With heightened pressure from the Meyer administration to commit to a summer deadline, the Public Education Funding Commission (PEFC) is making headway on a new direction for Delaware’s public education funding structure.
While Gov. Matt Meyer's goal of having a new education funding framework for the state was floated to the PEFC previously, his formal announcement in last week's State of the State made it clear he's looking for concrete ideas to be finalized in the next few months.
The commission took a step toward that goal at their Monday meeting, discussing a potential funding framework: a three-tiered hybrid model used to distribute state education dollars.
The tiers proposed include base funding, which will encompass the required amount needed to staff a school district or charter school. This includes teachers, instructional support positions, principals, administrative/clerical support, etc.
The second tier is known as supplemental funding, which will at least include per pupil flexible allocations based on the number of low-income, English learners and special education students.
Concentration funding is the final tier, which are additional per pupil flexible allocation of funds to support school operations and allow for flexibility within districts — something school administrators have long advocated for.
Polytech School District’s Director of Operations Nick Johnson explains this proposal merges the alternate unit count system that school administrators are calling for with the proposed AIR weighted funding formula.
“It maintains some of the current components of the existing system that we have, but with some improvements in terms of flexibility, but also transitions in part to allocating targeted resources on a per-pupil basis," Johnson said. “The one thing that this model does, it's scalable. It doesn't require significant reconfiguration statewide. It can be implemented as soon as we're ready to go. It targets funding for the individual student needs and some of the improvements we're talking about making in terms of flexibility also simplify what we currently have and make them more transparent.”
Members of the commission appeared largely pleased with the framework and spent the remainder of the meeting proposing potential funding "buckets" to be included in the final formula, like extra weights for homeless and foster students, as well as funding for pre-school and mental health professionals.
The commission intends to review a formula under this framework that includes these potential funding buckets at their April 28 meeting and is then looking to vote on approving that framework on May 5.
Colonial School District Chief Operating and Financial Officer Emily Flacon, who has been collaborating with Johnson on developing the frameworks, did express concern with finalizing a new funding formula by the summer.
"A fully fleshed out formula is not going to be possible by June 30, and I know that's something the governor has put forth in terms of wanting to put something in front of the General Assembly by the end of the session," Falcon said. "The formula itself and being able to run school-level numbers with equalization components baked into them that we right now don't have real data for, I'm just trying to set expectations that we can run scenarios and try to model with draft data, but there's a lot of details that are not going to come together in the timeline that I think has been set more recently by what the governor put in his State of the State."
Gov. Meyer's request is a accelerates the commission's existing timeline of producing first draft recommendations by October 2025 and final recommendations by July 2026, but Secretary of Education Cindy Marten believes the commission is on track to get at least a framework to the General Assembly before the end of the legislative session in June.
"There is enough to put together a formula with Emily and Nick staying involved in the conversation and charter leaders staying involved in the conversation, but [Senior Researcher and Policy Analyst at the Learning Policy Institute Mike Griffith] being able to push this together for us so that we have something to react to on the 28th, and there's an overall framework that the legislature can take action on on a five-year implementation plan that we move forward," Sec. Marten said. "I'm not willing yet to say it's impossible to get formulas by [June] 30 — Emily I know you just said that — but I think there is a path forward to be able to do this based on the input we got today."
The PEFC added more meetings to their schedule with the intention of meeting six more times before their last currently scheduled meeting on Sep. 8, 2025.
