Delaware
Can Delaware’s Next Governor Fix a Jim Crow-Era Funding Formula?
In 2000, Delaware education advocates began pushing to reform the state’s school funding system — a relic of the Jim Crow era that baked profound inequities into district budgets. Since then, half a dozen marquee tasks forces and commissions have chimed in, unanimously calling for a wholesale overhaul.
This quarter-century of broad agreement notwithstanding, Delaware’s next governor will inherit the problem, a rising price tag for the fix and, critics complain, no clear political roadmap.
Six candidates are running. Democrats Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long; Matt Meyer, county executive of New Castle, the state’s largest county; and Collin O’Mara, World Wildlife Federation CEO and a former Delaware environmental official, will face Republicans Mike Ramone, who is minority leader of the state House of Representatives; retired 9/11 first responder Jerry Price; and businessman Bobby Williamson.
Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter
The state’s last Republican governor left office in 1993, and this year’s polls again strongly favor Democrats. The current contest, then, will likely be decided by the Sept. 10 primary, in which Hall-Long and Meyer are the front-runners.
Whoever wins, a recent court case and subsequent legislation commit them to take action. In 2020, outgoing Gov. John Carney settled a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of the Delaware NAACP and a coalition called Delawareans for Educational Opportunity, in part by agreeing to a small boost in aid for a mushrooming population of disadvantaged students.
The settlement also required the state to commission an American Institutes for Research study to determine exactly how underfunded Delaware’s schools are. Earlier this year, the researchers reported that fixing the problems would cost $500 million to $1 billion.
“An alarmingly clear and negative relationship exists between the percentage of low-income students served by schools and the outcomes they achieve for students,” the report declared.
After the report’s release, lawmakers created a planning commission to figure out how to raise revenue and right inequities, with an eye toward releasing recommendations in October 2025 for a new funding system to take effect in 2027.
“The time has come for us to stop kicking this can down the road and start working on real systemic reforms,” said state Sen. Laura Sturgeon, one of the Democrats leading the charge.
But others are decrying the appointment of yet one more panel to study what they say is a well-understood problem. ACLU of Delaware Legal Director Dwayne Bensing isn’t convinced that the 2027 timeline — seven years after his organization’s suit was settled and almost a decade after it was filed — does not, in fact, just create more delay.
Reports by a succession of commissions packed with a Who’s Who of Delaware education advocates, philanthropies and state and local officials were released in 2001, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2015, 2017 and 2021. The only real difference in the new American Institutes for Research report, released this past March, was the price tag.
Will Fallout from COVID Recession Fix Delaware’s Jim Crow-Era School Funding?
A central issue identified over and over: With a few, narrow exceptions, Delaware does not include financial supplements to offset the cost of services needed by children with disabilities, those from impoverished households or English learners. Its unusual “unit-based” funding formula is actually set up to send more money to wealthy school systems than to impoverished ones.
The state tallies the number of teachers a district employs, their years of seniority and other credentials and then sends money to pay for enough educators — at a salary level corresponding to their presumed qualifications — to reach a staff-to-student ratio, or “unit,” spelled out in the law. The staffing ratios apply statewide, but school systems with higher salaries receive more money for each unit.
Because this means wealthy districts automatically receive more money, those with the most property tax revenue have been able to hire and retain the most sought-after teachers, while struggling, property-poor school systems have no way of competing for faculty or offsetting the costs of poverty.
All three Democratic candidates and two of the Republicans recently attended an education forum moderated by Marcus Wright, who serves on the board of Seaford School District, an impoverished school system in the southern part of the state. Wright came away concerned about the lack of a plan for moving the reform forward.
“I thought that there were very broad ideas, but not a roadmap or a game plan,” he says. “I’ll just say that I expected more.”
Four of the six candidates agree the school finance formula needs fixing, with Republican Ramone calling for a “bipartisan approach” to the overhaul. The two candidates that do not mention the reform are GOPers Price, who favors expanded parents’ rights and career education, and Williamson, who calls for “individual student allotment” vouchers.
The platforms of all three Democrats tick lots of boxes on educator wish lists, with Hall-Long’s proposals perhaps the most traditional. Funding reform is near the end of her published roster of priorities, which is topped by expanded early childhood education, universal free school meals, spending on student mental health, higher pay for teachers and smaller class sizes.
Carney, who is term-limited, left Hall-Long with a mixed record. Under the settlement with the ACLU, he immediately increased supplemental funding for the state’s most vulnerable students by an amount starting at $25 million in a year in 2020, rising to $60 million annually starting in 2025. It’s a start, critics concede, but a pittance compared to the $500 million to 1$ billion called for in the AIR report.
Hall-Long’s candidacy has been dogged by several ethics scandals — including complaints about payments she may have made to her husband, who has served as her campaign treasurer since she entered electoral politics in 2016.
Her closest competitor, Meyer, is a former math teacher who in 2016 was elected New Castle county executive. New Castle is Delaware’s deep-blue northernmost county, home to 60% of the state’s population, 57% of its voters and the city of Wilmington, where school funding inequities are perhaps the largest.
Meyer started as a Teach for America corps member at an all-boys charter school in Wilmington, where almost every student was impoverished. The school struggled — in part because of the uneven playing field Delaware’s various commissions have noted. It closed years after Meyer left.
As county executive, Meyer was also a defendant in the ACLU suit, which challenged decades of delays in updating the property valuations used to finance local school aid in Delaware’s three counties. His 18-page education platform is the most detailed of all the candidates’, including specifics on reforming both the state funding system and county-level taxes.
“Funding cannot change overnight but must increase with urgency,” the document asserts, pledging to “Better align our state’s funding system with the AIR report’s recommendation of an additional increase of $3,400 to $6,400 per pupil.”
Because of the inequities with county and property development taxes, some districts are able to send four times as much funding to schools as their neighbors. Any new state aid formula must account for this, Meyer says in his plan.
The third Democrat, O’Mara, is a former Delaware secretary of natural resources and environmental control. His education platform commits to fully implementing the recommendations in the AIR report, suggesting that one way to fix the system would be to leave the basic “per-unit” calculation alone and add more funding for challenged students.
So how will the next governor achieve his or her vision? At the time the state settled the ACLU suit, proponents of the agreement said they thought shifts in state demographics and the composition of the General Assembly might help cement the political will to raise taxes and change the way the money is distributed. One of these shifts is the rapid demographic change in Delaware’s student population.
For decades, inadequate and inequitable funding was a problem of the state’s blue, urban districts. But more recently, education gaps in Sussex — the state’s southernmost, red-leaning county — have widened as the area’s large poultry processing industry has drawn an influx of Spanish-speaking migrants. Advocates had hoped the shift would drive home the notion that inadequate school resources are not just an urban problem.
Simultaneously, the 2018 election of a wave of younger, more diverse, left-leaning lawmakers — among them several people of color who sought elected office to advocate for equity in education — was supposed to buoy efforts to reform the system. In 2021, spearheaded by the new lawmakers, a bipartisan swath of the General Assembly passed a resolution committing to overhaul the funding formula. This year, some of the same legislative leaders sponsored the bill that created the latest commission.
The sponsor and co-sponsor of the 2024 legislation, Sturgeon and state Sen. Elizabeth Lockman, declined to be interviewed for this story; Rep. Nnamdi Chukwuocha did not return emails requesting comment, though he did speak at length for a 2021 74 Million piece on the urgency the pandemic’s academic losses would supposedly lend to efforts to reform the funding system.
Some are optimistic the new effort will succeed. Zahava Stadler, project director of New America’s Education Funding Equity Initiative and an expert on Delaware’s school funding system, says she understands advocates’ concerns but is less skeptical than some that the commission announced in July will come up with meaningful reforms.
“Just because the AIR report made specific recommendations doesn’t mean the political system won’t have to hash them out,” she says. “Sometimes these reports sit on a shelf and go nowhere, and sometimes they get results.”
Some of the wonkier shifts are already underway, she notes. Property values for local tax purposes, until recently frozen at 1970s and ‘80s levels, are now being reassessed every five years — a significant change, if not a widely understood one. That will raise revenue, she explains, but the state needs to follow up with a system for more equitably redistributing this money so tax-poor districts aren’t locked out of the gains.
For his part, Bensing, the ACLU director, worries that a general agreement that the system needs fixing without new specifics means more delays. “It’s not politically convenient for our elected leaders to tell voters they are going to increase taxes,” he says. “But that is the right thing to do.”
He wonders whether a new court challenge would add a fresh sense of urgency — or give recalcitrant elected officials the political cover of a legal threat or edict to blame for changes to the tax system.
Wright has more confidence that in the long run there will be change, but decries the impact of the incremental pace on students.
“How can we compete? How can we fill out classrooms with teachers, with paraprofessionals, with all the people it takes to run a school district?” he asks. “Our kids don’t deserve any less than any other kids.”
Slithery intruder makes appearance on beach
A huge snake was spotted making its way across the beach in Ocean City, Maryland. Luckily, the reptile was not venomous.
It could be one of your worst nightmares.
You’re enjoying a summer day in the water when you feel something brush past your leg. You turn, and there’s a snake.
While the chances of that scenario playing out are highly unlikely, there is a good chance the waters you enjoy playing in are also inhabited by snakes.
The danger level might not be as high as Florida’s, but it’s still something to be aware of when you go into the outdoors.
Here’s a look at the snake-infested lakes and ponds in Delaware, according to worldatlas.com.
Nanticoke River
The Nanticoke River runs 64 miles from southern Delaware to the Chesapeake Bay, winding through marshlands, forests, and farmland along the way. The habitat is perfect for the Northern watersnake. The snakes are nonvenomous, but they will defensively strike if you corner them or try to hold them.
The Brandywine
This is where you need to be very careful. The Eastern copperhead is a confirmed and documented presence, and a small group exists at Alapocas Run State Park along the water near Wilmington. The snakes won’t chase you, but if you step too close or don’t see them, they will strike. You should watch your step near log piles and rocky outcrops.
Millsboro Pond
Millsboro Pond is the home to perch, black crappie and frogs, which is the perfect food for snakes including northern water snakes, plain-bellied water snakes, queen snakes and common ribbon snakes.
The Eastern copperhead lives in southern Sussex County, which includes the pond. However, sightings are rare. It’s something to watch out for when you are at the pond.
Lums Pond
The pond, located in Lums Pond State Park, has numerous varieties of snakes. However, the inlets and small islands are perfect for northern water snakes to bask in the sun. The snakes thrive on fish and amphibians and benefit from the surrounding forest and wetlands.
One snake to watch for is the ringneck snake. It has a mild venom and its teeth have trouble puncturing human skin, but for those with venom allergies, you should treat it like any other venomous species.
Trap Pond
Trap Pond, located in Trap Pond State Park, is noted for its cypress swamp. The bald cypress trees and the tree’s root structure provide a great hiding place and basking spot for eastern garter snakes and northern water snakes.
Silver Lake
Located in Dover, Silver Lake is lined with trees and vegetation, making it a great place for snakes. The northern water snake is seen here, but eastern kingsnakes are also occasionally seen in the wooded areas of the lake.
Garrison Lake
Garrison Lake is a popular spot in Kent County for fishing and boating. The marshy areas and dense vegetation are perfect habitats for northern water snakes, eastern garter snakes and eastern rat snakes. The wetlands are attractive to snakes due to the abundance of prey and the availability of cover.
Red Mills Pond
Red Mills Pond, located near Lewes, has a rich biodiversity supporting numerous amphibians and small mammals, which attract snakes. Among the snakes you may see in and around the pond are the northern water snake, eastern ribbon snake and eastern ribbon snake.
Del lawmakers discuss bill requiring teachers work with valid licenses
The bill is a response to revelations a school therapist fabricated his credentials before he was charged with sexual abuse of a child.
Delaware Online/The News Journal won the A-Mark Prize for Investigative Journalism for its reporting revealing hundreds of invalid teacher licenses in Delaware.
The work by reporters Kelly Powers and Esteban Parra led to lawmakers proposing a bill that would tighten licensing requirements for public school employees and penalize districts that retain unlicensed staff.
The judges cited the work for “meticulous and thorough reporting” and “a fair and balanced presentation of the situation.”
The A‑Mark prize honors excellence in watchdog and accountability reporting. It is backed by The A‑Mark Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit supporting investigative and unbiased social‑issue journalism, in partnership with the Maryland‑Delaware‑DC Press Association.
“The reporting from Kelly Powers and Esteban Parra reflects the very best of investigative journalism in Delaware – thorough, fair and impactful,’’ said Mike Feeley, executive editor of The News Journal and Delaware Online. “We are proud to see their work awarded with the inaugural A-Mark Prize in a highly competitive field.
“I congratulate all of Delaware Online’s award winners in this year’s MDDC Awards for their commitment to journalism that strengthens our communities,’’ Feeley said.
Delaware Online/The News Journal won a total of 18 awards May 8 at the MDDC Press Association’s annual conference.
The MDDC Awards recognizes news publications from Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia. For each category, a first- and second-place winner is chosen based on circulation divisions. A part of the largest-circulation division, Delaware Online/The News Journal competes against news sites like the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Banner and Washington Post.
Here is the list of winners, with links to the stories that took home the prizes.
Best of Show
- News-Driven Art or Illustration: Luis Solano, “American’s deadliest habit”
First Place
Second Place
- Feature Story: Non-Profile: Xerxes Wilson, “Why this Delaware prison is making tattooing part of its educational programming”
- Sports Feature Story: Brandon Holveck, Martin Frank, “Eagles’ Saquon Barkley’s historic season built on selflessness, generational athleticism”
- Local Column: Critical Thinking: Xerxes Wilson, “Broken bones, brick walls and searching for accountability”
- Sports Photo (Feature): Benjamin Chambers, “Delaware wins 61-31 against UTEP in Conference USA regular season finale”
- Public Service Reporting: Krys’tal Griffin, “While these Delaware riders depend on Paratransit, the service still lags post-pandemic”
- Breaking News: The News Journal staff, “Delaware State trooper killed by shooter prevented other deaths, state officials say”
- News Page Design: Luis Solano, “American’s deadliest habit”
- Page 1 Design: Stephanie Lindholm, “Musical haven in Delaware”
- Continuing Reporting: Kelly Powers, Shane Brennan, “Your property taxes are changing. What Delaware homeowners should know about new laws”
- General Website Excellence, The News Journal
What to know about jury duty in Delaware
Here are some tips and information about what to do when you receive a jury summons in the mail in Delaware.
A lawsuit seeking to represent all people locked up by Delaware claims that prisoners are routinely left to “marinate” in a high-concentration pepper spray.
The lawsuit filed May 7 in Delaware Court of Chancery seeks an injunction barring correction officials from using the spray until leaders enforce rules the lawsuit says require staff to decontaminate prisoners after they are targeted.
In interviews, state prisoners have frequently described officers’ use of so-called OC spray, a more concentrated form of pepper spray only available to law enforcement, as cruel. Prisoners say the spray is deployed unnecessarily, recklessly, frequently and causes intense burning on the skin and through the respiratory system.
“Imagine taking a glass bottle, smashing it up and grinding it up and snorting that up your nose, then times that by 1,000,” said a former prisoner, William Davis, describing being sprayed during a previous interview about a similar use‑of‑force lawsuit involving Sussex Correctional Institution. “I felt it burn for days.”
Records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show OC spray — short for oleoresin capsicum — is used hundreds of times a year and is a frequent issue in Delaware prison lawsuits. The new ACLU lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of all Delaware prisoners and focuses on what happens after someone is sprayed.
The lawsuit claims officers routinely ignore training, policy and clear health risks by failing to properly flush and clean people after using OC spray. It argues the practice violates Delaware’s constitutional ban on “cruel” punishment.
Prisoners allege they were sprayed while handcuffed, naked or already subdued, including one who said officers sprayed him through his cell door while he was locked inside, and another who said he was forced during a strip search to touch his genitals and then his mouth after being sprayed.
In each of these episodes, the lawsuit states that prisoners were not properly decontaminated, some were left unattended, returned to a contaminated cell, left in clothes drenched in spray and some were not allowed to shower for a day or more after.
“Refusing to decontaminate prisoners is cruel because it subjects them to hours of needless suffering. Prolonged exposure is also potentially deadly,” the lawsuit states.
Delaware Department of Correction officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The allegations of the lawsuit are built partially on declarations from eight named plaintiffs in Delaware prisons. Additionally, it leans on video and deposition evidence from two other excessive force cases the ACLU is litigating on behalf of Delaware prisoners.
In those other cases, several officers have testified in depositions that they had not decontaminated individuals they sprayed and were unaware if others had, the new lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also cites Department of Correction training materials turned over in other lawsuits. Policy and training documents outline that OC spray is only to be used when no reasonable alternative is available, not as retaliation or punishment and in short bursts from a safe distance.
A training presentation describes the health risks of OC spray and says sprayed individuals should be moved to fresh air, assessed for medical conditions and repeatedly flushed and wiped to decontaminate them.
It notes that people who have been sprayed must be monitored. It underscores these instructions with a red skull and crossbones.
Other litigation: New lawsuit claims excessive force used by Delaware officers during September prison raids
In interviews, prisoners have reported that officers would “empty the can” in long bursts directed closely at their face. The named plaintiffs in the new lawsuit include asthmatic individuals who said they were denied their inhaler after being sprayed.
Besides pain, OC spray can cause difficulty breathing, gagging, heart distress and blindness. It can also induce a feeling of suffocation and helplessness, according to a department training presentation. Failure to decontaminate can cause blindness, respiratory failure and skin conditions, the lawsuit states.
If sprayed too close, the OC molecules can cause what’s known as “hydraulic needling of the eyes” where the spray causes lacerations, the complaint states, noting that multiple prisoners in other states have died after being sprayed.
The lawsuit also claims that officers deploy OC spray in numerous ways, which include a grenade, fogger, spray, muzzle blast rounds, as well as pepper balls fired from a weapon similar to a paintball gun.
One of the named plaintiffs was shot numerous times by a pepper ball gun, rupturing the globe of his right eye. A separate lawsuit filed on behalf of that prisoner was dismissed because he didn’t address written complaints about the episode through prescribed channels inside the prison.
Rather than seeking damages for federal constitutional violations, the lawsuit asks only for an injunction forcing changes to decontamination practices. And instead of following the typical federal-court path for prisoner-rights cases, it was filed in Delaware’s Court of Chancery — the state’s business court, where cases tend to move more quickly.
It names Department of Correction Commissioner Terra Taylor as its lone defendant, claiming that the department has knowingly failed to follow its own policy regarding the spray’s use.
It also cites a deposition given by Taylor in other litigation in which she states there is no specific process for decontaminating those targeted with OC, that she hasn’t taken any steps to require officers to do so, and that she doesn’t believe there is an obligation to do so.
Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com.
-
Sports10 minutes agoPrep talk: Southern Section Division 1 semifinals features matchup of boys’ volleyball powers
-
World22 minutes agoEurope Day: 40 years of ties between Spain and the European Union
-
News52 minutes agoFrontier Airlines plane hits person on runway during takeoff at Denver airport
-
New York2 hours agoMan Dies in Subway Attack; Mamdani Orders Inquiry Into Suspect’s Release From Bellevue
-
Detroit, MI3 hours agoPatchy dense fog turns to stronger thunderstorms for Metro Detroit to start the weekend
-
San Francisco, CA3 hours agoWhere to watch Pittsburgh Pirates vs San Francisco Giants: TV channel, start time, streaming for May 9
-
Dallas, TX3 hours agoFC Dallas vs Real Salt Lake Preview: Lineups, Storylines & What to Watch
-
Miami, FL3 hours agoMiami Area Gets First New Manufactured Home Community in Decades