Lieutenant Governor's Blog

I got a message from the Governor’s office last night telling me that Delaware was going to be announced today as one of the nation’s nine Race to the Top early childhood grant recipients. As I listened to the message, I flashed back to two moments from 2009.

The first was in September of 2009, the first time that I had been Lieutenant Governor at the beginning of a school year. I was visiting an elementary school in the second week of school, and I spent about half an hour in a kindergarten room. It was heartbreaking. The students were divided into five or six different groups around the room. A few of them were reading. Some of them were doing alphabet and word drills. And about a third of them couldn’t make any letter sounds, and more significantly, couldn’t sit attentively for more than a few minutes at a time. It was the second week of school of their entire lives, and they were already far, far behind.

The second moment was in December of 2009. The Governor was meeting with a group of six or seven people to put together the budget he was going to propose to the legislature in January, 2010. And, of course, the well was completely dry – the discussions were all about what to cut and what we could save from cutting, not about what to add. But as we sat around the table, the Governor said that if the day ever came when he was Governor when we could spend new money, the first thing he would want to invest in would be early childhood education.

Last spring, the Governor kept that promise. When the state discovered that its money situation had brightened just a little, the Governor’s advisors told him that there was enough money to invest in one new thing in the state’s operating budget. Just one. He had dozens of great ideas in front of him – I think every one of his cabinet secretaries made proposals for how to spend the money, and they were all good. But it took him just a few seconds decide that he wanted to use the money to make a historic investment in early childhood education. When virtually every other state in America was freezing or cutting early childhood funds, he dramatically increased them. And he focused the money very precisely on two things: improving the working conditions of the people who help these kids, and giving our programs a powerful financial incentive to improve quality.

Today, the federal government gave us another jump start by awarding the state almost $50 million to enhance our early childhood efforts. And we went to Hilltop Lutheran Day Care Center, a mile or so from the Governor’s office, to announce it. Hilltop is one of the early childhood centers that will benefit from our new efforts: a center that is already enrolled in our quality improvement program, and is on the cusp of receiving a significant financial boost from the state when it meets its next set of quality benchmarks. About forty incredibly well behaved Hilltop kids listened as the Governor outlined our plans for the money.

As the Governor was talking today, I was watching those kids, mostly four and five year olds. (I realize that one of the expectations of the Lieutenant Governor is that he will always gaze adoringly at the Governor while the Governor is speaking, but I made an exception today.) And I thought to myself what an extraordinary opportunity we had to change their lives. I tell my two boys all the time that if they work hard, treat other kids kindly, and avoid being knuckleheads, they can do great things. That is true for them in part because they got a terrific head start on kindergarten. Every kid in this state deserves that opportunity. Although we still have a long way to go, today’s events were another giant step forward in making this state where every kid can go as far as his talent and determination will take him, no matter where he may have started in life.

This should not have been a good Thanksgiving for Bernadette Winston.  She isn’t even living in her own home  – she had a major fire in her house in July, and she has been living in temporary lodging since then.  But because of an extraordinary act of grace and love that she undertook this year, this Thanksgiving will be a memorable one for Bernadette and her family.

Some time after Bernadette’s two kids were grown and out of the house, she heard about how many children in Delaware were in foster care and decided to become a foster parent.  Bernadette took children in from tough circumstances, and cared for them until they could be placed or reunited with their families.

Sisters Tanae, age 8, and Natae, age 9, came to Bernadette’s home with little warning.  I won’t tell you how they ended up in the foster care system, but suffice it to say that Tanae recently told Bernadette, “I don’t ever want to worry about police coming to my door any more.”   Bernadette cared for Tanae and Natae – as she did for the other foster children she had nurtured – until they found permanent homes.  And then the time came for the girls to go to live with the North Carolina parents who had decided to adopt them.

This is not an After School Special – Bernadette didn’t change her mind at the last minute and say she couldn’t live without the girls.  Tanae and Natae went to North Carolina.  But a short time later, Bernadette began getting calls from the new parents in North Carolina.  Things were not going well, and the girls were not adapting.  In fact, they weren’t speaking to anyone other than each other.  The North Carolina family decided they couldn’t deal with the situation, and they wanted to send the girls back to Delaware.

Bernadette was asked if she could take Tanae and Natae back into her home while the state explored other options to place them.  Had Bernadette done so, that would have been more than enough – foster care is set up to be temporary.  But Bernadette could not bear the thought of Tanae and Natae being shunted into yet another home, and having their lives uprooted yet again.  “Children are not pieces of furniture,” Bernadette told me. “You can’t be shuffling them in and out of people’s houses all the time.”  So Bernadette decided that Tanae and Natae would become her daughters: she applied to adopt them, and the adoption will become final in a couple of weeks.

I met Bernadette and her new daughters at an amazing National Adoption Week event in Dover this past Saturday.  The event is a daylong conference that the state’s adoption agencies put on every year for new adoptive parents and the kids that they are adopting out of foster care.  To walk around the room and see these kids – whose lives have literally been transformed by the love and commitment of their new adoptive parents – was as uplifting an experience as I’ve had in a long time. 

Bernadette was there with her whole family – her mom, her grown daughter, and her two new daughters Tanae and Natae.  And you don’t have to be a social scientist or psychologist to see how devoted these girls are to Bernadette.  They were stuck to her like glue, knowing that she is their real mom and the only mom they are ever going to have.  “That word ‘forever’ is so powerful to a child,” Bernadette told me.  Giving these girls a sense of security, stability, and love – at a stage in Bernadette’s life when, frankly, she had earned the right to relax a little – is an act of selflessness that should inspire all of us to do better.

My son Adam’s first grade teacher invited parents to class last week to hear the kids read essays they had written about their heroes.  There were a couple of dozen essays read, and in about two thirds of them, the heroes were either mom or dad.  And there was a striking consistency in the reasons the kids gave for thinking their parents were heroes: “he keeps me safe,” “she always looks out for me,” “I am never afraid when my dad is around.”   Until recently, Tanae, Natae, and the dozens of other kids I met last Saturday could not have written an essay like that.  Now they can.  On this Thanksgiving, let’s give thanks to the adoptive parents who have created permanent, loving homes for kids who were in our state’s foster care system.   And if you are interested in exploring the possibility of becoming a foster parent yourself, you can find out more at http://kids.delaware.gov.

Salome Thomas-EL, the principal at Thomas Edison Charter School, and Betsy Fleetwood, the principal at McCullough Middle School, are very different people.  Principal EL is a larger than life personality at Edison, where students recited his inspirational verses and the numbers of books they had read when he and I visited their classes last Thursday.  Disney Studios has optioned his life story.  Mrs. Fleetwood has been a principal for just over four years, and we visited eight different classes during my trip to McCullough last week with little interruption to any student or teacher.  Disney has not, as far as I know, optioned her life story.  Yet for all their differences, both of them have led renaissances at their schools and demonstrated how determined principals can help rally students, teachers, and staff to achieve great things.

I have probably been to 75 schools and hundreds of classrooms as Lieutenant Governor.  I have never been in classrooms with the level of enthusiastic but disciplined energy that I saw in the classrooms at Thomas Edison Charter School on Thursday morning.  Every kid was leaning forward in his or her chair listening to the teacher, hands were insistently waving in the air to answer teachers’ questions.  I see this in some classrooms at some schools; I saw it in every classroom at Edison. 

The results speak for themselves: at a school where 96% of the students are classified as low-income, where 96% of the students are African-American, where the federal government rated the school as failing to meet Adequate Yearly Progress after the 2009/2010 school year, everything has changed.  Last school year, the school’s test scores soared, it exceeded the federal AYP standard, and it was one of five schools (along with McCullough) to be recognized with a $150,000 Academic Achievement Award.

 I asked everyone I could grab at the school – students, teachers, staff – what had changed, and they all gave me the same answer: Principal EL.  They said that he brought rules, order, fairness, discipline, high expectations and boundless enthusiasm to the school when he arrived in May of 2010.  He is clearly adored by everyone at the school; he knows what every child and every class is doing.  And he has created an incredible sense of common purpose and high expectations.  All of this in little more than one academic year. 

We stopped in an eighth grade classroom during my visit, and Principal EL went around the room and asked the kids – each of them African-American, almost all of them from low-income homes – where they were thinking of going to high school.  And each of them rattled off the names of some of the top public and private high schools in the state, most of which had been at the school during a recent ‘high school night’ to recruit Edison students. 

Mrs. Fleetwood, the principal at McCullough Middle School in New Castle, has a different style than Principal EL, but she has clearly had an enormous impact of her own at McCullough.  A proud product of the Colonial School District’s public schools herself, Mrs. Fleetwood said that the changes at McCullough have come through methodically building stability and teamwork among the staff there, along with the same sense of pride and high expectations that I saw at Edison.   Mrs. Fleetwood and Principal EL are working, of course, in different environments given that McCullough is not a charter school.  Mrs. Fleetwood is doing her job while simultaneously implementing a wide range of new state programs, including detailed teacher evaluations, that occupy a great deal of her time.  And in charter schools, students’ parents are motivated at least to the extent that they invested the time and effort to enroll their children there.   At McCullough, Mrs. Fleetwood is responsible for educating students with both motivated and unmotivated parents. 

In spite of those challenges, McCullough is marching ahead.  The classrooms we visited were quiet, the students were diligent, the teachers were focused and serious, and most tellingly, McCullough’s student test scores have been increasing.  McCullough is one of a very small number of middle schools in the state that moved from below AYP to meeting AYP during the last school year – the national trend has been in the opposite direction, as the AYP standards have gotten tougher.  And like Edison, McCullough has brought everyone along for the ride: reading scores for special education students are catching up to others, as are math scores for African-American and Hispanic students. 

Of all the things Betsy Fleetwood said to me during my visit, a story she told me as we were wrapping up stuck with me the longest.  She said that when she got the job as principal of McCullough, one of her colleagues congratulated her but also said that it was a shame that she was going to have to start her career as a principal in charge of “that school.”   With fire in her eyes and an edge in her voice that I had not heard all day, Mrs. Fleetwood said, “We will not be ‘that school.’”  And she repeated it.  “We will not be ‘that school.’”  Well, they’re not.  With the commitment the kids see from Mrs. Fleetwood and her team of teachers, McCullough is moving in the right direction.

On my way out of Edison, Principal EL ducked into his office and grabbed me a copy of his latest book (yes, he has more than one) called “The Immortality of Influence.”  I read most of it over the weekend.  In it, he relays the advice his role model from childhood gave to him: We never know how much time we have on this earth, so we should use each day to inspire and lift up others who need help.  That is what Salome Thomas-EL and Betsy Fleetwood are doing every day.

Two Fridays ago, I sat on stage at the graduation ceremony for the new class of Delaware State Police Academy graduates.  I studied their faces while the Delaware State Police Pipes and Drums played “Amazing Grace” in honor of New Castle County Police Lieutenant Joe Szczerba, who had been killed in the line of duty just hours before the ceremony.

It was neither the first nor the last time I would hear “Amazing Grace” this month.  The confluence in time of so many events involving our men and women who put their lives on the line – September 11^th, our annual state firefighters conference, the state police graduation, the safe return of four Delaware National Guardsmen from Afghanistan, Lieutenant Szczerba’s death and memorial service –was coincidence.  But the common ground among these men and women is not.  They are cut from a different mold.

These men and women have chosen work when, as Kathy Sczerba poignantly noted, every day they kiss their spouse goodbye could be their last.  Sometimes, there is no special warning.  Joe Szczerba’s last day seemed just like any other.  Delaware City firefighter Michelle Newton Smith was killed in 2008 while she was tending to an accident victim on the side of the road.  Sussex County paramedic Stephanie Callaway six months earlier while she was treating a patient in the back of an ambulance that crashed.  Others live almost every day in active combat zones.  Dane Dougherty, a Delaware Army National Guardsman, told me last week, when he returned from his year-long tour of duty, that his air reconnaissance missions over Afghanistan had not placed him in harm’s way – and then his commanding officer reminded him that they were living at Bagram Air Base, which was shelled several times a week.

Either way, their families bear the burden of knowing their loved ones live dangerous lives.  And when the worst happens, the burden is almost unknowable to the rest of us.  Earlier this month, I spent some of the days leading up to the tenth anniversary of September 11^th talking to the families of some Delaware soldiers who had died overseas in the conflicts that followed that day.  Their families are strong, but they are still hurting.  Rose Kennedy was right when she said that time does not, in fact, heal all wounds.

There is a real kinship in our state among those who risk their lives to protect the public.  Lieutenant Szczerba was mourned by both the firefighters and the National Guard.  As I climbed dozens of flights of steps with the Wilmington Manor Fire Department on September 11^th – a tribute to the New York firefighters who charged up the steps of the World Trade Towers – I noticed that they were wearing helmets dedicated to Delaware City’s Michelle Newton Smith.  I saw Michelle’s mother a few days later, and I told her about the tribute to her daughter – she hadn’t known about it and she was touched, but she wasn’t surprised.  

It was at that 9/11 stair climb that I finally, after ten years, fully appreciated the bravery of the New York firefighters who died that day.  Obviously I knew they had run into burning skyscrapers, which was unimaginable enough.  But what I didn’t fully comprehend, and Aetna Fire Company member Steve Austin brought home with his eloquent remarks at the beginning of the stair climb, was the absolute certainty in those firefighters’ minds even as they entered the buildings that some of them would die that day.  Steve’s remarks inspired me to read David Halberstam’s Firehouse, which tells the story of one truck that lost all but one firefighter on 9/11.  In the book, Halberstam describes a scene at the firehouse weeks later when fellow firefighters first see some news footage of their fallen colleagues as they are entering the World Trade Center:

“It is easy to identify the men.  They are loaded up with gear, and their expressions are unusually stoic.  Their  brothers from 40/35 find it almost unbearable to watch the clip, because they can imagine what the men already know about their chances of surviving, and yet they are going forward, with no panic or fear on their faces.  They are, in the fire-fighting lexicon, calm, and they are doing the right thing.  It is a haunting moment….”

Fortunately, our Delaware first responders and military members rarely face the types of moments that New York’s firefighters faced on the morning of September 11^th.  But each and every day they live lives that are profoundly different from most of ours, because each day they willingly assume the risk of being hurt or killed.  And they do it because they believe in serving the public.

Thanks to modern technology, the dangers of first responder work and military service are placed before young people in our state more vividly than ever.  Yet, they continue to step forward to serve.  This year, Connor Thompson, whose father, Jarrett, died in the line of duty in Iraq in 1993 when Connor was six, signed up for the ROTC program at Caesar Rodney High School.  His mom, Kelly, believes that Connor will defend the country just like his father did. 

And as for those young men and women receiving their badges at the police academy graduation, they are undeterred.  When I hear “Amazing Grace” in the future, I will think of their faces as they were greeted on their first day as police officers with the violent death of one of their colleagues: grim, resolute, and proud.  These men and women are a different breed, and we owe them our respect and gratitude.

On Friday, I had a chance to speak at the unveiling of the state’s 9/11 monument outside Legislative Hall.  This is what I had to say:

Thank you to the Delaware Heritage Commission  for this beautiful monument, and to Senator Marshall for coming up with the idea.  It will be a fitting reminder for all of us of a day that changed our history.

For many, of course, September 11^th is much more personal than that.  Bill McGinnis is one of those people.  I don’t know where Bill was when he and I spoke – he is a tractor trailer driver and he pulled over to talk to me on his cell phone.    But we were talking about his only son, Marine Sergeant Brian McGinnis, the first Delawarean to die in action in Iraq after September 11th.  For Bill McGinnis, 9/11 isn’t a ten year old historical artifact, it’s an event that set in motion a military campaign that took his son and continues to claim American lives today.   When I told Bill that I was going to talk to people about 9/11 today and asked him what he would want you to know, he said two things.  First, look out for our troops and our veterans.  And second, spend time with your kids because you never know how much time you have with them.

Around the country we will dedicate much of this weekend to honoring the bravery of those who died on September 11^th, and those like Brian McGinnis who have died since in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Countless Americans are alive today only because of the bravery of first responders on 9/11, and of a plane full of extraordinary ordinary Americans whose lives heroically ended in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  And if you had told most of us on September 12, 2001 that a decade would pass without another major terrorist incident in the U.S., few would have believed it.  Yet, that is what has happened – not for lack of will or effort by our enemies, but because of the skill, perseverance, and sacrifice of a small group of Americans to whom we are all permanently indebted. 

For those who are in harm’s way today and those who have served, we have an obligation to pay down that debt every day.  That’s not just me talking, it’s Sheila Flocco, the mother of Navy Mate Second Class Matthew Flocco, a Delawarean who perished at the Pentagon on 9/11.  This is a hard weekend for Sheila – she told me that over the last few years, the crushing sorrow of losing her only son had gotten a little better, but the flood of attention on this tenth anniversary has brought back some of the pain.  Sheila said that the 9/11 families have gotten many kind offers – to attend memorial services in Washington, to be guests at major sporting events – but she is spending the day quietly at home with some friends.  She brought up support for our troops and veterans when I asked her what we should think about this weekend.  So did Emma Roberts, who lost her only son Marine Lance Corporal Anthony Roberts to an Iraqi attack on April 6, 2004.  Tony was in the ROTC at Middletown High School, and when Emma saw him after school let out early on September 11^th, she knew that he had already made up his mind to enlist in the Marines.  She still grieves for her son, she thinks about him every day, but like Sheila she worries about the troops in harm’s way.

Events like this one are part of paying down that debt, but they are a very small part.  To those in harm’s way, we owe every effort to keep them safe, to support their families, and to bring them home as soon as our nation’s safety allows.  To those who have been wounded, we owe the finest medical care our country can provide.  And to all those who have risked their lives for us, we owe a little more than we owe those of us who have not – an extra effort to help them live in peace and security after their tour has ended. 

The last ten years have been grueling for the military.  But ten years later, brave Americans still step forward.  Connor Thompson just started at Caesar Rodney High School this year, and he has already decided to join ROTC.  His mom Kelly is convinced that Connor will follow in the footsteps of his dad Jarrett, who died in the line of duty in Iraq on September 7, 2003, when Connor was just my boys’ age, six.    The media shows us so much more vividly today the harsh realities of war.  Yet young men and women – many of them inspired the bravery of the first responders on 9/11 and the soldiers who have stepped forward since – continue to volunteer.  There is no finer example of patriotism or courage.

Bill McGinnis, the truck driver I mentioned before, has undergone an evolution in the last eight years.  When his son Brian died, Bill didn’t want to talk to the press about it.  But since that time, he has become a vocal advocate for veterans, both in Congress and in New Jersey where he now lives.   He has a photo of his son Brian on the dashboard of his truck, and he does most of his advocacy work on his phone from the cab of the truck as he is driving his loads.  He said he thinks of himself and Brian as a team, and even though he gets frustrated at times, looking at Brian’s picture helps him push on.   On this September 11^th and, more importantly, in the months and years afterward, we need to be part of that team as well, to recognize in real and concrete ways the crushing burden carried over the last decade by a select few and our continuing obligation to do right by them.

I’ve spent some time with my family this August, including a great week at the beach with my mom and all her children and grandchildren to celebrate a milestone birthday.  But in the interim, there have been some uniquely Lieutenant Governor experiences.

1.     Handing Out Watermelon on the Rehoboth Boardwalk With Watermelon Queens.  So I was saying to Agriculture Secretary Ed Kee the other day, “Ed, I feel that I have been cooped up too much.  Is there any chance that I could roam around the boardwalk for an hour with tiara wearing watermelon queens and try to offer free watermelon to wary out-of-state tourists?”  The rest is history and you can see the proof at http://tinyurl.com/3nk52yn.   In all seriousness, it was a great opportunity to highlight some of our local growers, and our own Mar-Del Queen Jordan Calloway, is a pro.  Her motto: “It’s good and good for you!”

2.    Visiting Early Childhood Centers with Kids Department Secretary Vivian Rapposelli.  Now that the legislature has approved the Governor’s proposal to make a major new investment in quality early childhood education, Secretary Rapposelli and I have started to visit many early childhood centers that are on the verge of achieving quality rankings that would earn them one of the state’s new quality bonuses.  We are asking the center operators the same questions that we ask of businesses: what can the state do to help you?  Hopefully the outcome of our work will be many centers moving up in quality rankings, providing better care for their kids, and earning a better income for their front-line staff.

3.    Introducing BET Star Rocsi Diaz at the Delaware Teen Summit.  My wife and I were watching TV when I realized that I had been invited to introduce BET personality Rocsi Diaz at Delaware’s Youth Summit the next morning, and I hadn’t a clue who Rocsi Diaz was.  So I did what any pop-culture-deprived Lieutenant Governor would do; I Googled her, and up on my laptop screen came a picture of Rocsi Diaz strutting up a sidewalk in a bikini and some kind of wraparound dragon tattoo.  My wife said, “What the heck are you looking at on your computer?” and my response was, “It’s for work.”  A chilly moment in the Denn living room.  Rocsi was fashionably late for the Teen Summit, so ultimately I didn’t introduce her anyway.

4.    Introducing the Brandywine Zoo’s New Siberian Tiger.  A joke I made on my Facebook site about thinking the Governor was trying to do me in by sending me in his stead to introduce the tiger led the zoo staff to be concerned that I was Tiger-phobic.  So I got the opportunity to answer the following question from News Journal reporter Robin Brown: “Do you have an issue with tigers?”  My response was, “No more than I do with lions, grizzly bears, or any other animal that could dismember me.”  Robin’s story about my interaction with the tiger is at http://tinyurl.com/4yjcpa6.

5.   And, on a serious note, Welcoming Home Delaware National Guard Members from Afghanistan.  One of the real honors of my job is having the privilege of speaking at National Guard send-off and welcome home ceremonies when the Governor is unavailable.  Last week, I was able to welcome home a small group of Delaware National Guard members who were returning from a year in Afghanistan supporting the 184^th Expeditionary Sustainment Brigade from Mississippi.  The show of support at the welcome home ceremony was – as it always is in Delaware – amazing.  I asked those participating in the ceremony to remember three Pennsylvania National Guard members who had died in action just days before – and just 24 hours later came the tragic news from Afghanistan of the largest American military loss in Afghanistan since the start of the conflict.  It is impossible for me to put into words how indebted we are to the men and women who put their lives on the line for America, and equally impossible for me to express the sense of grief and loss that we feel for those who have been killed in action and the families they left behind.

This morning, I joined the Governor and several other leaders from state government as he issued an executive order creating the Delaware Justice Reinvestment Task Force, which he asked me to chair.  This 18 member Task Force, with representation from all three branches of government and both political parties, is going to comprehensively review the state’s criminal justice system to make recommendations to improve public safety.  Its work will have a heavy emphasis on reducing the number of repeat offenders and spending our criminal justice dollars more wisely.   The Governor has asked us to issue our recommendations by January 31 of next year.

When I agreed a couple of weeks ago to chair this task force, I decided to make a few detours in my daily travels in the car.  I’ve been up and down the state quite a bit the last couple weeks, and I drove through some of the neighborhoods in our state with the highest crime rates.  We all know them, some are only a mile or two from the State Office Building in Wilmington where the Governor issued his executive order today.  Some of the neighborhoods  I drove through were marked by sidewalk memorials to murder victims; others were marked not so much by what I did see as what I didn’t – on nice summer days, no kids playing outside.  I drove through these neighborhoods because I wanted to remind myself why, ultimately, this Task Force’s over the next few months is so important.

The people in the neighborhoods that I drove through do not, and cannot, live normal lives.  Their children cannot have normal childhoods.  At best, they live in fear.  At worst, they suffer crushing losses of family members – to violence or jail.  This Task Force’s goal is to make Delaware’s citizens safer, and if we succeed, that success is going to have the biggest impact in the areas of our state that right now are under siege.

This is going to be an inclusive process.  There are 18 members of the task force already, but I know that there are a lot of people in our communities who have dedicated extraordinary amounts of time to fighting crime, and their insights have value.  We will find a way for them to be heard, and what they say will be respected.

Finally, although we are going to spend a lot of time on this Task Force talking about process and data, I want to be sure we stay focused on the fact that these are a means to an end.   The end is, very simply, figuring out ways that we can use the precious resources we have to keep our citizens safer, and allow them to live richer and happier lives.  I view a large part of my responsibility as chair to be keeping everyone focused on that end.  There will be times during this process that people will need to put egos aside, and I suspect that there will be times during this process that people will be asked to take some political risks.  What I asked of the Task Force members today was that when those moments come, that the Task Force members remember the people for whom we are doing this, and the enormous responsibility the Task Force has to let them live their lives in neighborhoods where children play outside, and where hope rather than fear is the order of the day. 

I am ready to get to work.

I got an e-mail from a friend last week that Jackie White had passed away at the age of 89.  Mrs. White was the English department chair at Berkeley High School in California (my alma mater), and probably the best teacher I ever had. 

Jackie White’s skills as a teacher did not go unrecognized.  She received just about every formal honor a school teacher could receive during her 25 years at Berkeley High, and was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame – no small thing at the second biggest high school in the largest state in America.  But the trophies and tributes do not do her justice.

Some of Mrs. White’s former colleagues and students have posted on-line remembrances of her, and everyone mentions her laugh.  Twenty five years later I can still hear it in my head.  I remember her laughing not in response to jokes, but in absolute delight at a piece of writing that she had just read aloud to the class and was rediscovering.  I still remember her reading us one sentence of dialogue from Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” – “Put me down easy, Janie, I’m a cracked plate.” – and laughing as she exulted in it.  She loved great writing, and she made us love great writing because we saw how happy it made her.

Back in 1981, just after my family moved to California from Delaware, a writer named Anne Moose published a collection of interviews with people who she considered “Berkeley institutions.”  Jackie White was one of them, and she kept returning to the enormous sense of responsibility she felt toward her students.  Mrs. White said  “One of the reasons I love teaching literature, is it enables me to talk about really important things without the kids feeling put upon.  But the literature has to be taught and relished with a sense of responsibility on the teacher’s part….More people of greater intelligence should go into teaching.  I understand why they don’t.  When you have to deal with a hundred and fifty or so kids, when you have papers to read and grade from September until June, when you’re kind of treated like high-class dirt, most intelligent people don’t want to come near high school teaching.  But for those who do go into it, I think it’s really dishonest to do it just because there are long vacations and because the pay is reasonable.  And I think about that constantly, because I see the power teachers have, and I see the responsibility we have.”

Mrs. White was demanding and uncompromising, but we were ok with that because she made it obvious in skillful and subtle ways how much she cared about us.  She was smart, she was cool, she was passionate, and she was dedicated, and we craved the approval of a teacher with that combination.  So when she took me aside and told me that she didn’t think I was doing my best work, I was crushed – but I was determined to show her I could do better, and I did.

Finally, she was a firm believer in the importance of music and baseball.  On our first day of American Literature, she asked everyone in the class who could describe a suicide squeeze bunt to raise their hands.  I was the only one.  She was appalled – she told the class ‘you can’t understand America if you don’t understand baseball,’ and she arranged for the entire class to go to a game at Candlestick Park between the Chicago Cubs and her beloved San Francisco Giants.  I made the mistake of telling her that Larry Bowa, who at that time had been traded from the Phillies to the Cubs, was my all time favorite player.  She told me that she would introduce me to him.  So beginning half an hour before the game, she began yelling to Cubs players and coaches warming up that she had a student who wanted to meet Larry Bowa.  Eventually the word got to Bowa, and he began making his way over to the third base line where the class was sitting.  Mrs. White waved at him and kept yelling “Mr. Bowa, Mr. Bowa, over here.”  I got up out of my seat to greet him.  And once he got close enough, Mrs. White yelled “Hey Bowa, you stink, and the Giants are going to kick your butt today!” And then she threw her head back and laughed her famous laugh, and instantly turned a class full of literature nerds into Giants fans.

Mrs. White, thank you for teaching me to love great writing, thank you for teaching me the importance of striving for excellence, and thank you for teaching the same lessons to an entire generation of students who idolized you.  It is an extraordinary legacy, and I cannot imagine a more meaningful or noble way to have spent your time on this earth.

As you may know, the Delaware General Assembly finishes its business every year on June 30^th, during a marathon session that – by virtue of language in the State Constitution – must extend beyond midnight. Lots of good stuff in that Delaware State Constitution, but the June 30^th late night business is insane. Here is this year’s somewhat selective journal of my activities as the President of the State Senate on June 30^th.

3:00 p.m.: Stop at gym en route to Dover to run on treadmill. Gym TV is showing VH1’s ironically named “Jennifer Lopez: Behind the Music.” I had forgotten about the back-up dancer husband who got tossed for Ben Affleck; I hope he got a good settlement.

5:00 p.m.: Arrive at the state capital, and sit down with staff to preview a long day of July 4^th events, highlighted by my serving as Grand Marshal of the 28^th Annual Bethany Beach July 4^th parade. Thousands of out-of-state tourists in Bethany for the weekend will see me heading up the parade and say to each other, “Gary Sinise sure looks goofier in person than he does on the CSI show.”

6:30 p.m.: The Senate is in session. Senate Minority Leader Gary Simpson’s young grandchildren are in the chamber, and I send him a note telling him that they are welcome to come sit up with me for a few minutes – something that I do for most kids visiting the Senate. I watch Senator Simpson walk over and extend the offer to them, and his granddaughter violently recoils and shakes her head “no.” Kids love me.

6:45 p.m.: Senate President Pro Tem Anthony Deluca has asked me to read a large number of gubernatorial appointees who need confirmation by the Senate, and he appears to have deliberately saved those with the hardest names to pronounce for the last day of the session. Grateful for the time I have spent reviewing Hooked on Phonics videos with the boys.

7:15 p.m.: The first bills the Senate works on are Senate bills that were amended by the House of Representatives and must therefore receive a second Senate vote. After recognizing Senator McBride for the third consecutive time, I remark that all of the bills amended by the House seem to be his bills, and ask if they have a problem with him. He is visibly unamused.

8:00 p.m.: The Senate breaks for a party caucus. I go to the Wawa a block from Leg Hall for coffee. Wawa is out of coffee. Seriously. Several young Senate aides are gathered around the empty coffee urns, speechless and ashen-faced, while a Wawa associate gives frantic NASA-style updates regarding how many minutes remain until new coffee will be available. I return to the capital to have some Starbucks instant coffee (which sounds gross, but is actually pretty decent).

8:19 p.m.: I receive a text message from my children, which reads “Goodnight daddy. Adam says I love you very much. Zach says I hate your shirt.”

10:42 p.m.: The Senate debates the annual bond bill funding road and building projects, and Senator Katz offers a rare amendment to the bond bill to remove funding for the Delaware Health Information Network. Spirited debate ensues, capped by one Senator asking me to rule all further discussion out of order on the basis that it is late at night and they should not be debating a complicated financial matter. I tell the Senator that I do not disagree with his basic premise, but that the Senators are going to have to police themselves — there is no “it’s almost midnight” objection permitted by the Senate rules.

10:52 p.m.: The Senate passes the state’s annual grant-in-aid bill, and the Senate takes the occasion to have its annual debate over the size of growth in state government. Each year a couple of Senators rise to decry the size of growth in state government (regardless of how large it is), and another group of Senators rises to accuse the first group of grandstanding and speaking with forked tongue. The debate has started to remind me of the “It’s Rabbit Hunting Season/It’s Duck Hunting Season” debate between Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck when they are cornered by Elmer Fudd.  I briefly consider how appropriate it would be if the Senate debate were ended on the same terms as the cartoon debate, by having Bugs suddenly change sides and say “It’s Rabbit Hunting Season” to confuse the opposition. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a serious issue and one where I think the Governor and legislators have made significant progress over the last three years – I just don’t think the late night histrionics add much to the conversation.

Midnight: Midnight arrives, the Senate goes through its ritual of convening a special session at the stroke of midnight, and I mentally prepare for one last June 30^th tradition: the expression of outrage by a dissenting Senator that a particular bill is being considered “after midnight on June 30^th.” Thirty minutes go by, an hour…will this be the year that it doesn’t happen? No! Just after 1 a.m., a bill to create a new mortgage foreclosure unit in the Attorney General’s office sparks allegations that the Senate is furtively creating a new office in state government…after midnight! Though the bill was introduced on March 24^th, and voted on in the House of Representatives on June 14^th.

2 a.m.: I say goodnight to my friends in the Senate (especially Senator Blevins and Senator Sokola, who worked with me on some important bills to help kids this year), stop to get another cup of coffee, turn on a Dan Patrick interview with Charles Barkley I have been saving for the trip home, and drive north.