The General Assembly will hold a public forum next week focused on the recent discovery of lead in the water supplies of nearly 50 Delaware school buildings. The virtual forum will be held Monday, Nov. 14 at 7:30 p.m. “Like many parents throughout Delaware, my fellow legislators and I are very concerned about the presence of any lead in the …
Delaware’s school choice applications for the 2023-2024 academic year open this week. The First State is one of 13 in the country that allows families to send their child to any district or charter school in the state. Students may submit applications to multiple school districts. Applications must be in by Jan. 11 at 11:59 p.m. After reviewing school choice …
Delaware’s Equalization Committee has agreed to not make any decisions on whether to freeze or change the state’s equalization formula, which affects school funding, until next year. The purpose of the equalization formula is to allocate state resources to districts inversely based on their ability to raise revenues through their local property tax base. “It’s to try to help those …
Colonial School District is adding three electric buses and one propane-powered bus to its fleet, courtesy of an $809,000 federal grant awarded to the state’s Department of Education. In addition to a quieter ride, electric and propane-powered buses are said to be more environmentally friendly than gasoline-powered ones because they release less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Colonial Superintendent Jeff …
The Wilmington Learning Collaborative already is forming the council that will govern it. Once the council is established, it will order a needs assessment, which will help the council decide where to put or share resources. Those are the starting tasks of the new education group that state, city and district officials hope will help raise learning and test scores …
Delaware’s Department of Education has denied Red Clay Consolidated School District’s request for $265 million to address maintenance costs and improvement needs in 27 buildings. “With anticipated available funding, the focus of the public education capital budget for Fiscal Year 2024 is funding previously authorized projects, including market pressure funding for increased construction costs and statewide minor capital improvements and …
Delaware will announce a new statewide math plan in December to counter COVID learning loss and boost the state’s horrific test scores, which are among the worst in the nation. The state has been working on the plan since January but is not yet prepared to release details because the plan hasn’t been finalized. Underscoring the need for help, especially …
Delaware test scores have fallen to the bottom of the heap since 2019, with some worse than any other state, according to the Nation’s Report Card, which was released Monday. From 2019 to 2022, the average scores for Delaware fourth-graders on the math assessment dropped by 14 points, the steepest of any state. “In Delaware specifically, our scores were decimated,” …
Red Clay Consolidated School District voted unanimously Wednesday night to create and join the Wilmington Learning Collaborative. That makes them the third and final district to commit. Christina and Brandywine school boards already had agreed to sign the memorandum of understanding to create the agency. Red Clay Board Member Adriana Bohm for weeks has called for the version of the …
Delaware’s teacher union proposed a new salary schedule Monday that includes a base pay of $60,000. Of that base pay, $42,000 would come from the state — $12,000 more than it’s currently paying. Under the plan, teacher salaries would be raised over three years, costing the state $134.5 million in total. By the final year, total teacher salaries would cost …
Changes in the final version of the agreement to create the Wilmington Learning Collaborative include giving schools hiring power, tasking site-based councils with curricula recommendations, and outlining requirements for individual membership. Those changes were designed to address concerns that board members of the participating districts – Christina, Red Clay and Brandywine – discussed over the past five months, delaying the …
Ashley Lockwood, a fifth-grade teacher at Lulu Ross Elementary in Milford School District, has been named the 2023 Delaware Teacher of the Year. “Teaching children has been one of the greatest blessings and gifts that God has ever given me, and for that, I will be forever grateful,” Lockwood said during the award ceremony Tuesday night. “Thank you to my …
