The WLC and Redding Consortium will work together to carry out the goals they share in common.
Two Wilmington organizations focused on helping city students excel – the Redding Consortium and the Wilmington Learning Collaborative – have started to determine how they will work together.
“We are at a point now where we really can give a high level introduction to what we think that’s going to look like,” said Sen. Elizabeth “Tizzy” Lockman, D-Wilmington, co-chair of the consortium.
The Redding Consortium was founded in 2019 to recommend policies and practices to the governor and legislators to improve education equity and outcomes in the city of Wilmington and Northern New Castle County. Some of their work includes implementing school-based health and wellness centers as well as preschool programs.
The Wilmington Learning Collaborative was created in November 2022 and is made up of nine city elementary schools across Brandywine, Red Clay and Christina school districts. It aims to improve the educational and societal outcomes for those children while also giving Wilmington families more of a voice in policy decisions.
Both receive millions of dollars of state funding.
Lockman and the WLC’s Laura Burgos, listed these areas of alignment:
- Empowering school communities
- Improving outcomes for students in the city of Wilmington
- Codesign of expanded learning activities with school communities
- Evidence-based support services
- State-funded programs focused on educational equity and access to high-quality teaching and learning for Pre-K to grade 12 students
- Cohesive governance across school districts
- Professional learning investments in teachers and school leader capacity
“It’s been a pleasure meeting with the team and coming to a very clear, concise narrative for how we will complement our efforts,” said Burgos, executive director of the collaborative.
Lockman said the two groups will continue to work on alignment with the shared goals listed in mind. She said they hope to come back to the next regular Redding meeting with more definitive ideas about how they will work together.
“We’re going to keep them top of mind as we continue to work on alignment and figuring out ways to ensure that we are not duplicating work, or doing work that’s in conflict,” she said. “We are very much focused on similar goals, but approaching those from different vantages.”
She said the consortium does a lot of work that’s focused on state-level policymaking and has advanced a lot of recommendations.
“And then I think we’ve seen what WLC is doing is very hands-on and on the ground for their districts and schools,” she said.
Burgos said she was pleased at the rapid progress that the Collaborative had made in its last 30 days.
That includes being close to wrapping up its teaching-and-learning analysis of the nine schools it serves, a precursor to choosing programs to help. That included a team visiting each school for a day, sitting in on randomly chosen classes, looking through student work and collecting a lot of data at each school
The program also has been working with school administrations and school education leaders to learn about programs they think work or will help.
Some of those programs will be adopted in 2024, she said.
Burgos said more details would be reported at the next Collaborative meeting.
The collaborative’s next meeting is Tuesday, Jan. 16 at 6 p.m. Watch it here.
The consortium’s next meeting has not yet been scheduled, but will be posted on the Delaware Public Meetings Calendar.
Raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Jarek earned a B.A. in journalism and a B.A. in political science from Temple University in 2021. After running CNN’s Michael Smerconish’s YouTube channel, Jarek became a reporter for the Bucks County Herald before joining Delaware LIVE News.
Jarek can be reached by email at [email protected] or by phone at (215) 450-9982. Follow him on Twitter @jarekrutz
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