The House Education Committee moves six bills forward that would provide substantial reform to school board meetings and member requirements.
The slate of legislation comes amid ongoing controversies surrounding the Christina School Board of Education.
FOIA violations, residency concerns around member Naveed Baqir and the ousting of former superintendent Dan Shelton, who has since filed legal action against the board, are just a few of the questionable acts to have surfaced.
The wrongdoings inspired lawmakers to introduce six different bills, three of which would require virtual board meeting options for the public, provide limited circumstances for members to attend remotely and codify FOIA training requirements for new members.
The other bills would require members to undergo a background check, ensure board meeting recordings are posted in a timely manner and bolster residency requirements for members.
Support from members of the educational community varied bill-to-bill, with several raising concerns over the cost of requiring public virtual meeting options.
“We did provide feedback to share that the majority of our districts use a livestream format, not an interactive. There would be costs to moving to an interactive platform, as well as cost for having someone oversee the platform during the meetings," Executive Director of the Delaware Association of School Administrators (DASA) Tammy Croce said.
But House Education Chair Kim Williams (D-Stanton) argued that those costs would likely not "break" a district or charter school.
The Delaware School Boards Association (DSBA) expressed similar concerns to DASA, while the Delaware State Education Association (DSEA) — the state's educator's union — and the Delaware PTA spoke in favor of the bill.
State Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton's (D-Newark) bill improving residency qualifications for school board members received full support from stakeholders present.
The bill would require that a school board candidate and member be an “inhabitant” of the district they represent and if that member is not physically present in their district for more than 75% of the days in any yearlong period, the member ceases to qualify as an inhabitant.
While Rep. Wilson-Anton noted residency concerns around Christina School Board member Naveed Baqir — who has been accused of living outside the country for months — are the driving force behind the bill, she and others explained violations are happening throughout the state.
“This is not just happening in Christina. This is happening in other districts and especially in New Castle County where we have nominating districts. So if somebody is— you literally have to live in the nominating district in order to run and serve. Anyone can vote for you, and you handle the whole district," National PTA President Yvonne Johnson explained.
Rep. Williams bill requiring background checks for board members also received unanimous support from stakeholders present.
DSBA raised redundancy concerns around codifying FOIA training requirements, arguing most boards already do this and several stakeholders raised concerns around a proposed requirement to record executive session meetings — although the bill's sponsor, State Rep. Eric Morrison (D-Glasgow) vowed to remove this provision before placing the bill on the floor agenda.
Some House Education Committee members, as well as DSBA, raised concerns around Rep. Wilson-Anton's second bill that would allow school board members to participate in meetings virtually only under certain health circumstances or dependent on their military deployment status.
Opponents argued the decision for whether a member should be allowed to attend virtually or not should be set by the school board itself.
Ultimately, all of the bills were voted out of committee and will move to the House Floor for a full vote.
