Page 23 - Delaware Lawyer - Fall 2021

Efforts to organize a public school system began as early as 1817,8 but did not take hold until 1829, when the General Assembly passed the “act for the establishment of free schools,” which divided each county into incor- porated school districts that were ad- ministered by an annually elected clerk and two commissioners, and overseen by unsalaried county superintendents.9 Between 1829 and 1861, around 133 school districts were organized.10 Avail- able funds, however, were insufficient, taxpayers rallied against increased taxa- tion, and “schools began to decline.”11 During that time, the system suffered from “loose organization” if “any organization.”12 It was described as having “no general mandatory law” such that “[e]very school district had the absolute power of saying whether it should have a good school, a poor school, or no school[.]”13
In 1861, the General Assembly ad- opted legislation to ensure that each county would enjoy minimum educa- tional funding.14 The 1861 act provided for a mandatory minimum annual levy of taxes to support public education in each of the three counties, increased the taxation authorization amount, and au- thorized school voters to create a sepa- rate tax for building or repairing school houses in their districts.15 Despite the 1861 act, one scholar later noted that, in the decade immediately preceding the adoption of the Education Clause, “[t]he system was without system.”16
Against this background, the del- egates to the 1896-1897 Constitutional Convention17 drafted the Education Clause. One delegate described the public school system as a “mighty maze, without a plan,” and expressed hope that the Convention would “formulate something better, on which some effi- cient system of legislation and manage- ment can be based.”18 After an “extend- ed and spirited debate” emblematic of the Convention,19 the Education Clause
was adopted on May 20, 1897 in Article X, Section 1, and remains unchanged.20
III. Establishment of a System of Free Public Schools
For several decades, Delaware’s pub- lic school system remained fragmented: “It was not, however, until after World War II that Delaware began to de- velop a full statewide system of public schools.”21 After the United States Su- preme Court ordered desegregation in the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education,22 the State began a pro- tracted study of Delaware’s educational system and the needs of its citizenry, resulting in a state-wide plan for redis- tricting that was passed by the General Assembly in 1968.23 The redistricting plan did away with a prior distinction between state and “special” or local school districts, and resulted in 23 con- solidated districts and three vocational education districts, all of which were supported by the State.24
IV. Current Organizational Structure of the System of Free Public Schools
Currently, the structure for Dela- ware’s public school system is codified in Title 14 of the Delaware Code. Title 14 provides that the public school sys- tem is overseen, at the highest levels, by the Department of Education (DOE), which was established by the General Assembly and tasked with adopting rules and regulations “for the maintenance, administration and supervision through- out the State of a general and efficient system of free public schools.”25 The DOEisledbyaSecretaryofEducation, whoisappointedbytheGovernorwith the advice and consent of the Senate.26
In addition, each school district is overseen by a local board of education elected by the residents of the district, and empowered to “undertake the general administration and supervision of the schools within such districts.”27 Each district has a superintendent
appointed by the local school board.28 The local school boards “have the au- thority to determine policy and adopt rules and regulations for the general administration and supervision of the free public schools of the reorganized school district.”29 The local boards ad- minister and supervise districts, limited by the boundaries set by the DOE and General Assembly, which impose state- wide standards.30 This dual system of state and local supervision reflects a bal- ance of the constitutional mandate for a general system of education applicable to all districts against the “established state policy favoring locally controlled schools.”31
More than two-thirds of a public school district’s funding comes from state appropriations, made under Title 14, Chapter 17, of the Delaware Code.32 These funds are apportioned into three “divisions”: Division I provides com- pensation to district employees “in accordance with the state-supported sal- ary schedules contained in Chapter 13 of [Title 14].” Division II appropriations pay for “all other school costs and ener- gy, except those for debt service and the transportation of pupils.” Division III funds, known as “equalization funds,”33 are dedicated to addressing the substan- tial differences in the value of taxable property between districts.”34
In addition to the division funding, in 2017, Gov. John Carney announced a new Opportunity Grant program with special funding “to improve supports for low-income students, students chroni- cally exposed to stress and trauma, and Englishlanguagelearners.”35 In2019, CarneyproposedandtheGeneralAssem- bly adopted the “Opportunity Funding” program to provide “weighted funding for low-income and English learner stu- dents in schools across Delaware.”36 As discussed below, in 2021 the Opportu- nity Funding was made a permanent part of the State’s funding for Delaware’s sys- tem of public schools.
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