DREW ATCHISON FROM THE AMERICAN INSTITUTES FOR RESEARCH PRESENTS THE REPORT ON DELAWARE EDUCATION FUNDING IN DECEMBER. HE IS EXPECTED TO PRESENT TO THE LEGISLATURE NEXT THURSDAY.
Delaware’s legislators will get their first official look next week at a recently released funding report that suggests changes to how the state funds its schools and says it should pump $500 million to $1 billion more into education.
On Thursday, March 7, at 11 a.m., the Senate Education and House Education Committees will have a joint meeting to be briefed on the report, which cost Delaware $700,000 as part of the settlement of an education lawsuit.
The next steps will be up to policymakers, including the governor and General Assembly, who will have to decide whether and then how to put more into education, which already consumes about one-third of the state’s projected $6.1 billion budget for fiscal 2025.
Thursday is designed to supply a briefing opportunity for legislators who could not attend the December report unveiling.
The joint committee meeting also will provide an opportunity for legislators to ask more questions.
No public action has been taken yet in the aftermath of the report release, so it’s likely that the briefing will include questions about how to move forward with potential legislation.
The Vision Coalition, a public-private partnership of Delawareans working to improve public education that includes education, community and legislative leaders, will likely play a role in how the state acts on the report.
The coalition’s leadership developed the Vision 2015 plan in 2006. Ten years later, with Delaware adopting more than 75 percent of its recommendations – such as pathways in school – Vision Coalition helped create a new 10-year plan in 2016 and is working on creating a third installment.
Thursday, the leadership team released a statement ahead of next week’s briefing.
“We, the Vision Coalition Leadership Team, call on policymakers to act on the recommendations in the Independent Funding Assessment,” it read. “The recommendations provide a unique opportunity for Delaware to act on longstanding issues of equity.”
It said the coalition agrees with the recommendations in the independent assessment, and it recommends that policymakers take action to:
Increase investment in Delaware’s public education
Distribute more resources according to student need
Implement a weighted student funding (or foundation) state funding formula
Allow for more flexibility in how districts use resources
Account for local capacity and address tax inequity
Improve funding transparency
Regularly reassess property values
Simplify the calculation of the local share provided to charter schools
While taking action, the statement also said that policymakers should engage key stakeholders, approach the issues systemically, make changes with increased investments, maintain the educator salary schedule, prioritize equity and sustain strengths of Delaware’s system, especially the predictability and stability.
The Vision Coalition leadership team includes Mark Holodick, secretary of education; Stephanie Ingram, president of the Delaware State Education Association (teacher’s union); Dorrell Green, superintendent of Red Clay Consolidated School District; Gary Henry, dean of the University of Delaware’s College of Education and Human Development; Shelly Cecchett, executive director of the Kent Sussex Leadership Alliance; Logan S. Herring, chief executive officer at the WRK Group, and a few other leaders from either education groups or social service and community organizations.
Raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Jarek earned a B.A. in journalism and a B.A. in political science from Temple University in 2021. After running CNN’s Michael Smerconish’s YouTube channel, Jarek became a reporter for the Bucks County Herald before joining Delaware LIVE News.
