This article has been updated to better reflect the Public Education Funding Commission's decisions moving forward.
At its fifth meeting to date, the Public Education Funding Commission (PEFC) decided to loosen the pressure around if the body should be focusing on only recommending a new public school funding formula or remodeling the current system.
Co-Chair and State Sen. Laura Sturgeon (D-Woodbrook), chair of the Senate Education Committee, announced instead of taking the "either-or" route, the commission will ensure the public education funding path that Delaware takes moving forward is centered around an established set of guiding principles.
Whether the future holds an entirely new model, a more equitable version of the current unit system or a combination of both is still being developed by the commission, but members agreed a values-based approach is the most effective line of action for the First State.
The PEFC was created by the Delaware General Assembly to be the latest body to look into how to make the First State's education funding formula more equitable after a lawsuit was filed in 2018 by the Delawareans for Education Opportunity and the NAACP Delaware State Conference of Branches.
The lawsuit argued the state's school funding system has resulted in low-income children, English learners and students in special education programs to not receive an adequate education.
The case was settled in late 2020. As a result, all three counties agreed to property reassessments — something that had not been done in 40 years — and the state created Opportunity Funding to enhance programs for disadvantaged students.
The PEFC has since spent five months listening to presentations, analyzing data and discussing what the best path forward for the state is in terms of funding charter schools and school districts as educational outcomes continue to rank among the bottom of U.S. states.
Delaware's current education funding structure was creating in the 1940s. Known as a unit system, spending is allocated to school districts and charters based primarily on student enrollment. Student to unit ratios determine how much a district receives to pay for a teacher or two paraprofessionals, funding for non-salary expenses and for “equalization,” which provides proportionately more money to districts with lower property tax bases.
Although, school administrators have attested that equalization funding has not been updated for over a decade and is a "broken" system.
Delaware is just one of only seven states that uses a resource allocation system to manage its education spending — 37 other states use a foundation or weighted funding formula.
The commission's initial question was to "build a new house or remodel the one that you already have," leading the body to consider if they should recommend scrapping the state's current funding formula entirely and create a new one or adjust the current unit count system.
"We've sort of moved away from that path from choosing 'well are we going to do this kind of system or that kind of system' because 'yes, both-and or neither.' It's going to just be, we wanted to pick the values that were important to us that our Delaware system had and build a model around that," Sturgeon said to commission members. "So the answer is, we've completely moved off of choosing from models that already exist and [are now] building the Delaware model."
Complementary to Sturgeon's remarks, Delaware Secretary of Education Cindy Marten implored commission members not to think about the future of the funding formula in terms of a binary, but to rather stick to the five guiding principles the commission has established, no matter what the new or improved system looks like.
Those five goals include:
- Adequate: Ensure that funding is adequate to meet school/student needs
- Equitable: Funding should be adjusted for local wealth and student needs
- Flexible with guardrails: Allow for greater flexibility in how funds are expended, including investments in teachers, other staff and student groups
- Transparency: Greater clarity on how funds are generated and expended, streamlining the formula to reduce the administrative burden on schools and promote predictability
- Connecting student outcomes to funding
"If we design a change, which I think everybody in this room agrees some sort of change can and should happen, these are the principles that go into it. And so is that a new formula? I don't know. I think it's going to be something that's not going to be what we have now completely. There will be change in some way," Marten said.
Commission members have also made it clear that they intend to prioritize holding districts and charters harmless from any loss while implementing a new formula.
A "hold harmless" policy prevents school districts from receiving less state funding than they did in the previous year, protecting them from immediate financial loss as the formula changes.
Commission members have also largely agreed a new formula must contain protections for teaching positions and other key educational staff.
With theses guiding principles in place, Sturgeon and Marten believe it's time for the commission to see some funding models so they can begin to make their long awaited decision on what to recommend moving forward.
The commission intends to review three models: the current unit system, the weighted funding formula recommended by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) report and a proposal from the Delaware Association of School Administrators (DASA) on how to adjust current unit ratios to account for low-income and English learner needs.
The AIR report was a part of the funding litigation settlement, meeting a requirement that an independent evaluation of the state's education system be conducted.
The report outlines 8 key recommendations, the last being that Delaware adopt a weighted student funding formula with a target funding amount for each district/charter, which is determined using weights to account for differences in student needs and context.
The local share would be determined based on the amount of revenue able to be raised locally based on a reasonable uniform property tax rate, and the state share would account for the rest to achieve the target funding amount.
The report also recommends the state invest anywhere from $590 million to $1 billion more on public education to meet education outcome goals.
But several commission members are still hesitant about investing more money without ensuring the funding formula is not only changed but changed in such a way that equates to better fulfilling student need.
"What are we doing now that's not working, and lets fix it too. Just adding money to something doesn't mean it's going to fix the problem. And the AIR report says half a billion to a billion dollars, but I still don't understand if we had a billion dollars, what would we do?" Co-Chair and State Rep. Kim Williams (D-Stanton), chair of the House Education Committee asked.
Marten says questions of how much to invest can help be answered by the models.
“Let's get a model. Let's adhere to the good guiding principles that this body has worked [on] long before I got here. Those guiding principles didn't come out of thin air. Get a funding model so we can start talking in concrete terms of what does this mean to this district or this district. Where are the gains, where are the losses, what would a hold harmless cost? If we're doing 30% or 20% — there's different models that help us decide what the actual fiscal impact is," Marten said.
Williams also raised concerns over Gov. Matt Meyer's announcement that he wants a semblance of recommendations from the committee by July 1, 2025, instead of the commission's target deadline of October.
Marten says there is nuance in that expectation, noting although the governor would like to see some plans by July, he understands there will need to be at least a year of buildup before concrete financial changes can be implemented.
Sturgeon says she still plans to role out the commissions first set of preliminary recommendations in October with the final set due by July 1, 2026.
Sturgeon closed the meeting with kudos to the new administration, who has placed education reform at the forefront of its policy work.
"I want to thank Gov. Matt Meyer and Cindy Marten, our new secretary of education, for making it abundantly clear that we have their full support as we work to finally accomplish something that has eluded our state since this funding system was put in place over 75 years ago," she said. "Their clarity of vision and willingness to take a hands-on approach has been immensely helpful in our ability to reach this historic juncture in our work to build a funding system that supports all students regardless of their income, their disability status, their zip code, or whether they’re a native English speaker."
The commission intends to go over the three models at their next meeting on March 10.
