Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Delaware meets legal obligation for education Opportunity Funding, equity conversations continue

Delaware school graphic
Delaware Public School
Delaware school graphic

The Vision Coalition of Delaware continues the conversation around reworking Delaware’s education funding formula in its latest Equity in Education event.

A 2018 lawsuit against the state argued Delaware had been aware of deficiencies in education resources for low-income students, English language learners and students with disabilities and had not adequately addressed those disparities.

A settlement was reached in 2020, and one of the agreements was for the state to implement Opportunity Funding, which is targeted specifically at enhancing services and providing additional resources for high-needs students.

The settlement required Delaware to invest $25 million in Opportunity Funding, which had already been implemented on a temporary basis after the lawsuit was underway, and to eventually reach $60 million by the 2024-2025 school year.

Associate Secretary of Operations Support for the Delaware Department of Education Kim Klein explains the state has now met that requirement.

“In fiscal year 2025 we met the full obligation of the settlement at $63 million, and then the department has requested the amount necessary for FY 26 to ensure that the per student funding amounts remain," she said.

Klein explains low-income students and multilingual learners (MLL) are being allocated close to $1,000 each in Opportunity Funding — in 2020, low-income students were being allocated $300 and MLL were at $500.

While the remainder of Friday’s program focused largely on how other states and the nation as a whole are tackling funding inequities, Co-Chair of the Public Education Funding Commission Laura Sturgeon provided local updates.

The commission is currently in the process of reviewing Delaware’s education funding formula and preparing recommendations for how to make it more equitable, which Sturgeon notes has been done before to no avail.

The group has set October 2025 as its target to provide preliminary recommendations, and while some stakeholders are pushing for more urgency, Sturgeon says a longer process will hopefully ensure real results.

“While the commission has played a little bit with the timeline, it's so that in the end, we are more likely to actually get our recommendations implemented because the problem that's happened in the past is recommendations have been brought forward, but then they just go nowhere — I mean, that's why 17 years have gone by," she said.

Sturgeon says the final recommendations could be pushed to July 2026.

The commission’s next meeting will be held on Dec. 9, where they will hear from school districts and charter schools on how the current funding formula is working and what they would like to see in the new recommendations.

Before residing in Dover, Delaware, Sarah Petrowich moved around the country with her family, spending eight years in Fairbanks, Alaska, 10 years in Carbondale, Illinois and four years in Indianapolis, Indiana. She graduated from the University of Missouri in 2023 with a dual degree in Journalism and Political Science.
Related Content
  • The Public Education Funding Commission takes the pressure off its October deadline for delivering funding formula recommendations.
  • Education funding remains a front-burner issue in the First State, but how it will be addressed and how quickly remains up in the air.Last year, the state received an independent report recommending it spend $600 million to $1 billion more annually on education and revamp its education funding system. Earlier this year, lawmakers created the Public Education Funding Commission to examine the report and offer its own recommendations on how to proceed.That group met for the first time last month and contributor Larry Nagengast reports that there are already questions about how quickly it can do its work and provide a path forward.