In 2016, before the General Assembly failed to pass a measure that included spending additional money on some Wilmington schools to address the needs of low-income students, Jea Street said he would sue the state to get schools funded equitably. 

In 2018, the longtime education advocate and New Castle County councilman made good on that promise. 

Now, Gov. John Carney has settled the lawsuit, agreeing to propose additional funding for the next five years for schools statewide with high populations of poor students and English language learners. More ambitiously, he said he would push for those additional dollars to be a permanent part of the state’s school funding system.

TRIAL AVERTED: Settlement of Delaware education suit promises historic changes

By 2025, the state should set aside at least $60 million annually in funding for disadvantaged students, the settlement outlines. 

Carney’s agreement represents a legally binding promise to implement a form of school funding he previously shied away from backing when it was proposed by the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission, saying in 2017 it was politically and financially unfeasible.

Education advocates have asked the state to adopt weighted student funding for decades. It never happened, despite many acknowledging that students in poverty face obstacles that make it harder and more costly to educate them.

The settlement places the responsibility back before the General Assembly, which failed to support a form of weighted funding in 2016 and now has until 2023 to fully incorporate additional funds for low-income and English-learning students into state law.

If the General Assembly does not substantially pass the legislation outlined in the settlement, it could open the door for future litigation in a court case that challenged the fairness of Delaware’s education funding. 

“I was glad a lawsuit was filed because I thought for a long time we weren’t doing a good job with respect to equity or adequacy,” said Senate education committee chair David Sokola, D-Newark. “This is not going to be easy … but by having a court case now gives us a little bit of incentive.”

A wave of younger, diverse, more left-wing lawmakers arriving in Dover in recent years makes Sokola optimistic his colleagues will support weighted funding.

“There’s always been some people in the legislature who wanted to do more,” he said. “The legislature is getting younger, getting more diverse. By getting younger there are people who have been close to public education more recently so they have a better firsthand view of what’s needed.”

“I think we have a lot of enthusiasm behind” the proposals, said Sen. Elizabeth “Tizzy” Lockman, D-Wilmington, one of the newcomers and chair of the Redding Consortium, the latest state push to improve Wilmington schools and educational equity in the state.

Lockman, a Wilmington parent and schools advocate, was a member of the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission and ran for office in 2018 seeking to reform school funding.

How lawmakers approach the proposals will depend on leadership in the General Assembly and the Joint Finance Committee that hold budget hearings each year. With many senior lawmakers having been unseated, it’s not yet clear who will play the biggest roles in the discussion.

A long time coming

Delaware’s education system is funded by a “unit count” system – school districts receive state funds based on enrollment numbers. Those enrollment numbers dictate things like how many teachers and administrators each school gets funding for. 

Schools with concentrations of high-needs students tend to require more supports like reading specialists and counseling staff, but the unit count system doesn’t provide additional funding for those supports. 

LAWSUIT: Delaware schools are leaving children in poverty behind

This week’s settlement seeks to change that by making the governor’s Opportunity Funding permanent in state law — should the General Assembly approve the change, schools would get additional funding for each low-income student and English language learner.  

How to properly fund Delaware’s education system has been the subject of decades of state-formed commissions and reports. 

For 20 years, groups of advocates, educators and lawmakers have come back to the General Assembly with the same suggestion: Change school funding to provide students in need with more resources. 

And for 20 years, that repeated recommendation has gone unheeded. 

“The conversation you’re having with me is the conversation [education advocate] Raye Avery had with reporters in 2000,” said Tony Allen, president of Delaware State University and chair of the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission in 2016. “When you string it all together, it is a historical picture. It really is one set of leaders passing the baton off to another to get to the finish line.” 

A 2001 report by the Wilmington Neighborhood Schools Committee suggested the state provide additional funding “to schools serving children from low-income families.” 

“Without substantial systemic change, the cost of the status quo will be paid by our children and the broader community,” the report stated. 

“Schools with the highest concentrations of low-income and/or minority students are the schools that are systematically under-resourced,” the report pointed out.  

But no changes were made to Delaware’s school funding formula. 

In 2006, a report by the Vision Coalition of Delaware called Vision 2015 suggested weighted funding, giving schools additional resources for low income, special education and English learners. 

In 2007, the state-formed LEAD Committee suggested weighted funding, even including cost savings suggestions that would have freed up resources to pave the way toward weighted funding.

A year later, the Wilmington Education Task Force made the same recommendation. 

The evidence, research and reports piled up for 20 years. In 2015, the General Assembly established yet another commission acknowledging that the state’s education funding system “does not reflect the needs of today’s” schools, and that a “modernized education funding system” would “allow the State to target resources” to high-needs students.   

The General Assembly still did not implement weighted funding.

“If you look at the history, changes that have taken place on issues of educational equity have had to be resolved through the courts,” said Dan Rich, professor of public policy at the University of Delaware. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s not atypical.”

‘A stretch goal?’

When Carney took office in 2017, a WEIC plan to redistrict Wilmington’s students from Christina School District into Red Clay and provide additional dollars to high-poverty schools there had failed to gain enough votes in the statehouse the year prior. 

That plan called for an additional $15 million per year for three high-poverty school districts across the state.

Some lawmakers representing the Wilmington suburbs worried about their schools in Red Clay being disrupted, while others such as southern Delaware representatives and Republicans felt the weighted funding for high-poverty schools was too Wilmington-centric. 

“The work that we did was certainly based and grounded in the realities of the city of Wilmington,” Allen said. “But there are children from disadvantaged backgrounds all over the state. This was not simply a Wilmington problem, it was really a problem for all kids and school populations.”

Others questioned how the additional dollars would be spent. 

Under the settlement, schools will have to annually report how weighted dollars are being spent starting in fiscal year 2023. 

Carney said when he first proposed Opportunity Funding now included in the settlement, he always intended to push for it to become a permanent part of Delaware’s school funding system but wanted to first evaluate its effectiveness.

“I didn’t want to just throw more money at a problem without assessing its effectiveness,” he said. “That’s why we structured it as we did.”

In 2017, Carney told WEIC its weighted funding proposal would financially “handcuff the state,” which was facing a $350 million budget deficit. 

Despite a historic revenue shortfall due to the coronavirus pandemic, Carney said Tuesday he’s confident the state has the money.

“Will it be a stretch goal? It will,” he said. “But I didn’t want an agreement that was beyond our reach … I didn’t want a judge in a court telling us what to do or how to do it.”

Natalia Alamdari covers education for The News Journal. Contact her at [email protected] or (302) 324-2312. Jeanne Kuang covers Wilmington for The News Journal. Contact her at [email protected] or (302) 324-2476.

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