‘Denial’: Delaware commissioners question need for added funding as governor seems to soften call for quick implementation

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!

This story was supported by a statehouse coverage grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Delaware Education Secretary Cindy Marten appeared to walk back Gov. Matt Meyer’s stance on pushing for the implementation of a new education funding formula by this fall at Monday’s Public Education Funding Commission meeting.

Just a few days before the meeting, Meyer told WHYY News in an exclusive interview he informed his secretary of education that he would like “something new in place by this fall.” He also said he strongly supported a weighted school formula, meaning more money would go to high-need populations, such as low-income students, those with disabilities and multi-language learners.

“There’s a lot of disagreement on this,” he said. “They’ve been working on this for years, and I believe we’re not making as much progress as we need to make for our kids. So that might mean we’re not going to get everything we want to get, but we’re going to get part of it. We’re going to get a better formula. It’s going to be in place by the fall, and then we’re going to continue working to perfect that formula.”

“That seems very impossible right now,” said Rep. Kim Williams, Joint Finance Committee chair and House Education Committee chair, during the commission meeting. “So I want to know if that’s what we’re aiming for because that is very concerning to me.”

Marten, who attended the meetings for the first time, told commissioners who raised questions about the timing that Meyer wanted to see recommendations on some models of a formula and what the price tag would be. After that, it would be another year to actually implement the changes.

“You don’t flip a switch on this,” she said. “I know how school funding works. You can’t just flip a switch and say, ‘Here’s a new formula, here’s your money.”’

Asked about both comments, a spokesperson for the governor said Meyer remained committed to getting the funding formula changed for the next school year. That may not mean it is “put into place “ by that time. She did not answer questions about which fiscal-year budget would include money for implementation.

To implement a new or revised funding formula for the 2025-2026 school year, lawmakers would likely need to fund it in the state budget for fiscal year 2026, which starts in July. The state could also phase it in over several years.

The 31-member commission includes lawmakers, executive branch officials, teachers, principals, school administrators and community advocates.

American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware Legal Director Dwayne Bensing, an education advocate who previously sued the state because it was underfunding disadvantaged public school students, said he agreed with Meyer about the lack of urgency currently displayed by the commission and other groups who have worked on this issue, but remained optimistic by the governor’s apparent call to action.

But Bensing said he’s been frustrated from the start by what he believes is the commission’s pushing back of deadlines and making decisions, and “denialism.”

The commissioners almost immediately pushed back their deadline so that final recommendations would not be due until July 2026.

“Every commission hearing that I’ve witnessed has been a regurgitation of the same issues,” Bensing said. “Like I said, I really just sense this denial that folks don’t want to swallow the pill that we just have an enormous deficit when it comes to our investment in public education.”

Some members continued to express concerns about the state moving from a resource-based system, which Delaware has had since 1940, to a weighted formula where money follows the child based on need. Delaware’s resourced-based system takes a yearly count of students and converts the number of children in each building into units.

Marten has experience both with high-need populations and with implementing a weighted student-funding formula. Before serving in the U.S. Department of Education as deputy education secretary under President Joe Biden, she served as the superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District from 2013 to 2021.

California implemented the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) in 2013, which allocates state funding by the proportion of unduplicated “high-need” students in the district: those from low-income families, English learners and those in foster care. California added an additional $18 billion to education funding that was phased in over six years.

State Sen. Laura Sturgeon, chair of the Public Education Funding Commission, said the group has completely moved away from the idea that it would “remodel or rebuild” the current formula.

“We wanted to pick the values that were important to us that our Delaware system had and build a model around that,” Sturgeon said. “So the answer is, we’ve completely moved off of choosing from models that already exist and [are now] building the Delaware model.”

The meeting agenda said the group would discuss funding models as new business. But that discussion was moved to next month as members debated the goals and principles of what a new Delaware formula should have. Members agreed to look at three models: the current unit system, the weighted funding formula recommended by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) report and a proposal from the Delaware Association of School Administrators (DASA) on modifying the current unit ratios to give equity to low-income and multi-language learner needs.

Mike Griffith from the Learning Policy Institute, a nonpartisan education policy think tank that is helping guide the Public Education Commission through the decision-making process, said members have stressed to him that a new formula, regardless of how its based, must hold school districts and charter schools harmless for any loss of funding and that there should be protections for teachers and other key staff.

A report released in 2023 by AIR as a result of the school funding lawsuit showed Delaware was underfunding high-need students by $600 million to $1 billion.

Delaware is required to invest more money in public education due to a legal settlement with the ACLU of Delaware and others. Civil rights groups sued the state in 2018, alleging it was persistently underfunding disadvantaged public school students. The parties settled in 2020.

Some commissioners, including Rep. Williams, D-Stanton, and state Sen. Eric Buckson, R-South Dover, questioned whether the state needed to invest that amount of money.

“Just adding money to something doesn’t mean it’s going to fix the problem. And the AIR report says $500 million to $1 billion, but I still don’t understand if we had a billion dollars, what would we do,” Williams asked.

Bensing said the AIR report is a direct result of the civil rights litigation because among the parties, including the governor’s office, there was an open question about how much money would it take for the state to reach the constitutional mandate to provide an adequate education. So they engaged experts to determine what funding would be required for Delaware schools to equitably and adequately educate our students.

“This wasn’t like some voluntary think piece about people who believe in big government spending, what would they do in a dream world,” he said. “Even if you want to count the progress that we’ve made — that incremental change over the last four years, since the litigation and the settlement. The increase in opportunity funds, it’s still not nearly enough.”

As part of the settlement, the state had to provide $25 million in Opportunity Funding, which is equity dollars for low-income students, and was required to eventually reach $60 million in fiscal year 2025. The Delaware Department of Education said Opportunity Funding is at $63 million.

Delaware is ranked 45th in the nation for educational outcomes, according to research from the University of Delaware. Three-fourths of fourth-graders are unable to read proficiently and 82% of eighth-graders are below proficiency in math. Earlier this month, Gov. Meyer declared a “literacy emergency” after national test scores revealed eighth-grade reading scores in the First State hit a 27-year low in 2024.

Bensing said every day that Delaware doesn’t provide an adequate education is a violation of the state constitution and the promise made to its public school children.

“We have plenty of evidence that our legislators fail to act when they are told that there is a crisis in our public education system,” he said. “But it seems to me that further delay here just proves what history has shown us, and that is that the legislature will fail to act.”

Bensing said he felt some hope by Sturgeon saying she wanted this commission to actually address the issue, unlike past groups.

“As long as progress is being made, I’m happy to be a quiet observer at these meetings,” he said. “But further delay is not the answer here and it’s really a disservice to Delaware students.”