve it. So Greg, is there any way to put
the, the comments up on the sidethat I can see it?
Is there a way for me to. Oh, I think I found it.
Thank you very as I'm speaking, I find it so tonight, the main
driver of tonight's conversationis the Reading Consortium and

(12:32):
many people I am very, you know,don't know that it's going on
and it's very interesting. They have held a lot of lot of
meetings. There has been a committee put
together and they've been meeting for several years.
But there are still so many people that are going to be
affected by this and so many people who have children within
the school districts that don't even know that this is going on.

(12:54):
Katie just talked with a woman last night that said she had no
clue that this was going on and she lives in Wilmington.
So that's why we wanted to bringthis up, because this is
basically the implementation path.
And what we're going to talk about tonight is the history of
the Reading Consortium and the history of the school district.

(13:15):
And we're going to talk about these first two dates, December
2020. Fifth, that's when the
consortium actually makes. This month, they will make a
vote to the final redistricting option.
So this is coming up next week. They are going to make a vote of
which of these three options aregoing to choose.
And then in February, they're going to have public hearings
that are held on that vote of which district they're going to

(13:40):
to push forward in June. It's going to come to the
General Assembly in June of nextyear.
And then the implementation of this plan is going to be LED out
through the next couple years. But this is the level of Shannon
Tiberi's on here. She's going to talk with us
later tonight about the finances.
She also has some great videos of when you get involved.
And this is when you get involved, if you have not

(14:03):
already, because the decision about these three plans is
what's happening now. Now I'm going to give you a
little bit of background about the reading Consortium.
And it's, it's an interesting story.
It really is because the the redistricting of Wilmington if
if you're not familiar with the actual history here, this is a

(14:23):
school district that it that theinside the city of Wilmington.
These are the these are the fourschool districts that we're
talking about here, Christina, Colonial, Red Clay and
Brandywine. And the city of Wilmington is
split up between, as you can see, it is split up between

(14:44):
those. And if you go back and I'll
bring up the other map real quick again, you can actually
see some of these, this Christina right here actually
has a little island here in Wilmington.
They actually call it the Christina Island.
And the reason why the city of Wilmington is broken up is
because of court, federal court orders over 50 years ago that

(15:09):
that has left a confusing, tangled, tangled up mess for
parents and for and for schools,school districts.
And that if you look at that really quick, that reminds me,
and I'm not drawing any other parallels to this, trust me, but
it looks like Berlin when I lookat it as history.
It's just like divided up. The city's divided up and it's

(15:30):
divided up into four places. Please don't take that out of
context. I'm not saying that it's any
other any other parallels to it.But this came from, you know,
the 1970s federal descent segregation orders to carve up
the city of Wilmington and basically ensure that

(15:52):
individuals, the black individuals in the city of
Wilmington, were desegregated and going to suburban schools
that had mainly white children. And the white children were
coming into the city of Wilmington so that the races
could go to school together. And that is why you see the

(16:15):
makeup of that map right there and why the city of Wilmington
is broken up into four differentdistricts.
Now, the reason why many people on the ground level really want
this to have been asking for decades for this to, to stop.
Well, there's a number of reasons, but obviously

(16:36):
Wilmington is historically a community that is is is 1 it you
know, it has this. You can't draw a line between
streets and drive people to other school districts.
And then they're disconnected from the streets that they
actually live in the streets, the streets that they live in,
just like any other town is their neighborhood.

(16:56):
That's where they go to the park, that's where their
neighbors across the street thatthey're friends with their
families live together. This is a the Wilmington is a
city that historically has been locked in together with
businesses, with families. And that's what they want to do,
is bring the city back together under a plan where the districts

(17:17):
can be one city again, because it's confusing to parents.
Parents are saying, OK, now my kid has to get on a bus to for
an hour and 15 minutes to go to their school or I have to go to
the admin building to talk with the administrator and I've got
to drive a hour and 15 minutes to go there and it's just not

(17:38):
working. So each, you know, what is
actually did was break up these historically connected
neighborhoods in a call of, of trying to to balance, you know,
the the suburbs and the the cityall into one.
And there's many people that arecalling for this.

(18:00):
And there's three choices that we'll talk about later.
We've got the president of President Heller from the
Brandywine School District that's going to talk about the
three choices that are on board.There's a metropolitan choice,
which is the Wilmington and the closest suburbs together, a
split model, which is the city split between Brandywine and Red
Clay and consolidation, which isall four districts into one

(18:24):
large county wide district for Newcastle County.
So there's, there's been a, there's, there's, there's going
to be huge changes. And right away what you're going
to see is at least 1600 Wilmington students that are in
the Christina school District, they will not be in the
Christina school district anymore.
The Christina school district, that little island that I showed

(18:45):
you before where the green is inthe middle of your screen,
that's going to be taken away nomatter which one of these three
plans passes. So the, the schools there,
there's no uniform vision for the city right now.
And that's what I think that's one of the positive things that
they're hoping comes from the, the redistricting is that there

(19:06):
will be a uniform vision for thecity.
But what we're going to talk about tonight, and I'm going to
bring one of the parents on in just a minute, is some of the
concerns that they have because there's a lot of information
that has not been given to the community about how much money

(19:27):
this is going to cost. If there's going to be new
schools built in the city of Wilmington, there's an equity
dashboard that hasn't been built.
And first let me talk about the money that has been spent.
And then I'm going to go to one of the the parents from
Brandywine School District and then we'll talk about the
finances with Shannon Tiberi. So the money that has already

(19:49):
been spent. And I want to bring this up
because we're talking about kindof the past history here about
this. Let me bring this slide up real
quick. So this is the Reading
Consortium to date, and it's since 2020 to 2025, there has
been a total of 1.44 million spent for staffing, research and

(20:11):
operations from the University of Delaware and Delaware State
University. That means 1.44 million spent on
people to tell them what kind ofoptions they have for
redistricting. What kind of options it would it
would look like if they were to have these, these and I believe
they either started with six or or 9 different options.

(20:33):
The second is an equity investment, $30 million has been
spent in the low performing schools already for early
childhood for, for pre-K and yeah, for pre-K services,
teacher recruitment, which is given extra money, I believe at
least $10,000 for teachers who are teaching in the low

(20:55):
improvement schools and wrap around services for, for, for
children as well for these low performing schools.
And then another 14.6 million has been directed towards
literacy, extended learning and behavioral health for the
individuals, the students that are in these lower performing

(21:16):
schools within these districts. So today we they've spent
between 46 and $50 million already.
And now it's coming to this plan.
So let me bring up, I'm going tobring up a parent for the
Brandywine School District to talk to you about some of her
concerns. She has actually fully had a lot

(21:38):
of this information and has not received some of that
information that she's foiled. So I want to talk with her and
give you an insight of what's going on, what information is
coming out there and what she has talked, what she has asked
for and what she has not received as well.
Hi, Brian. Hey Brandy, how are you doing?

(21:59):
Pretty good. Very great to see you.
I I've appreciated talking with you over the past couple weeks
and, and thank you for coming ontonight.
I, I wanted to start with, tell me, tell me about a little bit
about where you guys, you know where you guys are from.
I know that you're from Brandywine, but how old your

(22:20):
kids are? You don't have to be very
specific, but just tell me aboutkind of where you are in the
district and on their education career.
I got two kids, 1 is in at 6th grade at Tally and then another
one's freshman at Concord High School.
Tell me, tell us a little bit about them.
What are they interested in? What are they?

(22:42):
What are they really good at? What are you excited about about
their educational career? My oldest, she's going into
BioMed, like she wants to go forpediatrician and she's into the
sports. She does flag football and
soccer. My youngest does.
I don't know if she's going to do cheerleading this year.
She does that and she does soccer.

(23:05):
Interested in soccer, basketball, and then they're
into karate, which is like an outside activity.
So you guys are very active in the school.
It sounds like you guys are veryengaged in what's what's going
on and that's why we wanted to bring you on because I wanted to
talk about even with families who are engaged, even with

(23:27):
families who are trying to find out information.
Can you walk us through kind of when you started to hear about
the Reading Consortium and, and what, what went through your
mind and what you as a mother with two students, what you
what, what are the first questions you started to ask
about this? Well, I started researching at
1st and my very first question is where's this dashboard?

(23:50):
Like, I love data and I love doing data dives.
And I was really excited about being able to dive into this
dashboard that, yeah, I'm still trying to locate was my first
thing. And then I was like, OK, it's
not there. OK, I went to the meeting and I
asked about it at the meeting, and I just still haven't gotten

(24:11):
an answer as far as where's that?
So I started kind of just digging into, all right, what is
available. So tell us, tell us our viewers,
what that dashboard is and, and,and what the writing consortium
has put out there. What will the dashboard tell us?
They haven't exactly defined what will be in there versus

(24:35):
what isn't out in there. I know that some of their
reports have said things about how they're tracking close to, I
think 11,000 students across thecity of Wilmington.
I imagine that they're using some of the data from like, Open
data, because I know they're tracking the student mobility as

(24:58):
far as how many times kids are transferring schools and
everything, but they haven't defined exactly what will be in
that. And I've even tried to FOIA.
OK, The dashboard isn't available.
Where are the data sets? What data sets are you using for
this? Because I mean, it's something I
could work on. And yeah, haven't gotten much.

(25:21):
So do I, they haven't defined it, but have they talked about,
because I know you've watched the meetings as well as many of
us have, have they talked about is it, is it proficiency rates,
is it social indicators? Have they talked about any of
that when it comes to the the dashboards?
They've done some and nothing has been a dashboard at all.

(25:43):
A lot of the information comes through in almost like
PowerPoints. So I haven't seen an actual
dashboard period. And like I've really tried to
dig into that. But they did do something on the
social drivers is the last thingthat they put out in October.
And that kind of addressed what goes on outside of the school.

(26:05):
What else is impacting the educational outcomes?
And those outcomes were defined as public safety.
I mean, kids are afraid to walk outside and everything.
Mental health, transportation and housing, which I, you know,
I'm going to give them credit onthat.
I can definitely say that I agree with those social drivers

(26:28):
what they did on that 1000%. Those things matter.
Now what? What I, I, you know, I've read
the report as well about these, these social, these social
impacts. What did you, because I know

(26:49):
what conclusion I came to as youread through that report.
What conclusion did you come to as you you started reading
through the the social impacts? So originally when I started
looking at this, I'm like, theseare all things that have
existing government agencies that are responsible for these

(27:09):
social drivers. Why are we introducing these as
wrap around services? But when you step back and look
at it, I kind of see how it's comes back to public safety is
one of the number one things because public safety is
impacting transportation. Kids are I, I can say for

(27:30):
myself, my nephew was robbed at gunpoint getting his little
sister off of the bus. Like these are real problems
that are impacting not just the city of Wilmington, but also in
Claymont as well. And those things tend to impact
the mental health. It comes back to crime and the
housing aspect of it. I look at, you know, what can we

(27:52):
do as far as working with Department of Labor for better
opportunities for them to find training programs to find better
jobs to where they're not stuck working in a minimum wage job
position? Like, I think those are the two
things that would kind of betteraddress what the true issues are

(28:15):
so that also parents can be there for their kids.
They're not working multiple jobs.
Yeah, absolutely. Now, this is the report that
Brandy's talking about. The, the OR, or at least this
was a report where the slides came out of was the Reading
Consortium for Educational Equity.
And you can, you can bring this up, you can just Google that and

(28:36):
you can read through this report.
It's about 44 pages. And the reason that I brought up
this slide on transportation, well, first of all, let's bring
this back. This was the social drivers that
she talked about. This is actually in the report
social drivers. She stated them exactly as they
are public safety, mental health, housing and
transportation. And and Brandy, as you stated,

(28:58):
when I, when I went through this, I, I saw even as they went
through mental health, housing and transportation, it all came
back to public safety based on what people were saying about
their their community. And here was the one on
transportation that I brought up.
I don't know if if the viewers can see this, but the quote

(29:19):
that's in there is, is a young lady who's who's catching the
public bus to school. And she's saying that quote.
She says I'm young. And the guys on the bus,
crackheads too, just won't stop.They won't give up.
It's like, I don't even want to get on the bus anymore because

(29:40):
it's what I got to go through. And number one, I'm sure as a
mother this does for you as wellas a father, it broke my heart
that that is what she has to deal with every day just to get
to school. And that is the social impact.
Yes, it may be classified under transportation, but that is a

(30:02):
public safety issue. When this young lady doesn't
feel comfortable enough to sit on a bus to get to school,
something is wrong with public safety.
And then as, as I'll bring up under the public safety itself,
the quotes from the parents, I mean, are, are just
heartbreaking. And I, and I would, anybody

(30:24):
who's viewing this, please go and, and read these quotes.
I mean, these parents are sayingthat they won't send the first
one. It's an area where I live that
prevents me from letting them gooutside because it's dangerous.
There's no nearby park, so I just don't let them out.
You know, these parents within these quotes are basically
begging these individuals at theReading Consortium.

(30:48):
They're they're, they're coming to this meeting about school,
but they're begging them about social impacts.
They're begging them to fix public, excuse me, public
safety. They're they're begging them to
help with the resources for mental health, begging them for
transportation, begging them forhousing.
But at the core of it, it seems that public safety is really on

(31:09):
their mind. And it gave reminds me, just
going back to if you, you know, psychology 101, if you ever took
that course of of Maslow's Triangle that, you know, the
safety and security has to be #1of someone before they can have
any sort of intellectual development.
And it's these kids are, are living in fear, it seems like.

(31:32):
And they, they can't, they can'tlearn.
And as you said, your did you say your cousin or your your?
Nephew. Your nephew was held at gunpoint
at at the bus stop. So as you're reading these
documents as a parent, you're seeing these things.
Did do you see within the reports or the meetings you went
to or any of the FOIA requests that you had, did you see

(31:56):
anything that addressed these social impacts from a, from a
school standpoint or from the Reading Consortium standpoint?
No. And Mayor Carney was actually at
the October meeting and I asked him about that and he's like,
oh, we can do two things at once.
Well, why aren't you doing it already?

(32:17):
It made absolutely no sense. It should be like this is their
right, they shouldn't have to live in that, and we're going to
redraw lines on a district map instead of addressing that.
This should have been addressed years ago.
They should have never been subjected to this to begin with.
Now, I have heard the claim frompeople in education and I think

(32:39):
it's a very valid statement thatlook, this is something that's
inside of the neighborhood just starts at home.
This is not something that the school can can change.
So and I completely agree with that.
But when the parents are coming to something about education and

(33:00):
they're saying they're begging for help, there has to be some
sort of cooperation or somebody in, you know, public safety that
can help with these things, needto coordinate with the schools
to say these things are intermingled.
As a parent, what would you liketo see?
You know what for whether it's reading consortium or not, what

(33:22):
would you like to see from the the school standpoint and from
the parent standpoint to help with these social impacts that
were listed in through this report?
I don't think that the schools can do much.
I mean, what can the school do when they're returning home to
this? Because it's not just the
transportation aspect, it's the aspect like you've read, that

(33:45):
they can't go outside and decompress after a sitting in
class all day long. Like they don't have that
release, which is the issue. I it needs to be on the public
safety side, it needs to go withthe agencies that are
responsible for this, not withinthe schools.
And if you look at the grand scheme of things, they're in

(34:07):
school for about as long as you're at work for the day.
They're still weren't returning to that environment after
school. And you can put in all of the
after school programs that you want, but if you don't clean up
the streets, those kids are going to have the same issues
getting to and from those after school programs as they do

(34:29):
getting to and from school. So that that's a great point.
And that begs the question that I have of Will, do you think as
a parent that's going to be affected by this or impacted by
this? Do you think that changing and

(34:49):
redrawing the lines is going to help these students within the
city of Wilmington or your kids in Brandywine School District?
Is it going to help with, at theend of the day, what this is
supposed to help with, even though the parents are bringing
up these things that definitely need to be dealt with, Is it
going to help them with their learning math on grade level,

(35:13):
learning reading on grade, gradelevel, getting to a A level
where they're ready for work or whatever's outside of high
school? No I don't see how if you don't
fix their social drivers they'restill returning back to that.
Like where they go on these mental health side of things and

(35:36):
trauma informed responses. Yes, those things are important.
They're very much so important. But if you're sending them back
home to an environment that is re traumatizing them, that's not
going to solve the problem. You're just saying, oh, here
you're going to be traumatized over and over again, but as long
as we give you some therapy, youknow, we're doing something.
No, that's not the answer. And I, I've heard many parents,

(36:00):
especially that live within the city of Wilmington, say the same
thing that we, we love they, andthis is what they tell me.
We love the idea of having a, something that's inside of
Wilmington that would, would be a district for Wilmington to
bring that neighborhood back together.
But at the same time, we have todo something about the crime and

(36:22):
the violence in Wilmington because yes, we, we think that
it's wrong that they go on a busand they're shipped out and we
don't have that neighborhood anymore.
But if that neighborhood is violent and that neighborhood is
traumatizing, they're not going to be be able to use education
as a lever to to achieve more than they do now.
And honestly, it just shocks me that that's even on the table.

(36:45):
Like, we have to discuss this. Oh, we have laws against this
crime. Why aren't they being enforced?
Yeah. Well, Brandy, what do you, you
know, ultimately there's going to be 3 choices that are that
are going to be decided by this writing consortium and at the
end of next week I believe. And is there, is there one of

(37:08):
them that you think is better than the other or, or do you
want them to keep going back to the drawing board?
Do you want them to keep reaching out?
What what do you see is the bestinterest of of families like
yours? I think they need to go through
the data. The biggest thing that I've
tried to push for is the capacity reports, then digging

(37:31):
into the data on what are the current schools capacity limits,
how many schools are overcrowded, undercrowded.
Are they going to redo their capacity assessments?
Because the last I heard that they were updated in the 90s and
it doesn't really work with the classes and the programs that

(37:54):
are being offered today. I think Concord High School
actually shows that it's under capacity.
But my daughter's there and she's like, no, it's definitely
overcrowded. To the point both Tally and
Concord have actually added a fourth lunch period this year
where sometimes the kids are eating at 10:30 in the morning.

(38:16):
They're eating lunch because they had to add that 4th lunch
period. But yet Concord shows that it's
not at full capacity. So there's a lot of things that
they need to dig into before they say, oh, here, this is what
we're going to do. Because you don't even have the

(38:37):
numbers from each school from asfar as I know.
I think they just got the requested the data from
Brandywine School District in the past couple weeks.
How did without all of these like financial numbers,
everything? How did you get from the
original 9 redistricting optionsto the current three?
Like it just seems like there wasn't enough analysis put into

(39:00):
it. It was all done off of I don't
even know what. That that's interesting.
So I've heard many people talk about the capacity reports, the
overcrowding and want to basically know what is going on.
How are they going to move children?
Where are they going to move? And I've heard a bunch of people

(39:22):
ask, are they going to place newschools inside of the city of
Wilmington? Because it it seems like
especially with a high school, then that would that would
definitely need to be done. Yeah, they, I think they're
going to need additional schoolsno matter what just based off of
what the what I see in the schools here versus how many.

(39:47):
I think it's somewhere around 2002 to 4000 students that
they're talking about moving around where are the schools
because they're already overcrowded.
Now my one daughter at Concord says sometimes they don't even
have enough desks in the classroom for the kids like it
is. They need to do an in depth
analysis on the capacity of eachschool before they say.

(40:11):
We're just going to redistrict like it doesn't look like
they've put in the homework on that and.
Like. You ask the questions, I go
there, I ask the questions, and when you don't receive a
response, it kind of creates this feeling of what's the point
in even asking? Like you guys want this input

(40:33):
and everything, but all you're asking for is input.
You're not giving any feedback or any information as far as
who's making these decisions. How did you make these
decisions? And at some time point it does
become tiring that you go there and you just kind of watch them
read off of PowerPoint. Yeah, unfortunately I've seen

(40:53):
that with a myriad of different things this year, whether it has
to do with the energy price hikes or the tax reassessment.
There is meeting after meeting, but there's as you put it, you
put it, I, I love how you put it.
They'll listen to you, but theredoesn't seem to see be any
feedback or a way forward that seems like they actually listen

(41:16):
to to you. Or answers.
I'm sorry. If you're going to uproot my
entire district, you at least owe me answers to my questions.
I'm sorry. Yeah, absolutely.
Well, Brandy, I have really appreciated that you have, you
have sent us information, you'veeven sent us the FOIA request
that you've sent so we can read through them as well.

(41:38):
I've been digging through those the past couple days, some
interesting information in there.
And I'm very interested, even though I am technically down in
in the Milford area, this, this could be not only like it will
be life changing for the the individuals and the families up
there and the students up there,but this very well could set a

(41:58):
precedent for the entire state, especially if it's one district
in Newcastle county that very easily could be Kent and then
Sussex County of having one district.
And how is that rolled out? What I don't enjoy is what I see
is a, it seems like a leadershipthat is going from emergency to

(42:24):
emergency and they want, they want to put a plan there.
And then when something pops up,they'll fix that.
When something else pops up, they'll fix that.
But this is a, this is, this is huge.
You know, this needs to be looked at and say, OK, what's
going to happen the next 10 years, the next 25 years, the
next 50 years. And we need to think all the way
through this because this has larger implications than just

(42:45):
the kids that are in school right now.
And Reading actually brought that up at one of their
meetings. They did a history of something
between every 5 to 8 years. There's like some new committee
to kind of reshape what's going on in Wilmington.
And they don't want to keep going through this.
And I'm, I'm there with them. But let's do it the right way.

(43:06):
Let's figure out the data and find something that's actually
going to work. Because everything that I've put
into research on redistricting schools of the size of Christina
or anyone, school district, red clay, colonial, if it's over
like 1500 students, I think that's the threshold.

(43:29):
If it's under 1500 students, yesit is financially beneficial,
but at this size it doesn't, which is also how we did this in
1978 with Newcastle County School District and it failed in
1981. Our population for Newcastle
County has grown 60% since then.Like you couldn't manage it

(43:52):
then, how can you manage it now?And I got the e-mail response of
there wasn't a financial plan in1980 or 1978.
We have one Where is this plan, the one that you're going to
have right before the vote? Well, that, that's a good
question. I haven't seen a financial plan
either. I'll forward to that.

(44:15):
E-mail Brandy, thank you so much.
It's it's been refreshing to hear from a parent's perspective
of what's going on. And I think a lot of people
really identify with what you'resaying because they're asking
the same questions and they've been asking the same questions
for a while, especially about the finances.
What this is going to mean. You're more than welcome to

(44:37):
thank you very much. You're more than welcome to to
stay on if you'd like to. We're going to welcome President
Heller. We actually have the president
from the school board of of Brandywine on board with us
right now. Hey, Jason, how are you?
Hi everybody. Thank you for having me.
Thank you for going on board. I really appreciate it.
And, and I wanted to connect with you, Jason, because you

(45:01):
have, you're actually hosting a meeting with Brandywine families
to talk about this upcoming vote.
And I want, I wanted to start there.
Why did you why did you feel it necessary to reach out to the
community to to to have a meeting specifically for the
Brandywine School District? You know, I do have to say and,

(45:24):
and give thanks to Senator Lachman and Mr. Den.
So I think they heard our concern that that we've been
raising for a little while. We had thought and we and, and
I'm pretty sure it was said earlier in the process that that
there would be some type of a listening session or public
input, like very specifically ineach impacted district.

(45:47):
And just, you know, a couple weeks ago, it sounded like that
wasn't going to happen. And, you know, we, we had
reached out and shared our concerns several times about
that. So, you know, Senator Lachman
reached out and offered to, to do these meetings.
So we're thankful that that thatwas being heard because, you
know, frankly, I don't think they had to, you know, so we
appreciate that, that, that, that this came about.

(46:09):
I think the reason it's important is even though this
has been going on for years and then for years before that and
then for years before that, right, is everybody you talk to
has no idea that it's happening.So while there, while there has
been, you know, quote of quote, public meetings, I don't think
there was a really strong effortto make the public aware of

(46:31):
those meetings, right? The ones that I went to had a
very small handful of attendees that weren't very directly
connected to this. So, you know, I think it's
important to have an opportunitythat that our actual neighbors
are able to hear first hand kindof where we're at with the
remaining options, what the timeline is and and have their

(46:53):
questions or concerns at least heard.
So we're looking forward to Monday night.
Yeah. Well, thank you.
And and if I'm not mistaken, oneof the plans actually takes
Brandywine out of the equation overall.
Is that correct? Yeah, two of the plans in
theory, right? So the, Oh my God, so so both
the Newcastle County Consolidated School district,

(47:14):
right, We would have all four districts merging into one.
So none of the none of the northern Newcastle County 4
would be left as they are today,and then the Metropolitan School
District would have us in red clay, merging together to become
a new district. OK, so before we we dive in a
little bit about that, what would that what would that mean
if those two plans went forward for the Brandywine School

(47:37):
District? The short answer is we don't
know which is one of the challenges.
So, you know, we hear that this is a data-driven process, but
you know, I obviously missed thefirst part of the show because I
was in a, a meeting. I imagine it come, it's come up
already. But we haven't really seen any
data about, about any of this financial feeder patterns,

(48:02):
facilities, transportation. So all the things that are
important, we haven't really seen data about.
And, and I think what's different about Brandywine
School District is that when theNeighborhood Schools Act came
about, and I think that was right around 2000, it
essentially like led to de factoresegregation, right?

(48:24):
Because students could attend the local school, but there
wasn't busing required. BSD, to my knowledge, was the
only district that continued to bus and continue to focus on
diversity in every building. And I think that's different
than than the other districts that have schools of very high
poverty or very high need. Like, you know, we don't really

(48:46):
have that because we never went away from, you know, that the
late 70s model of, of having diversity in every building and
the other districts didn't. So this would dramatically,
there would be no way that we wouldn't have to change feeder
patterns and really any of theseplans probably.
So this would dramatically change the look and feel of our

(49:09):
schools. It would, it would change things
that I think our community is proud of and, and the diversity
that we have in each building and, and that, you know, every
student gets to experience that,that wide range of diversity.
So remind me, what is the date of the the first decision that
has to be made about these three?
It's next week, isn't it? It's changed several times off

(49:33):
the top of my head, it's either the 14th or the 16th I believe
is when they're going to be selecting the the final model to
move forward. And now I I did see that there's
a change in the timeline. So then I believe mid January or
so is when they're supposed to have be presenting some data
around that final decision, but it doesn't seem like enough time

(49:54):
to gather the data that would really be needed to to move that
forward to me. That was the immediate question
I had. So it so it sounds like a
decision is going to be made about these three programs, two
of which could take out the Brandywine School District from
Wilmington. And then the data's going to
present it after the decision it's made about.

(50:17):
Well, here's how much it's goingto cost.
This is where the kids are goingto go now.
And here's how you're going to bust them wherever you need to
do, or how the parents are goingto get them to wherever the new
school is going to be. Sure.
And that's something we've been talking about for, I mean, at
least a year, if not longer is like how I don't know if you

(50:40):
recall. So when it was narrowed down
from six options to three, right, Superintendent Lawson was
the only dissenting votes to go from six to three.
Because as she said at that meeting, kind of at the
direction of the board is like, we don't have enough data to
make this decision to go down from 6 to 3.
And specifically, your concern was that all of these remaining

(51:02):
three options remove Colonial from the picture, where if we're
trying to be the least disruptive, there's certainly
models where colonial should still be part of the picture
that would be the least disruptive to families, to
students, to staff. None of these three models are
undisruptive, right? All any model we choose at this
point is going to be very disruptive to a lot of people.

(51:26):
Do you know from from seeing this from the very beginning and
now seeing it to the votes goingto be next week at least
deciding which model to go from.Do you feel like the the, and
this happens many times that thethe model was decided and
they're trying to move towards which model they want without

(51:48):
because they haven't brought up any of the financial, the feeder
pattern or the transportation todistricts?
Yeah, it's fine. I did think that.
I did think that for a long timethat coming out of I guess it
was, is was Wick, right there was the final recommendation
made from Wick that essentially red clay would absorb all of the

(52:10):
city, right. And that that almost passed, I
think 2016 time frame. But so, so I thought that's what
we were moving towards again. And until recently, I still
think we did, but I feel like, you know, without any evidence,
I feel like there might be a leaning from the consortium to
what I think is going to be the metropolitan model.

(52:32):
So I do, I do think there was like a end game already right
now, but I think it might have changed over time.
So, so my hope, my hope, my hopewith one day's meeting is that
the is when they hear from the community, I mean, they'll hear
how important like local identity is to our residents.
And, and I think especially, especially our our city of

(52:55):
Wilmington residents, which is what this is all about.
I think they'll hear that. And and my hope is that at least
that will change the thought process about should we be doing
a consolidation like this. I heard Brandy right towards the
end and I had done the same research that I cannot find a
single example anywhere verifiable right of a

(53:17):
consolidation of a school district that resulted at an end
result of more than 5000 students where there was cost
savings or where there was student improvements
academically. So I don't understand why we
think this would be different, right, If, if it hasn't been
able to work successfully anywhere else, you know, in the
country. And then I, I don't know if, if

(53:40):
you recall, but I think it was in 2018.
I have a quote here. The General Assembly assembled a
task force to study consolidating Delaware schools.
And I have a quote from a Delaware Online article here
from the results of that and it says quote, the overall effect
of consolidating would result inminimal savings at best and

(54:01):
would create numerous problems related to facilities
management, personnel management, salary,
transportation and other logistical issues that would
more than negate the benefit of any consolidation.
So I mean, this isn't even 10 years ago.
We already studied this heavily,Wiik studied it heavily for
years and created a report, right that that had the

(54:24):
financial that, that, that that talked about all the impacts of
this. And I feel like with with the
writing work, we're just not seeing that kind of data or you
know, heavy deep research into the impact capacity hasn't been
looked at. I don't think obviously the
financial impact feeder pattern changes.
We haven't looked at the, the salary change is just to level

(54:48):
up all the staff that are becoming in from dozens of
different union contracts at different pay rates for the same
job, right. And, and who and who's going to
lead this district of 50,000 people?
Like no one in their right mind is going to lead a district of
50,000 people for the same pay that they're getting to lead a
district of 10 or 20. So I mean just the just the
payroll costs alone are I just can't imagine.

(55:13):
Well, and, and that, I mean, I am somebody that always pushes
for as much data as you can. You can't predict everything.
There's always going to be something, but as much data,
especially on the finances that you can and all the parts that
are moving people. As soon as you're moving people,
you're moving staff, you're moving students, you need all of
that information upfront. Somebody in the, in the comments

(55:36):
put something when they, when wesaid it changed, I like this.
They put it evolved. That's that's a good
terminology. It evolved.
What do you think that where do you see Brandywine School
District playing into this And how do you think, you know,
where can your community and your school district serve these

(55:58):
students the best? How is it doing it now and how
do you think they can do it in the future?
So, I mean, I'll give a roundabout answer because I will
say I don't think that there's any disagreement that there is a
disparity in outcome for a largegroup of the students within the
city of Wilmington, right? You know, I think educators,

(56:22):
parents, community member, I think that there's a pretty
universal agreement there. So I, I don't think the problem,
I, I think the Reading consortium's goal is noble and,
and right. And I don't, So I don't think
the problem is the goal. It's like it, it's the plan or
lack of a plan. And I'm sure you probably
already talked about the commission's own report, right?

(56:43):
Talks about that the issue is social drivers.
And I keep saying it's not, it'snot imaginary lines on a map,
right? Moving.
Oh, great. So, so I mean, moving imaginary
line on a map And, and this is the concern.
If there was evidence or data that this was going to magically
improve things for large, large numbers of students, then then a

(57:09):
financial trade off might make sense, right?
Logistical issues might make sense.
But one of my biggest concerns, and, and, and I'm hoping that
Senator Lachlan was able to speak to it on Monday, is like,
I've looked through all the documents from the start of the
consortium, all the studies. And what I haven't found even

(57:31):
hypothetically, is how any of this improves anything for even
a single kid anywhere. So like, what's the end result?
And if there isn't one, none of this is going to change
anything. What's on the screen is what's
going to change things for thesekids.
And I think we can do that more effectively the way that things
are laid out right now, like allthe money we're that that this

(57:55):
consortium has spent over the years, all the money that's
going to cost to do this redistricting.
Let's put that towards focus in the community, right?
And I think we'll see outcomes that that would be far more than
than we're going to get from from doing this.
Well, I mean, there's going to be I don't think there's going

(58:16):
to be any outcome change by doing all this and not focusing
on on those drivers. So that's what I think the that,
that's what I think that the, the community has to offer.
I mean, we, we need to ask for those social drivers to be
fixed. And to remind our our viewers,
this is where those social impacts came from was the

(58:38):
Writing Consortium for EducationEquity Analysis.
This was the analysis that was done and those social drivers.
I was reading through that and Isaid this to Brandy as well.
I really do hope and I I'm goingto take this and try to push it
and over like these are the the quotes that came from those
parents. They're.

(58:58):
They. Change they're begging these
they're they're coming there to talk about education.
They're they're asking the parents about education, but
under transportation, under housing and under mental health,
they're begging them to change the public safety in that
community in that city. And I really hope that they take
that report and regardless of what happens with this vote,

(59:20):
that they take those quotes fromthose families seriously and say
something's got to change. Because like you said, no matter
where you redraw those lines, those social impacts are there
and the people know it and they're talking about it.
And there was a woman last nightat the meeting at Red Clay that
was talking about how she has been taught.

(59:41):
She has been trying to put this on the table, do social impacts
for over 40 years. And she was talking about her
father, Shannon. Actually, Shannon Tabir here.
We're going to have on next in just a minute talk about the
finances. She shared this on her social
media pages about this woman whodiscussed that she had a very

(01:00:02):
traumatizing childhood her her. Father died at 12 and she is
taking up the lamp for her father to talk about these
issues in the city of Wilmingtonand it all drives back to to to
public safety. Yeah, and I mean, I'll say I
don't think it's a big secret, right, that yeah, like kids who
were really involved like in their school community and in

(01:00:23):
their community community, rightare are more successful the kids
that you see at the school afterhours and on the weekends,
right? They're they're more successful
life. But man, if, if a kid can't get
to an activity they're interested in safely right after
hours, then they just don't eventhey don't have that opportunity
for that kind of connection and then all the social benefits

(01:00:44):
that come from it. So yeah, we have to fix.
We have to fix those things. And that was one of the quotes
as well. One of the kids said, hey, I
used to be involved in sports, but my mother felt that it was
it was unsafe to pick me up. So I don't go to I don't, I'm
not involved in sports anymore. That was one of the quotes in
that report too. So what do you feel is for for a

(01:01:06):
brand new wine school district for the parents that you served
that elected you to, to be theirvoice?
What do you feel is the best move forward?
And, and that doesn't have to put you in the box of these
three votes. What do you think?
If you could, if you could be the voice of these parents to do
anything, what do you think should be the next step forward?
I mean, obviously fixing the social driver issues again, but

(01:01:27):
I, I think I mean, if we're looking at the options, which is
where we're at, right? If we're looking at the three
options, the current least impactful option is where Red
Clay and Brandywine split the city and essentially Brandywine
absorbs the colonial portion of the students.
Now, we still don't know what that looks like, right?

(01:01:49):
Because you know, our thought process is we don't want to put
a lot of resources into figuringout our own data until we know
the final option, right? I think would be irresponsible
to spend the public's money as adistrict to research 6 possible
outcomes when if we just wait enough a week, right, we'll
we'll know what the proposal moving forward.
And then we can look at real feeder pattern changes.

(01:02:11):
We can look at real cost. Like what is the impact on the
average taxpayer going to be forthis model?
How many schools are going to have to change feeder patterns?
How can we accommodate these kids?
But I mean, I think that is the least impactful of the options
that are on the table. And we could probably figure out
a way to make it work. But there is going to be a, a

(01:02:33):
financial issue, there is going to be feeder pattern changes.
There's there's no option that that doesn't have, you know,
those, those challenges that come along with it.
Now do you think that there's a way to, to, for the community to
drive for this decision to be backed up until data is there?

(01:02:55):
Because if I mean, this is the, the we just went through the
reassessment which caused people's taxes to go up.
Now there was a second vote for that that changed where small,
small businesses, manufactured homes, multi use or multifamily
homes that they could be charged200% versus, you know, 200%

(01:03:20):
versus the the residential. So people are are already have
higher taxes than they did last year.
So is there a way to say, hey, we need this data first before
we decide because obviously there's going to be some cost
that could be an increase in taxagain, if we don't know what the
finances are going to be on the on the forefront.

(01:03:41):
Yeah. I mean, I, I at least to us,
we've been asking for that for along time.
I think the challenge at this point is that I, I think there
is a mandate in legislation for them to have this final option
decided by December 31st. So right wherever where it goes
next, you know, the State Board of the legislature, maybe that's

(01:04:03):
the place where that conversation happens.
But I I do think that they're tied to this date and
legislation. Yeah.
Well, we love our special sessions this year.
Yeah, I see that we had a special session.
We have an extraordinary session.
So why not add one more in there?
We could and now we can vote virtually.
So we're all good. I mean, if that's what it comes

(01:04:26):
down to, if we're talking about being prepared or not prepared
and talking about whether what we know what's going to come
from these decisions. I mean I would rather go back in
session and vote to change the date and and have some more
information for sure. Right.
I mean, I think I, I feel like as it stands now, like the, the
responsibility of our community is like to share, like out of

(01:04:49):
these options, this is the one that is going to change what we
love about our local schools theleast, right?
And then then I think there's bigger conversations to be had
after that final choice moves forward where, where we can have
the deeper conversations. It would be easy to say to you
like, you know, I, I don't thinkyou should be voting on, on, on,

(01:05:12):
you know, on sending this to thegovernor's desk without clear
data on finances and where it's coming from.
You know, so I think it's a, that's a, a conversation to be
had after the final model. So that's, that's anyway, that's
my, that's my goal, you know, with Monday night is to send the
message that we really want the least disruptive option if, if
they have to choose one. And then once we know it, then

(01:05:35):
we can really become educated onthe impact of it.
Sure. Well, President Heller, please
remind us about the meeting where it is, what time.
So our our viewers, there's a lot from the Brandywine School
District around that area that are listening right now.
Yep. So it's it's going to be Monday,
December 8th, starts at 7:00 PM and it's in the multi purpose

(01:05:56):
room of Mount Pleasant Elementary School on Duncan Rd.
The important part is that parking is tough there.
So there's parking behind the building if it gets if it gets
full on the streets out front. OK, Well, thank you very much.
President Heller, I know you cutoff your meeting earlier to, to,
to come here. So we really appreciate it.

(01:06:16):
The viewers really appreciate it.
Our our first video, I think gotover 10,000 just after 24 hours.
So there's a lot of people listening in.
Thank you for taking your time to share your thoughts,
thoughts, but also where they can hear more and how they can
hear from the the consortium on Monday night as well.

(01:06:37):
Thank you so much for being on here.
I really appreciate all of the input that you've given us
tonight. Thank you for hearing Randy Wine
School District's voice and and we're looking forward to Monday
night. Again, thank you.
Thank you very much. So you heard it again repeated
that there there is missing information.
The president of Randy Wine School District said himself the

(01:07:00):
feeder patterns, the transportation, the finances
have not been discussed and and he's looking for out for his
parents and out for his studentsabout hearing where that
information is before a final decision is made.
And it, it seems like this decision, decision is going to
be made and then the data is going to be brought to people,
which unfortunately doesn't seemquite different from some other

(01:07:22):
things that are going on the state.
But right now we're going to bring up Shannon Tiberi.
She's working with us for Reclaim Ground Media.
She is our financial expert. Oh my goodness.
She's been digging into so many things this week.
And she has, the list is long ofwhat she's been digging into.
And she has been every time I get a text message from her, I'm

(01:07:44):
like, oh man, what am I going tohear about now?
And I, I'm, I'm loving it. I, I absolutely love that people
are getting more information from you than they ever have
about what's going on in the state of Delaware, where their
money's being spent and how theycan find out more.
I, that's the one thing I do love about what you're doing as

(01:08:05):
well as you're not just telling them where the money is being
spent, but you're showing them where they can look it up
themselves. And I and I think that's so
important, so thank you. Absolutely.
Thank you guys for keeping me inthe loop and, and having me on.
I think it's, it's important, right?
We, we, for those of us who havelived here for a long time, we
know that this has been an ongoing conversation.
And that's why I shared that video yesterday you referenced

(01:08:27):
because that was a long time Wilmington, Wilmington resident.
So anyone who's lived, worked, went to school in Wilmington,
you know, we know that this is an area that has been
disproportionately hit. And so one of the, the things
that has not come up during thiscall and you guys know, I love
to take it back and find the timeline and route calls and how
we actually got here. But it came up recently that a

(01:08:49):
lot of this actually stems not because of the tax reassessment,
but actually from a funding formula that was written by the
Apoquinomic School Board president Richard Forsten, who
wrote this formula basically disproportionately sends capital
funding from the state to the downstate schools as opposed to
our Wilmington schools. So that's where you'll see a lot

(01:09:11):
of the school building. And as you know, downstate,
especially in Sussex and Inapo, they have been building some
absolutely state-of-the-art buildings while we don't have
really any schools in, in Wilmington.
So I think that's, you know, been a challenge that has caused
a lot of challenges for the funding to be flowing up north
instead of below the canal. So that's the first thing.

(01:09:33):
Now there is a Commission that'sbeen charged to evaluate this
and, and redo the formula. So that's the PEFC, the Public
Education Funding Commission, but they were also charged with
making similar recommendations with what we're doing here, but
they were more so on teacher salaries, so teacher retention,

(01:09:54):
things like that. So that is a whole separate.
We have a lot of task forces andcommissions and things for
public education and we pay a lot of money for those task
forces and personnel costs, administrative and things like
that. So I'm I'm sharing my screen.
Hopefully I don't know if you guys can see it or not.
Before we break into that, I just want to remind our viewers

(01:10:16):
the the committee that you just talked about the what is the
acronym for it for? The PEFC, It used to be the
PECC, yeah. So the acronym that's studying
school funding. I'm, I'm going to do a video on
it tomorrow. Actually, they're having their
final meeting tomorrow, but theywant to push in more money to

(01:10:38):
districts that have lower incomeEnglish as a first or English
learning language learners, sorry.
And some also economic drivers. And they could be the, the
report that they already did, which was the report cost them
over $700,000. And you probably know the exact
number over 700,000 $700,000 to do this report to say that kids

(01:11:00):
who are lower income need more money to learn.
That's basically what it said. And then they want us.
The report says that they need to spend between half a billion
dollars and a billion more dollars in order to achieve
this. It's insane.
Which is, which is almost 20% ofthe OR used to be 20% of the
budget is probably not. And that's, that's a challenge,

(01:11:23):
right? It, it feels good to say, hey,
we're doing something about it. And so I, I, I'm not, not, this
is not about, you know, diminishing the work that's been
done there. There are people on both sides
of the aisle. These are, these are bipartisan
groups. They're supposed to involve
people from the community. They're supposed to involve
people that are actively, you know, in this space.
So I, I think what I noticed, and it's funny we ask, you know,

(01:11:46):
I hear people ask for term limits and one of the challenges
with term limits is you have a lot of turnover.
So things get lost and think, But so that's why I think it's
even more challenging that we'vehad the same people on every one
of these bills going back 10 years, while that should know,
Hey, we already have this Commission or we already, you
know, did this. So that that part's a little

(01:12:08):
frustrating for me because theseare people that have been in
this game for a long time now. What I have on the screen is
just kind of going back the timeline.
So this all started. Why I'm not going to say this
all started here because there is a lot of things that happened
before. But in 2019 is when the Reading
Consortium was officially formed.
This is when the, I think it wasreferenced earlier, the

(01:12:31):
Wilmington Education ImprovementCommission, another one that was
decommissioned and it became theReading Consortium.
The initial allocation bill allocated $1.5 million to
Wilmington, to a Wilmington Schools initiative.
In 2021. That was another 1.5 allocated.
And then it wasn't until 2022 that Reading actually received

(01:12:54):
its first allocation of $3,000,000.
So, so far up to 2022, we have about 5 million spent with the
report that had already been produced to your point, so I'm
not, we'll walk through a littlebit of what that was spent on,
but just to kind of keep that inyour purview.
Before we ever got started on anything, we had already spent

(01:13:14):
$5 million. So then this one was just an
amendment. This was an update to the
consortium member. So nothing really to see here.
This, these are two amendments that were passed with and sorry
for the overlap. I, I was trying to throw this
together quick. So on July 23rd, 2019, one
required a fiscal note. So when this was initially

(01:13:36):
passed, they had did not have a requirement for a fiscal note
for the bill. For those who don't know, a
fiscal note is something that typically attaches to
legislation to know how much it's going to cost.
So that was a bill that was added and then another amendment
was to add a deadline. So initially there was no
deadline for these the report, this one added a deadline for

(01:13:56):
January 1st, 2021 for the plan and it had to take effect
anytime between July 23 and July2025.
So that's our timeline for thoseasking.
I heard a question earlier like when is it due?
Initially, the deadline to implement the plan was July 1st,
2025. This one is another bill that

(01:14:19):
was passed at the same time. This is all about redistricting.
So if you're interested at all, this is, I have the, I'll put
this in the comments of the video, but you can look up the
House bill and you can read the text for yourself.
This is a kind of goldmine of information.
It tells them literally the blueprint of what the
redistricting should should looklike.

(01:14:43):
Now, what do you, what do you mean by that?
What the redistricting should look like.
It kind of goes through line by line of what the requirements
are. So for example, just like if
kind of like a a, a road map of what the requirements are for
redistricting, who has to approve them like the process
essentially that they're supposed to be following.

(01:15:05):
So this one sat and then in mindyou not a lot in between 2019
and 22 that I can. I'm not saying there isn't.
I just that's not something I was looking for.
So I have to fill in the blanks.There in 2022 is the first time
again that it showed up as readyconsortium on the annual budget
allocation bills passed by the governor.

(01:15:26):
It was $3,000,000 allocated and of that we funds were used to
provide free quality full day services for 300 students at age
3 and 4 facing the most serious barriers of race and poverty
through a program name known as the Delaware High quality pre-K
Initiative. And Brian, I wanted to I thought
this was interesting because, you know, we talked about

(01:15:47):
feathers in the cap and and which what are some account
meaningful accomplishments versus, you know, talking
points, if I'm not mistaken. I believe we just are someone is
pushing for universal pre-K Yeah.
So it looks to me like we've already been funding that for

(01:16:07):
that's already an an it's already a thing.
So it's not new. It sounds like if anything, it
may be just an expansion. So I just want to call that out
and that, you know, I think it'sgreat if we want to do that.
I don't have an opinion one way or the other on the universal
preschool, but just again throwing out the cost there.
And here's here's the thing thatworries me is that I, you know,

(01:16:29):
these, these ideas and as we go through them, the you know,
these are ideas that we've seen work some sometimes in other
areas when they're when they're done right and universal pre-K
is can be a good idea. But there there's also what
worries me is there's no measurement of data outcomes.
So if you're going to be doing this and you're going to be

(01:16:52):
spending $30 million or 3 million up up here, but there's
been 30 million and you'll get to it up to 2025.
What have been the outcomes? Has that produced better
learning rates? Have they been able to catch up
to, you know, their their grade level by the time they hit third
grade in the OR 4th grade when that first Test comes?

(01:17:15):
And that's the data I think thata lot of people are asking for.
They're not necessarily saying that it's a bad idea, but
they're saying show us where it's working so we know what's
working, where we should put ourmoney and where we should
reallocate it as well. And that was a lot of the
comments that were brought up atthe meeting the other night.
A lot of the, the people speaking were expressing the
concerns and saying that it's, it's not saying these aren't

(01:17:38):
great ideas. These are, you know, the for the
people, great ideas, but where is the proof that they're
actually working? And so as we talk about
different things throughout thisthis process, I think you'll see
you'll see commonalities with what the expenses, the
allocation bills say that the money is supposed to be used
for. So as the parents last night are

(01:17:59):
asking for metrics, asking for hey reports, things like that,
it is important to note and you know this throughout most
legislation there is typically aparagraph that follows.
It says that a report is due to the controller, the office of
the controller general or some there is some kind of quarterly,
monthly, whatever that cadence is.

(01:18:20):
It is typically documented in the legislation that this report
is due to these people on X cadence.
So when we request those and we submit FOIA's for those exact
reports that are legislatively required and they don't exist,
that becomes a very big challenge when we have
$3,000,000 that was allocated. And go ahead, sorry.

(01:18:45):
Sharon no, go ahead. So just to let the public know
as well, and I shouldn't say public, the people that are
watching this, how that how thatusually typically works out is
when there is a bill, just like Shannon said, where it says that
this report will go to the General Assembly.
So it will be it'll, it'll come to the emails of all 62 of the

(01:19:06):
General Assembly members, but itdoes not go out into the public.
And that is something that we'reI'm hoping to change this year.
Every single, I have a bill actually that's drafted that
every single bill or piece of legislation that says has to
have a committee should then have to or excuse me, bring back
to the legislature in a report every year or every quarter,

(01:19:27):
then should have to be in a public committee meeting so
people can actually hear what's going on when they have reports.
It does, it does almost no good for me to have a, a report that
is only shared with me. And you know, I read as many
reports as I can and guaranteed I don't get to 100% of them.
I definitely get to 100% of the committees that I'm on of those

(01:19:49):
reports, but guaranteed there's also people who probably don't
read many of them. And if if that's not going on,
it should be there and it shouldbe on a public website that
people can look it up and see throughout the history every
single year, every single quarter, wherever it has to be
reported that the public can follow it as well.
It doesn't do much good just to be in my inbox and then be never

(01:20:11):
never seen again. And that might be what you're
running into Shannon. I don't, I don't know for
certain, but it may be you're running into that one for you
because if it is in a legislator's inbox, if if a.
Name of a legislator is on an e-mail.
It cannot be for you and I don'tknow if that's the reason or
not. Yeah, that would be some of the
things that you're running into as well.
And I think that's great. I check in the mail, I didn't

(01:20:33):
even plan that one, but that is that's a great bill.
That's I think that's important because it's not just about it's
not about the public, you know, giving the public a chance to
cry about it. It is really to get them get buy
in. Like we don't, we don't talk
about that enough, right? It's it's just we're going to do
this and this is this is what we're doing.

(01:20:54):
But giving the public a chance to follow up on those reports.
We have a lot of experts and I know people joke about experts
in the comments, but we do. And I don't know about you, but
for me, as I'm talking about allthese things, I have gained so
much insight just going through comments and getting, oh, I'll
go look at that. Let me go look at that.
And so it's 2025. If we have legislators that are

(01:21:16):
not using social media effectively or even engaging
with their constituents at this point, then I think our, I think
voters need to be mindful of that because how are we
answering phone calls? Are we answering emails?
Like what is the best way to geta hold of your, your candidate
at this point? And we all know social media is,
is unfortunately or fortunately,depending on how you look at it,

(01:21:37):
the best way to do it. So.
When I'm sitting down at dinner with my family in a restaurant,
I just had that happen at lunch today.
I was sitting down with lunch with my pastor, and we do it
like as often as we can. And somebody came up and was
like, hey, can I talk to you? And I was like, let's go.

(01:21:59):
It is. It's just, and there's limits.
Obviously, I'm not saying everybody, you know, you have to
go and be a keyboard warrior, but it's just, it's, there's a
difference between posting a party meme and then actually
sharing like in depth information.
And hey, why does this look likethis?
Or I know you're concerned, whatever, because we do have a
lot of people that really do want information.

(01:22:19):
And, and I have to be mindful ofthis too, because, you know, if
I'm, if I'm being responsible and I'm sharing information, it
is, it is important to keep biasout of it.
But when you are, you know, not affiliated with anything, so
there's going to, it's going to sneak through.
That's just how it works. And I do my best to avoid that.
So on that note, going into the rest, what I have found is these

(01:22:42):
health centers that are in the schools, funding for the health
centers is almost always tied toReading Consortium, which I
think is really interesting because I was actually surprised
to see funding for the health centers come from the Department
of Education budget. I would have assumed that was
coming from health and social services.
I don't know why that is, but and it's also dependent.

(01:23:05):
So the the health and social center, this health centers have
to provide certain services and have to employ certain
individuals to be able to receive these, this this
funding. So that's where the 7 million,
the 17,000,000, initially 7 million of that was going to

(01:23:26):
maximize educational opportunities including to cover
personnel, contractual services,supplies and materials or other
expenditures to another group, which is now called, which is
called the Wilmington Learning Collaborative.
So this is now another organization that's entering the
mix that is also receiving millions of dollars of funding
separate from the Reading consortium.

(01:23:47):
I have not looked into Wilmington Learning
Collaborative, so can't speak onthat one.
And it was the intent for writing in the Wilmington
Learning Collaborative to coordinate to avoid overlap.
So hopefully you know that that was done as well.
And then last ready the writing funds so that 10 million for the
consortium was also allocated for Delaware wrap around

(01:24:08):
services. This is again the in school
health services and outside school time services at 3
elementary schools. So essentially we spent $10
million across three elementary schools is what what this is
saying. And then it is the intent of the
General Assembly to phase in additional appropriated funding
in subsequent years. I did also discover that Reading

(01:24:32):
received its own line item in the capital budget outlay,
Brian. So I have not had a chance to
look into that. So this is just what's coming
out of like general funds like regular funding.
I will get back to you guys on the capital funding.
I don't believe that's included in this. 156,000 went to
University of Delaware Biden School of Public Policy. 84,000

(01:24:55):
went to DSU for staff support and admin.
That might be a typo. Names.
And then 3.7 million was for free quality full day services
for three and four year old children facing the most serious
barriers of race and poverty. So again, no real metrics.
I'd love to know a report of howmany, how many children use

(01:25:16):
those services. I'd love to know how many people
we helped. I think that would be, you know,
a great win to show off, to say,hey, we, we funded, you know,
for almost $4 million and we helped X amount of students.
And that's, that's kind of my issue, Brian, is we hear these
great things. And if they were so great, then

(01:25:37):
we should be seeing wins out of them.
And we're, you know, they say don't use test scores, but
that's all we get. We don't really have a whole lot
of metrics to measure any other success and I hear don't use
test scores year after year after year.
But what I don't hear is, well then what should we use?
What is the benchmark that we can measure proficiency for our

(01:25:57):
children? Yeah, that's an interesting
question that people always throwback at me, like we
shouldn't use test scores. I'd also like to see, I'd like
to see the growth rate. Like I'd like to see like, hey,
the kid may not be at a fourth grade level, but maybe they
started the school at a first grade level and now they're at a
third grade level. Like that's a great thing.

(01:26:18):
That is an amazing accomplishment by that kid, an
amazing accomplishment by that teacher to get them over to to
1st grade, to 3rd grade in a, ina single year.
Absolutely should be celebrated.We should look at and those are
the things that that teachers are dealing with every single
year and, and we need to be ableto celebrate that.
But you're right, we need to have data to be able to say to

(01:26:40):
celebrate those wins, but also to put money behind where those
wins are coming from. And not just throwing money out
saying, well, we think this is going to or in some other place.
This is what worked it. It's great to have research from
other places, but you're also going to have to drive the money
where the where the data is. I do think as someone else said

(01:27:03):
or you just said earlier, is that I, I think that the, the K,
the Universal K is going to comeabout through this, through the
Reading consortium already putting money into Universal K.
And also the low income investment is going to be, this
is going to be used as the mottofor putting more school into or

(01:27:24):
excuse me, putting a higher amount of funds percentage wise
into schools as that that new committee for school funding is
is trying to look at as well. Yeah.
And, and I think that's so this is 2023 for the 2023 bill.
I think the challenge for me, Brian, is when I first started,

(01:27:45):
I, I actually didn't start looking at the writing
consortium because I'm down in Appo.
It wasn't I, I knew Brandy was doing a lot of digging into it.
So I trusted, you know, but thenI, I started and she's done
absolutely amazing things. And she, one thing she pointed
out that we also haven't broughtup yet is we already have
departments for all of these things.

(01:28:05):
We already have, you know, D allthe social drivers that are
mentioned are of whether it's, it's even, you know, Dell, dot,
Denrec, DHSS, all of these different departments have
programs that address these social drivers.
So, you know, here we have this,this consortium and I don't
know, you know, I don't know what overlap or what work they

(01:28:28):
do with those other departments to align with services that are
already being offered. But you are, you are right on,
you know, as as you look back and connect the dots and that's
I always say connect the dots, none of this is done in a
vacuum. So these decisions arguably
people say have been made and I,I think that's worth looking

(01:28:48):
into because when we have, you know, the district maps that you
mentioned that you showed earlier, those aren't new.
Those actually were published back in 2023 or 24 in the
spring. So that was actually when when
those district maps were were drawn.
None of this is new. In November of that year of
2024, the Appaquinomic school board president had proposed

(01:29:13):
idea of the night at a DuPont Country Club, you know, whatever
dinner, and it was for one school district in Wilmington.
So the month prior they had already allocated money also,
and we'll look at that in a second, they had allocated money
for Christina to separate Christina from the rest of the

(01:29:34):
school districts. So that was already the initial
plan was to separate Christina. They had those three district
maps strong. None of this was about
redistricting the whole thing. It was Christina initially after
the you know, one school district for Wilmington, it
started to get pushed for these these three options.
And you like you mentioned, you know, they there were supposed

(01:29:55):
to be public meetings whether there were not it we still have
people that don't even know about it now.
So you can put as much information out there.
We all know how that is people are going to find it or they're
not. But in to and so in 10 October
2023, it was actually updated also to remove the deadline for

(01:30:17):
submission of the final plan to the State Board of Education.
So that was again in October when they were also talking
about Christina. So in March of 2023, that's when
it was. 2024 is when they had the initial district maps drawn.
In. June is when the initial

(01:30:39):
resolution to support Christina School District, City of
Wilmington students and a plan for the eventual withdrawal of
the Christina School District from the City of Wilmington.
So that's again June of last year in oh, I had this out of
order, sorry. Oh, no, OK, sorry technical

(01:31:04):
difficulties, but I think that kind of tell gives you guys a
little bit of where let me fix this, sorry.
But I think it, it shows you kind of the, the overall, like
we've obviously put a lot of money into this, but if these
maps have been drawn since Marchof last year, why is this new?

(01:31:26):
Why are we acting like these are, you know, brand new maps?
And we have to go back to the drawing board.
And it's, it almost does feel like we're going through the
motions, just like the tax assessment when we had a report,
you know, years ago. And we're going through the
motions with these General Assembly sessions as people only
have 30 days to pay their tax bill.

(01:31:47):
It's so that's where I think people get frustrated.
And it's it's not about saying we don't want programs for kids.
It's not about saying, you know,we obviously care very deeply
about our public school system and improving the metrics and
outcomes for our low income schools and make it your funding
is not improperly allocated downstate to districts that are

(01:32:08):
have land use attorney's office that are, you know,
extraordinarily benefiting from the funding model.
So conflict of interest are not there.
I don't know. But these are all the things
that again, if we look at them in a vacuum, it doesn't seem
like anything's crazy. But when you see the whole
timeline, you're like, wow, we really have done a lot of work
and a lot of people have been involved in this.

(01:32:30):
Why is it still so ambiguous andwhy do we not have proper, you
know, metrics, dashboards and reporting?
Yeah, I think that's one of the biggest questions.
Now one of the question I have for you as well.
And this is so there is a plan that gives a one County School
District and what is that? That is the trying to think of

(01:32:53):
which plan that is. That is the it's called the
consolidated plan. All four districts are in the
one consolidated district in Newcastle County.
Now that is the one that Governor Myers has said that he
he really likes. He's recommending it.
And what I, what people have their concerns are what people
brought to me as their concerns is that that is really, they

(01:33:17):
think that that really is just amoney grab that they will take
all of the communities that are,that have the highest tax rates
and they'll pump whatever those communities are.
They'll take those tax rates andpump it into the areas that,
that don't have the tax rates that are, that are going on.
And because it's all consolidated in one district,

(01:33:38):
you can move the money wherever you want at any time without
any, you know, without any difficulty because it's not for
districts anymore is what, what do you think about that?
Have you heard anything about that?
I have different feelings. I I when I first started all of
this sure, one district sounds great like that.

(01:34:00):
That was my initial instinct is just one district would would
make a lot of sense. It's going to cut down on
bloated, you know, bloated admin.
It's it it would centralized things a little more.
I'm all about streamlining and and efficiencies, but the more
we dig and this is again, why wewant the fiscal review, why we
want the data. How much is, is this going to

(01:34:22):
save or is it going to hurt likeit?
Do we lose positions or do we now need to add an entire
another level of, of oversight that because the schools aren't
going away. So you're still going to need
your administrative structure within the schools.
So is this just adding another layer that sits above the

(01:34:42):
school, which is already the DDOE and DC?
If depend on how you look at it.And so that where, where are the
lines there? How does that work from an
administrative perspective? What is the fiscal impact?
And so that's again, one thing I, I'll just, you know, say is
that we have a timeline, but we've moved it before.

(01:35:02):
We have a timeline that says it needs to be enacted by July.
So I, I would just, you know, whatever pushback as far as
timelines and making people makea decision, I think we really do
need to see informed decisions before we just blindly,
arbitrarily do something becausethat's what the NCC 2050 plan

(01:35:25):
says we need to do. Yeah, and here's the, I just put
it up here is the kind of the, the month and date or the month
and year of what the plan says according to the legislation.
And I, you know, Shannon, I think you're right.
I mean, a, a date, you shouldn'tstick with something just
because there's a date there. And I really took to heart what

(01:35:46):
President Heller of the Brandywine School District said,
that they're they're forcing a vote.
And then the next week or the week after that, they're going
to show the data. And it's like, that is so
backwards. There's no way in my small
business that I would ever say, let's make a decision.
And then next week we'll look atthe data.
I mean, I mean. I if, if I operated half the way

(01:36:07):
that I have seen in this last four months of doing all this, I
would not have a job like it. This would never, none of this
would fly in corporate America. I can tell you that right now.
Well, that makes you think that it's already been decided,
because how? How else do you have?
How else do you make a decision without the data?
Yeah. It is, so that's.
Why I mentioned, you know, the different, the different

(01:36:28):
players, the different names, the different people that have
made these decisions because yougot it.
I think it's important to know because they are, these are
people that do benefit from these decisions.
And so it is, you know, important to understand that
because we do have a 2 1/2 billion dollar budget for the
Department of Education. This is not a small amount of

(01:36:50):
money. We love to throw big numbers
around 2 1/2 billion dollars. Brian, I don't know if you have
off the top of your head, I had it before, but how many kids
across the state of Delaware like just simple math, but it's,
it's a lot of money. We are one of the, I think
highest spends per per student with, with some of the more
dismal outcomes. And I know for me, my daughter,

(01:37:11):
I had to call my her teacher outthe other day said, does this
work look like passing work to you?
And she told me that they're notgrading spelling anymore.
They're not grading grammar and phonetics.
And so, you know, there are a lot of root causes going on
right now that are not just throwing lines on a map and
hoping for the best. We really have to look at it

(01:37:31):
full scale. Yeah, so the thing that drives
me crazy with the numbers and ityou can find this on the DOE
dashboard. You can go on to the DOE
website, their homepage and go on to their data.
The proficiency rate for the theschool show that 58% of our kids
are not reading at school at grade level, 68% are not doing

(01:37:55):
performing math at grade level, but yet something like 89% are
graduating. Like what?
How is that going on? How are they not performing at
that level? But they are graduating.
And I talked with teachers that are, that are saying that they
are pushing them through becausethey are told to push them
through. And then you have districts that
keep them at 50% even if they don't do the work.

(01:38:16):
So there are things that are, that are going on.
I'm glad that you push back against, you know your your
teacher because it it they've got to be they've got to know
that that work's got to be done and it's got to be they've got
to be held to a. Higher, grab her reddest,
brightest red marker and mark that paper up if.
You're not those parents. Please humble my child, and so

(01:38:41):
I. Will deal with the tears.
I'll, I'll what that feels like you.
Know, it's a good point because I wonder why people don't know.
And, you know, if you've been toa parent teacher or an open
house over the last, you know, year or so, you probably, and
teachers probably noticed that the attendance is lower.
We're, we have parents that are working 2 jobs now.

(01:39:02):
It's, it's not, it's not the same where you have a parent
that's able to attend all these different events and they're
never scheduled conveniently. So it's, it's, it's tough.
I mean, I, I showed up to one last, you know, the last two
years and we literally sat therefor an hour on an iPad playing a
game. So it's like, this is a great
use of time. And is this what my kids doing
all day in school, 'cause, you know, that's, that's probably

(01:39:24):
why we're here. So I, I think there's just,
it's, you can't look at this stuff in a vacuum.
It has to be a broader conversation about the
curriculum, about the culture, behavior.
You know, we again, all the different funding that's going,
all these random little, little things.
Where do we have opportunity foroverlap?
Yeah. Well, Shannon, thank you.
Thank you so much. I don't want to take any more of

(01:39:44):
your time up because you've beenwaiting patient.
Oh, I can go all night. I know you.
So guys, if you're viewing tonight, Shannon is going to
start doing something amazing for us.
She's going to start doing a quick video video for us
multiple times a week about the three.
Numbers that you should be watching for a quick, what are

(01:40:04):
we looking at? What are the three numbers
through the state of Delaware that you should be aware of in
finances to look at so that you can go and do your own research.
Again, one of the things I love about what Shannon does is that
she will tell you how you can find it yourself as well.
So you can dig into those numbers.
So it's not just somebody sayingthis is going on, but she's
saying here's the website you can go to, here's how you can

(01:40:27):
look at it. And that empowers the people to
do it themselves as well. So Shannon, thank you so much
for all the work that you've been doing through Reclaim
Ground and doing on your own. And it's just been, it's been a
pleasure working with you and I,I look forward.
Sometimes I got to, I got to be honest, there's when I get a
text message, sometimes they stress me out, but I'm always
from you. But I'm always better off

(01:40:49):
afterwards. Once I started, it only stresses
me out because I know that your text message is going to cost me
at least an hour of my day. No, it's been, it's been fun.
I you know, and I've, I've said before where like I, I kind of
stumbled into all of this. So it's, it is crazy to me to be
here, you know, four months in and what I will tell anybody
listening, I, I learned all of this in four months.

(01:41:11):
Like I, I knew absolutely nothing and I still know nothing
about a lot of things. So all you can do, I know boss
used to tell us to control the controllables.
And so when I see the degradation in the schools and I
am in, you know, in my kids school and I have 5 of them, so
I need to kind of care a little bit.
It it because it pattern recognition, you start putting

(01:41:32):
things together. It doesn't take much to start
digging in. These are all public documents.
I'm not doing anything special, but just sharing what what's out
there. And Brian, I, I really support
that you know what you're talking about earlier with
putting the reports out. There are people that care a
lot. And if you guys want to see
anything, if you guys, hey, I'm curious about this like that

(01:41:55):
Brian mentioned the Delaware, the the Delaware dollar, send me
a note. Hey, let's look at this spending
today. That's where we found out about
the Port of Wilmington grant because somebody asked me to
look into January grant spendingfor that year.
That's how it happens. It's most of this stuff is
stumbling across it. So just keep the request up and
just I, I just really appreciateeverybody.

(01:42:17):
Who's been supportive? Well, thank you so much Shannon.
We really appreciate having you on tonight.
I wanted to also, I think that brings up a good point with
people that are out there that want to get involved that, that
have skills like like Shannon does, or if you have skills with
you're very connected with your family or, or your family and

(01:42:39):
your church or the community or want to get more involved in, in
what we do here. If you go to
reclaimgroundmedia.com, there's actually a, a, one of the,
there's 4 little squares. There's a square where you can
become part of the team and you can either send us stories that
that you want us to look into. You can send us information that

(01:42:59):
you have that you want us to look into.
You can always e-mail it to us reclaiminggroundsreclaiminggroundmedia@gmail.com.
You can also go through the website and do that as well.
If you want to become a content creator like Shannon and Katie
and myself, we will help mentor you to get to a point where you

(01:43:22):
need to, to start looking up information.
And it's not just all about politics.
In the next week, excuse me, in the next week or so, we're going
to have a really great thing about how, excuse me, a show
about how to keep Christ in Christmas.
And I, I really appreciate Pastor Michael coming on and his
wife talking about these things about, you know, the secularism

(01:43:44):
of Christmas is it's great people have fun, but how can we
also keep Christ in Christmas? And how can we notice what the,
what the holiday and what, what the, the religious aspects are?
And how do you teach your, your families, especially if you have
young kids, how can you have them enjoy Christmas and also
bring in the religious aspect about Jesus's birthday?

(01:44:06):
And it's going to be a really great discussion.
So we want to know from you, we want you to become content
creators. We want you to share what's
going on. And we want the faith, family
and freedom to be from the people of Delaware.
We're all about independence. We want to create independence
for people so they've researched, so they get
information, so they bring information to the table.

(01:44:28):
Because when it's only coming from a political officer, it's
only coming from a few national narratives.
We don't get enough. All of us don't get in all the
information that we need. So thank you for all the people
who have supported us so far. We have had some amazing
support. We've had someone donate $5000

(01:44:51):
and if you want to put up the QRcode, that would be very
helpful. We've had somebody donate $5000,
someone donate $50. We even had somebody donate
$1.00. And I really, really appreciate
that $1.00. That is what they had to support
us and they gave it to us. And we want to be.
If you've ever had heard the story of the, the, the towns of

(01:45:15):
where people were given money inorder to invest it in their
community and they came back with tenfold.
That's what we're doing in here.And we hope that you invest
through us to find out this information for you to work with
you to find out what's going on in the state of Delaware.
We want to push back against this culture that is pushing

(01:45:38):
narratives from the national platforms, that is pushing
political narratives and gettingat the core of what you feel is
important here in narrative again.
And our foundation is faith, family and freedom.
And we want to make sure that weare getting at the root causes
of what's going on here in Delaware and how do we heal at
the roots? How do we get our communities

(01:46:00):
that are hurting? How do we talk about and discuss
the root causes? We're going to have a show in a
few weeks that talks about addiction and we're going to
talk about what's been going on in addiction, trying to solve or
help people with addiction in the state of Delaware.
What kind of money is being pumped into this?
What is working, What's not working?
We're hoping to get on. I'm sure they will Adult and

(01:46:22):
Teen Challenge who is I've, I'vebeen down to their property down
in Bridgeville, their women's property.
They have another property Vincefer where they actually
help people. They they live on the property
for up for 12 to 18 months, liveon the property and they find a
higher purpose in their life andthey have an over an 80% success

(01:46:42):
rate. And that is just unheard of
within the addiction community. And we want to talk about what
separates and what makes them different and how can that be
replicated here in the state of Delaware to help people make the
choice themselves to do something different in their
lives. And these are the conversations
we want to have. We do.
How do we help people make the decisions themselves to help in

(01:47:06):
their lives, whether they're just want a want a better job,
they want a better relationship with their family, they want to
push into politics or they just want to help out in their
community. How do we have that discussion
with them, lean into them and welcome them into these
conversations that they want to help others.
That's what we want to do here will reclaim ground media.

(01:47:28):
Thank you everybody for listening tonight.
I mean, it was a great conversation about the Reading
Consortium. It seems like there needs to be
a lot more data and a lot more information that's coming out.
We're going to try to dig into that, getting the dashboard
information for you. We're going to look at the
financials, the feeding patterns.
We're going to work with the president of Brand New Wine

(01:47:48):
School District, President Heller, to try to get that
information to you as soon as possible.
And keep watching as well. The Reclaim Ground Media
Facebook page, because we do have daily videos from our
content creators to talk about what's going on.
We talked about the the terror suspect this this morning, Luke
on Khan Tomorrow, we'll be bringing you some some more

(01:48:10):
information about school resource officers who have
prevented violence in schools right here in Delaware as well.
Greg just sent me that story while I was on here.
And we want to bring you what's going on here in your community,
how you can be involved and how together we can positively
change Delaware. So all of us have a voice and

(01:48:31):
it's not just a few driving the narrative.
So thank you all tonight again, go to
reclaimgroundsreclaimgroundmedia.com.Go to our Facebook Reclaim
Ground Media, connect with us. We want to hear with you.
We want this program on Wednesday nights at 7:00 PM, but
also our daily videos on our Facebook page or reflect what

(01:48:52):
you want to learn about your community.
So thank you so much. We will see you again tomorrow
on the Facebook page, and we will see you again next week or
Wednesday at 7:00 PM. Reclaim Ground Media, we're
taking back to Sam, lifting up the truth until the walls come
down. Voices for the Kingdom.
Hope in every town. This is where the loss get
found. Or reclaim.

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