Why Should Delaware Care?
As Delaware’s second largest district by enrollment, the Appoquinimink School District serves more than 13,000 students in the Middletown-Odessa-Townsend area. But ongoing conversations surrounding financial issues have caused community members to call for immediate resignations.
During a school board meeting Tuesday, Appoquinimink Superintendent Matthew Burrows told a crowd of angry residents that the district’s failure to properly track millions of dollars it thought it held in reserves would not happen again.
Many in the crowd were not reassured.
During a roughly 15-minute presentation, an often-defensive Burrows said the district would require increased financial training for the board, as well as for a citizens’ committee that oversees district finances, and for various other district officials.
He also said the district will begin working with “outside financial experts” to prepare an internal report that would be presented at the school board’s next meeting in October.
The report would come about a month after Delaware State Auditor Lydia York published her own report revealing that the district’s recent and controversial deficit resulted from years of failure by staff and leadership to properly track and record expenditures.
York’s report also criticized what it describes as a lack of public transparency by district leaders who identified funding issues at Appoquinimink nearly two months before they publicly acknowledged them.
“By delaying disclosure, they not only blindsided families with a 10% (tax) increase … but also damaged public trust,” York’s team stated in the report.
In his presentation Burrows defended the district, saying officials alerted the public in June to the financial snafu, weeks before they voted to raise taxes. He also said the district learned of the problems a month earlier in May, and then only learned “the full impact of the budgeting errors” during a June 25 meeting.
Among the issues learned during the June meeting was that the district had failed to account for past payments to teachers, which Burrows described as “underestimating employees’ cost.”
Burrows said district officials will meet with York to ensure recommendations from her team’s report are implemented.
‘Transparency and accountability’
Despite Burrows’ attempt to defend the district, community members have called for his resignation.
A Change.org petition demanding his “immediate resignation,” as well as those of Appoquinimink board members, and members of the Financial Advisory Committee, had over 500 signatures on Wednesday. Community member Kori Underwood created the petition on Tuesday.
The petition also calls for an independent legal review of the district, disclosure of financial reporting documents to the public, and a detailed corrective plan, among other objectives.
During a public comment period at Tuesday’s board meeting, Underwood also stood up to speak, saying the information found by the state auditor represented a “breach of public trust.”
“Transparency and accountability are not optional,” she said. “They are your duty, and when you break your oath, you forfeit the privilege to govern.”
Although only Underwood signed up for public comment, other members of the public made their opinions known as they called out to board members immediately following the superintendent’s report.
“And that’s supposed to make it OK?” one community member asked after Burrows confirmed that, to his knowledge, the auditor’s report said that the errors all occurred within the last fiscal year.
What led to it all
In May, the school board learned that a projected $7.9 million savings balance for the fiscal year that ended June 30 had essentially been a mirage. In reality the district had about $3.1 million in the bank.
It was a result of a failure to record several expenses, including paychecks that went out during an extra pay period in May, and pay to teachers and coaches for extracurricular activities that hadn’t been applied.
As an immediate response, Burrows during the final weeks of the school year cut about $2.5 million from districtwide expenses by reducing a few dozen open positions, and reassigning district staff to school-based roles, among other actions.
The Appoquinimink School District had a $232 million operating budget for the entire 2025 fiscal year.
The district ended the fiscal year with a cash balance of about $3.1 million. It also ended without a finance director, as Eric Loftus, who had held the position, resigned in June.
After the end of the year cuts, school board members in July voted 4-0 to approve a 10% increase for the portion of residents’ property taxes that funds schools.
A day after that July board meeting, New Castle County Councilmembers David Carter, David Tackett, and Kevin Caneco – who represent Appoquinimink’s Middletown-Odessa-Townsend area – called for York to investigate the accounting errors that occurred.
On Sept. 6, York released her 14-page report that revealed “failures in budgeting, reporting, and review that have resulted in Appoquinimink running large deficits for several years running.”
The audit didn’t find any evidence of theft or fraud.
Get Involved
The next public meeting of the Appoquinimink School District’s Financial Advisory Committee meeting will be held on Sept. 30 at 6 p.m. atthe Marion Proffitt Training Center, located at 118 South 6th street in Odessa.
