However, the governor also acknowledged that less than 40% of children statewide were reading proficiently at third grade.

“Imagine if your child went to a school with that kind of result,” he said. “None of us would tolerate that, but too many children across our state are faced with this reality.”

“We failed our children,” said Republican House Minority Leader Mike Ramone in response to Carney’s comments.

Ramone believes Delaware students deserve more student choice and improved access to quality education. Despite his support for Carney’s legislative proposals, like higher salaries and more money for early childhood education, Ramone said one party has been in charge for 32 years, often just applying band-aid fixes. He said it’s time to go beyond temporary solutions and completely change how education is funded.

“We’re not creating productive environments to give the children who are socially, economically challenged an opportunity to get to a good educational facility,” he said. “Rip the Band-Aids off, reconfigure the way we fund education, reconfigure the way we support our teachers and our educational facilities, and re-address the tools that we can use with technology. We want to put [students] into society where they can be the most successful person. They could be that’s our job, and we are failing desperately.”

Later this week, lawmakers could vote on legislation that would require people wanting to buy a firearm to complete a training course and require people to have a permit to buy a gun.

Protests against Israel’s war in Gaza continually interrupted Carney’s speech soon after he began. Several protesters were escorted out of the building by Capitol Police.

After Carney resumed speaking, he was interrupted several more times. For those watching on the livestream feed, the volume of the audio seemed to lower with subsequent protests. Both the governor’s office and House officials say they did not mute the livestream.