Delaware
Milford School Counselor Delaware 2024 Behavioral Health Professional of the Year – State of Delaware News
Shannon Gronau, a school counselor from the Milford School District, is the state’s 2024 Delaware Behavioral Health Professional of the Year.
Secretary of Education Mark Holodick and House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst made the announcement at a statewide banquet honoring the district and charter network behavioral health professionals of the year.
The Mispillion Elementary School counselor said by building strong relationships with students, she’s able to understand how to best support them.
Gronau told the story of a student who “hated school.
“This feeling manifested in many negative ways like attendance issues and aggression. Their parent considered pulling them from school,” she said. “To help I had to understand the student’s needs by building a strong, positive relationship.”
Through check-ins and weekly counseling, she helped the child build coping and anger management skills. She realized the student didn’t feel connected at school and didn’t have healthy morning and night routines at home. She also learned the student’s mother had died, and her family was grieving. Gronau helped connect the student to therapy, worked with the child’s teacher on classroom behavioral techniques and met with the child’s parent to help develop good morning/nighttime routines. She also worked with the school’s family interventionist to connect the family with needed community resources.
As their work together progressed, she offered the student the opportunity to help her run a small group to help other girls in the school also feeling a lack of connection. Today the student is flourishing at school and home.
“From this experience, I saw true growth because the student believed in their ability to do well and had someone that believed in them,” Gronau said.
Teaching leadership development is one of Gronau’s passions. She created a peer leadership group project that trains fourth and fifth grade students to mentor first graders who need a positive connection at school.
“Students thrive when they believe in their unique abilities and are given the opportunity to be a role model for younger students,” she said.
Her assistant principal, Ashley Ganley, said Gronau is beloved by her students.
“Walking the halls, you can see the hugs and waves she receives. The students trust her and confide in her,” Ganley said. “During her workday, Shannon can be found providing individual and group counseling. Her students learn valuable self-regulation skills in small groups or whole classes, which is so needed in today’s classroom and society.”
The Delaware State Behavioral Health Professional of the Year (BHPY) program is administered by the Delaware Department of Education (DDOE). The program recognizes outstanding service by school employees who are health care practitioners or human service providers who offer services for the purpose of improving an individual’s mental health. The Delaware Charter School Network also is invited to participate. Employees considered for the award include:
- School counselors
- School social workers
- Licensed clinical social workers
- School psychologists
- School nurses
From those nominated at a local level, one behavioral health professional of the year moves forward to represent each district or the charter school community in the state program. Each district/charter network winner receives a $2,000 personal award from the winner’s district or charter school. The state program then chooses one person annually to serve as Delaware’s Behavioral Health Professional of the Year. State winners receive an additional $3,000 personal award from DDOE as well as $5,000 to be used for the educational benefit of his or her students.
Learn more about all the 2024 District/Charter Behavioral Health Professionals of the Year here.
Media contact: Alison May, alison.may@doe.k12.de.us, 302-735-4006
Related Topics: award, Delaware, education, professional, support, year
Keep up to date by receiving a daily digest email, around noon, of current news release posts from state agencies on news.delaware.gov.
Here you can subscribe to future news updates.
Shannon Gronau, a school counselor from the Milford School District, is the state’s 2024 Delaware Behavioral Health Professional of the Year.
Secretary of Education Mark Holodick and House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst made the announcement at a statewide banquet honoring the district and charter network behavioral health professionals of the year.
The Mispillion Elementary School counselor said by building strong relationships with students, she’s able to understand how to best support them.
Gronau told the story of a student who “hated school.
“This feeling manifested in many negative ways like attendance issues and aggression. Their parent considered pulling them from school,” she said. “To help I had to understand the student’s needs by building a strong, positive relationship.”
Through check-ins and weekly counseling, she helped the child build coping and anger management skills. She realized the student didn’t feel connected at school and didn’t have healthy morning and night routines at home. She also learned the student’s mother had died, and her family was grieving. Gronau helped connect the student to therapy, worked with the child’s teacher on classroom behavioral techniques and met with the child’s parent to help develop good morning/nighttime routines. She also worked with the school’s family interventionist to connect the family with needed community resources.
As their work together progressed, she offered the student the opportunity to help her run a small group to help other girls in the school also feeling a lack of connection. Today the student is flourishing at school and home.
“From this experience, I saw true growth because the student believed in their ability to do well and had someone that believed in them,” Gronau said.
Teaching leadership development is one of Gronau’s passions. She created a peer leadership group project that trains fourth and fifth grade students to mentor first graders who need a positive connection at school.
“Students thrive when they believe in their unique abilities and are given the opportunity to be a role model for younger students,” she said.
Her assistant principal, Ashley Ganley, said Gronau is beloved by her students.
“Walking the halls, you can see the hugs and waves she receives. The students trust her and confide in her,” Ganley said. “During her workday, Shannon can be found providing individual and group counseling. Her students learn valuable self-regulation skills in small groups or whole classes, which is so needed in today’s classroom and society.”
The Delaware State Behavioral Health Professional of the Year (BHPY) program is administered by the Delaware Department of Education (DDOE). The program recognizes outstanding service by school employees who are health care practitioners or human service providers who offer services for the purpose of improving an individual’s mental health. The Delaware Charter School Network also is invited to participate. Employees considered for the award include:
- School counselors
- School social workers
- Licensed clinical social workers
- School psychologists
- School nurses
From those nominated at a local level, one behavioral health professional of the year moves forward to represent each district or the charter school community in the state program. Each district/charter network winner receives a $2,000 personal award from the winner’s district or charter school. The state program then chooses one person annually to serve as Delaware’s Behavioral Health Professional of the Year. State winners receive an additional $3,000 personal award from DDOE as well as $5,000 to be used for the educational benefit of his or her students.
Learn more about all the 2024 District/Charter Behavioral Health Professionals of the Year here.
Media contact: Alison May, alison.may@doe.k12.de.us, 302-735-4006
Related Topics: award, Delaware, education, professional, support, year
Keep up to date by receiving a daily digest email, around noon, of current news release posts from state agencies on news.delaware.gov.
Here you can subscribe to future news updates.
Is a data center coming to Delaware City?
A large data center project is in the approval process in New Castle County. County Council is deciding how to regulate them.
New Castle County Council approved regulations on the development of data centers Tuesday night.
They won’t apply to the massive proposed data center complex of Project Washington, which continues to fight through state-level objections.
The County Council meeting was standing room only. The crowd of both construction workers supporting the legislation and community members opposing it spread into the lobby of the Louis Redding City/County Building.
The ordinance requires data centers to have a closed-loop water cooling system to limit its water use and creates a 1,000-foot buffer between data centers and residential areas, with an exception for 500-foot buffers if a development can follow noise regulations. It also defaults to existing county limits on noise and lighting levels.
A unanimously approved amendment from Pike Creek representative Timothy Sheldon clarified that these new regulations count for applications submitted after this gets adopted and approved by County Executive Marcus Henry, unless an existing applicant requests to follow these new regulations.
It passed with 12 ‘yes’ votes, with Councilmember Jea P. Street absent from the vote itself.
This was the only amendment left standing. An amendment from Janet Kilpatrick, representing Hockessin, would have grandfathered existing data centers from the ordinance, clarifying that any pending proposal in the county wouldn’t be affected. Another amendment, from Claymont representative John Cartier, would’ve made the ordinance retroactive to count for Project Washington and others. Both were withdrawn at the meeting in a council compromise.
Project Washington’s plans north of Delaware City kicked local data center dialogue into high gear in 2025. The data center project would include 11 two-story data center buildings surrounded by electrical fields on two large land parcels accessible by Hamburg Road, Governor Lea Road and River Road.
It would be 6 million square feet of data center running 24 hours a day, seven days week.
The project’s developer, Starwood Digital Ventures, pledges job creation and and a colossal injection of tax revenue into the coffers of the county and Colonial School District. They said this will bring about 3,500 construction jobs and retain 700 permanent jobs to keep the facility up and running.
County Council member Dave Carter has spent months drafting the regulations that were voted on during this meeting. This is substitute number three on the original bill from August 2025, including compromises on noise and lighting restrictions. Carter wants sensible data center regulation in the county, and he told Delaware Online/The News Journal in March he thinks Project Washington is a “bad deal” for the state.
He thinks the potential demand on the state’s already strained electrical bid will hurt residents’ bills. He also disputes the developers’ promises on permanent jobs and tax revenue.
“We just have to really be cognizant and thoughtful and make sure that we are ensuring that we protect our communities, and that we manage these things well if they are coming,” Carter said at the meeting.
It hasn’t been an easy sell to the rest of County Council. Council member Janet Kilpatrick, who represents Hockessin, wanted consistent regulations on lighting and noise levels to avoid scaring off potential business. Data centers have sprung up across the country as the highly demanding AI industry exploded in popularity.
“If we don’t have some stability, these people are not going to be able to go through a lender to get money, and so that means that they leave, and I’m sure that there’s a group of people in this room that would love to see them leave, but that’s not how we build economic development,” she said at the meeting. “Part of what we need, in my mind, in economic development is that we have a stable land use code.”
Although this doesn’t apply to the controversial Project Washington, County Council will still have a say on the re-zoning of half of the project’s land. The County Board of Adjustment will also have to approve its electrical switch station, Culver said.
At the meeting, residents showed up with mainly negative comments for Project Washington. But, members of trade unions showed up in support of the project’s potential to create construction jobs.
Starwood Digital Ventures will continue to move through the approval process with no changes to Project Washington, according to Jim Lamb, who is handling media for the project.
“We’re really happy there’s a consensus within the council and it’s a really great opportunity for the residents of New Castle County,” Lamb said Tuesday night.
Now this goes to County Executive Marcus Henry’s office, who can sign or veto these regulations.
Half of Project Washington’s proposed land still needs a re-zone, which requires council approval. The project was stifled by DNREC, who ruled the proposal’s size, use and backup diesel generators violate the decades-old Coastal Zone Act.
Starwood Digital Ventures disagrees, and filed and appeal, saying the state environmental agency didn’t classify the project correctly and said it “solely focuses on alleged environmental risk and worst-case emissions, and does not fairly weigh or explain these countervailing factors in light of regulating criteria.”
The appeal’s hearing is in Dover and begins on March 24.
Shane Brennan covers Wilmington and other Delaware issues. Reach out with ideas, tips or feedback at slbrennan@delawareonline.com.
The U.S. Coast Guard and multiple partner agencies are responding to a barge fire in Delaware Bay on Tuesday after a tug reported that the vessel it was towing had caught fire.
According to the Coast Guard, watchstanders at Sector Delaware Bay received a call at approximately 8:20 a.m. from the tug Douglas J, reporting that the barge under tow was on fire. The barge was reportedly carrying scrap metal.
Authorities are towing the burning barge to a position about two miles off Maurice River Cove, New Jersey, in an effort to move the incident away from the main shipping channel while firefighting operations continue.
The Coast Guard has established a safety zone and issued a Broadcast Notice to Mariners as crews work to contain the fire and reduce potential hazards to vessel traffic in the busy port complex. Multiple fire departments have deployed fireboats to assist with suppression efforts.
No injuries have been reported and the cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Responders from Coast Guard Station Philadelphia, Coast Guard Station Cape May, and Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City have been deployed to assist. Partner agencies on scene include the Wilmington Fire Department, Delaware City Fire Department, Philadelphia Fire Department, New Jersey Office of Emergency Management, and Delaware Emergency Management.
The incident follows another major barge fire in the Delaware Bay region in 2022, when a barge carrying scrap household appliances burned for approximately 26 hours in what officials described as the largest firefighting operation in Delaware state history.
Response operations for the current fire remain ongoing.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2026 9:34AM
MINQUADALE, Del. (WPVI) — The DMV in Wilmington, Delaware is reopening at 8a.m. Tuesday.
This comes after the deadly shooting of State Trooper Matthew “Ty” Snook, 34, in December 2025.
A man walked into the facility and shot and killed Snook.
The DMV said service at the Wilmington location will be by appointment only for now. The Delaware City, Dover, and Georgetown DMV locations will continue to offer walk-in service to customers.
Copyright © 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.
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