DOVER – A commission of legislators, educators, community leaders and other advocates will conduct a comprehensive review of how public education is funded in the First State, and recommend a series of reforms to better address student need and more equitably distribute resources across districts and charter schools, under legislation passed by the Delaware Senate on Tuesday.
Sponsored by Senate Education Committee Chair Laura Sturgeon and House Education Committee Chair Kim Williams, Senate Concurrent Resolution 201 will help to drive public education funding reform beyond the conclusion of the 152nd General Assembly and into the term of Delaware’s next governor.
“In my 25 years as a public school teacher, I saw firsthand how the incredibly complex and inequitable system that Delaware uses to fund public education is failing to meet the needs of students and contributing to widespread burnout among educators,” Sturgeon said.
“Over the last five years, the courts, independent researchers, and community members have all weighed in and consistently confirmed what our public educators have been telling us for decades,” she said. “The time has come for us to stop kicking this can down the road and start working on real systemic reforms that will improve Delaware’s schools. The Public Education Funding Commission will do that by bringing advocates and experts together to develop a multi-year plan that the Legislature and Delaware’s next governor can follow to bring about the transformative changes that we all agree will be needed in the years ahead.”
Delaware’s current funding formula, which dates back to the Eisenhower Administration, is based on enrollment and on how much money is needed to provide education to a “unit” made up of a set number of students with little regard to the level of need among the students who make up that population. The state and federal governments provide about 70% of the funding, while another 30% is generated through district-level property taxes set by voters during referendums and collected by the counties.
The Delaware NAACP, Delawareans for Educational Opportunity and others filed a lawsuit in 2018 arguing that, by ignoring individual student need and local funding capacity, Delaware’s public school funding system is so unfair to disadvantaged students that it violates the state Constitution.
The lawsuit was later split with the Delaware Court of Chancery ruling in 2020 that the state’s property tax system was unconstitutional, resulting in all three counties undertaking property tax reassessment for the first time in decades, which will be completed in the coming years.
In settling the other lawsuit, the Carney Administration agreed to permanently allocate additional state funding based on the number of low-income and multi-lingual learners at a given school, and expand special education funding in kindergarten through third grade, among other changes.
An independent assessment of Delaware’s education funding system completed in 2023 as a part of the lawsuit settlement found those changes had not gone far enough.
The American Institutes for Research recommended several additional reforms, including an increase in Delaware’s overall public education funding, better distribution of resources according to student need, improved funding transparency and flexibility, more robust adjustments for inequity across district tax bases, the implementation of a weighted student funding formula, and expanded voluntary full-day, pre-kindergarten, among other suggestions.
The commission created by SCR 201 would be tasked with examining those proposals, determining which components of the public education system should be modified, and developing a multi-year plan for implementing reforms, including the order in which changes should be made and in what year.
The Public Education Funding Commission would be made up of 31 members, including legislators, cabinet secretaries, parents, educators, education support professionals, special education professionals, principals, administrators, district financial officers, community organizations, and advocates.
Once passed by the House, SCR 201 would require the Commission to hold its first meeting no later than October 1, 2024, and issue its first set of recommendations by October 1, 2025, to be considered in the governor’s recommended budget for Fiscal Year 2027.
“During the last several years, we have passed numerous measures and have committed meaningful investments to support students of all ages and abilities. While these have been critical steps, the fundamental issue lies in how we fund public education in our state,” said Rep. Williams, who also co-chairs the Joint Finance Committee. “The Public Education Funding Commission will help us create a more equitable system that truly meets the needs of all students and educators. I commend Sen. Sturgeon and all the stakeholders for working on this issue and look forward to the work of the Commission.”
SCR 201 now heads to the House for final consideration.
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