‘This is a failed experiment’: Redistricting advocates urge action for Wilmington city students amid fierce pushback

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The Redding Consortium for Educational Equity is set to decide next week on a concept to redraw school district boundaries in the city of Wilmington and northern New Castle County. But intense opposition is mounting by those opposed to changing the lines.

The consortium is a state group created in 2019 tasked with redrawing lines for the school districts currently serving the city of Wilmington and northern New Castle County. Redding co-chairs state Sen. Elizabeth “Tizzy” Lockman and former state Attorney General Matt Denn have been presenting the redistricting choices to school districts throughout December.

But hundreds of community members descended on a Brandywine school board workshop this week to voice their concerns about the upcoming vote. Lockman and Denn faced fierce pushback from school board members and from meeting attendees against the idea.

“I’m going to be lobbying my legislators to vote down any plan you come up with,” school board member Ralph Ackerman said. “We are not pawns in your bigger game.”

Wilmington is currently carved into four school districts: Christina, Brandywine, Colonial and Red Clay. City schools are consistently some of the worst-performing academically.

The advisory group is considering a few boundary models, which would remove the Christina School District out of the city and split those students between one or two districts. Lockman said the redistricting would affect about 2,730 students from pre-K to 12th grade.

3 options under consideration

• Metropolitan Wilmington School District: Would consolidate Brandywine, Red Clay and the city of Wilmington into one district
• Northern New Castle County Consolidated School District: Would consolidate all four districts serving Wilmington. It would not include the Appoquinimink School District in the southern part of the county
• Brandywine and Red Clay School District: The two districts would be responsible for educating all students within the city of Wilmington. There are three variations of the boundaries for this option

School board, public vexed by lack of detail

Many people who spoke at the Brandywine school board meeting expressed frustration about the lack of specifics regarding the models under discussion, including data on the fiscal costs of the different models, student feeder patterns and any cost savings from consolidation. Lockman said the financial data will be made public online before next Tuesday’s vote.

“I am frustrated at the lack of transparency and lack of data,” Alyssa Samuels said. “If I were at work and I were going to propose a plan to someone, and they wanted information from me, and I said, ‘I’ll get it to you next week,’ or ‘I’m not quite sure,’ I’d be fired, I’d be absolutely out the door.”

The consortium intends to pick the model and then develop a detailed plan early next year around that idea. The plan would then go to the Delaware State Board of Education. If approved, it would head to the General Assembly for a vote.

Red Clay has different ‘values,’ ‘philosophies’

The issue of race and diversity dominated much of the conversation during the meeting. The trauma of the 1978 court-mandated busing and consolidation of the mostly Black Wilmington school district and the 10 school districts in the suburbs lingers in the state’s psyche decades later. Delaware created the four districts within New Castle County in 1981. Court-ordered busing ended in 2000, but some students continue to be bused today.

Despite the court intervention to force desegregation of Wilmington schools, Delaware Department of Education data shows the students are majority Black or Latino and up to 73% of them are low-income.

District parent Keith Frankel provoked accusations of racism from some crowd members when he said Wilmington students should get more money to stay in their existing schools instead of being moved around.

“I don’t think any of this shuffling around of the schools is going to help these students in the underprivileged neighborhoods,” he said. “Personally, they’re a product of the area where they live, their parents, their neighborhoods.”

Brandywine school board members Kim Stock and Brian Jordan questioned whether moving forward with the Brandywine/Red Clay option would change the student demographic makeup of their schools, saying the two districts have different “values” and “philosophies.”

“We’ve got schools where the white kids go with the white kids, the Black kids go with the Black kids, the Latino kids go with the Latino kids,” Jordan said. “And they don’t come together in a diverse education where they get to be introduced to other views, other cultures, other perspectives. That’s a significant concern for me, because Brandywine has done, I think, a great job at making sure that its schools remain desegregated.”

State Rep. Nnamdi Chukwuocha, who is also a Redding Consortium member, challenged Jordan’s and Stock’s comments that children of color are treated the same in Brandywine by pointing to the district’s Harland Elementary School and P.S. duPont Middle School. DOE data reports duPont’s student population is about 55% Black or Latino and 27% white. About 83% of Harlan students are Black or Hispanic.

“This is a failed experiment and our children are the brunt of what’s happening,” he said. “It’s like we are the stepchildren of this district and we shouldn’t be. Our children should be treated just as fair as everyone else, and that’s not happening.”

Helen Anderson told the board that Black children in Wilmington have been failed for generations. The daughter of the late Wilmington education advocate William “Hicks” Anderson, she also spoke in support of redistricting.

“This very district has said no to every plan that has come,” she said. “I would love to hear when you’re going to give us a ‘yes’ on how you want to be part of the solution. I’ve heard you say ‘Red Clay,’ I’ve heard you say ‘Christina,’ but if we all don’t want to be solution-driven, then this is all pointless.”

The Redding Consortium is scheduled to meet Dec. 16 at the Delaware Tech campus in Wilmington at 5:30 p.m.