Delaware students head back to school

Governor Jack Markell made the first day of school extra special for a few students and teachers this morning.

Markell visited three schools in Delaware – Middletown High School, Cedar Lane Elementary and Cedar Lane Early Childhood Center, to greet families and help students start off the school year on the right foot.

“It’s an exciting day and we look forward to keeping the enthusiasm going throughout the year,” said Markell.

The governor handed out flowers to parents and students during drop-off and chatted with students and teachers as they arrived.

Markell said there are a lot of positive programs going on in the public schools and he hopes to be able to continue helping the teachers that go above and beyond for their classrooms.

“We have so many wonderful educators throughout the state and we want to make sure that we’re supporting them as we can but there’s a lot of work going on with the common core standards, with the world language immersion, with the early childhood, with all the things going on in K-12,” said Markell.

In his state of the state earlier this year, Markell said he’d like to see a change in teacher compensation however, salary increases didn’t end up making it in the FY2014 budget.

“Its not the easiest thing in the world to do because it’s changing compensation but we really want, as I said in the state of the state last year, we want to really focus on making an improvement there,” he said.