Why Should Delaware Care?
A state task force charged with reworking school district boundaries in Wilmington has laid out a plan that will impact tens of thousands of families in New Castle County. The move, if adopted by lawmakers, would combine the Brandywine, Christina, Colonial and Red Clay school districts.
The state task force charged with drawing plans to redistrict Wilmington schools recommended combining Delaware’s four northernmost school districts – representing a seismic shift in public education in Delaware that could have far-reaching effects, if ultimately approved.
The affected districts would include the Brandywine, Christina, Colonial and Red Clay Consolidated school districts.
The Redding Consortium for Educational Equity, a 6-year-old group formed unanimously by statehouse legislators to seek solutions to decades-long educational inequality for Wilmington students, had three options on the table ahead of Tuesday night’s highly watched vote.
It ultimately chose the most radical option, which would create a school district with more than 45,000 students.
The final vote of Redding members was 19-2, with Brandywine Superintendent Lisa Lawson and Christina Superintendent Deirdra Joyner in opposition. Red Clay Superintendent Dorrell Green and Colonial Superintendent Jeffrey Menzer voted for the plan, but did express support for a less drastic model too.
Notably, a town hall meeting in the Brandywine School District, which includes the Brandywine Hundred suburbs, Claymont and parts of northeast Wilmington, was especially heated last week, with dozens of concerned parents speaking in opposition to changes in the district. The meeting drew an audience of about 1,000 people, either in-person or online.
Wilmington Mayor John Carney, who was governor when the task force was created, ultimately voted to recommend the consolidation plan, but also expressed his doubts that it could survive the multi-party approval process.
The Redding plan, which now faces a two-month study period, will likely kickstart a heated debate in New Castle County over the future of public education. No districts have merged in Delaware in decades, but the state law that created the Redding Consortium does not require local approval of the plan.
The recommendation will now move to the Delaware State Board of Education – a group that rarely sparks public controversy – and finally the Delaware General Assembly and Gov. Matt Meyer, who was in attendance at Tuesday’s meeting and supported the plan known as the Northern New Castle County Consolidated School District.
Whether state legislators would be willing to approve such a radical shake-up of Wilmington’s school districts – especially in an election year – is unclear.
Redding Consortium co-chair State Sen. Elizabeth “Tizzy” Lockman (D-Wilmington) said she and the Consortium would not have passed the vote if they did not think it would pass through the General Assembly.
“I would have had a harder time if I truly believed that we did not have the capacity to seriously consider and pass such a plan,” she said.
In a statement released after the vote, Rep. Nnamdi Chukwuocha (D-Wilmington), a task force member who has led education reform efforts in the city for years, said the recommendation is not a “death sentence” for the city or the county, and called it the start of a new era.
“We have a real opportunity in the coming months to develop our final redistricting plan to shape our educational system into something amazing, and I can’t wait to work together to make that happen,” he said.
Earlier this month, House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown – a Democrat who represents an area in the Colonial School District, told Spotlight Delaware that legislators did not yet know what the final proposal looks like, and so it is “too early to say where our members may ultimately land on it.”
She also noted that several steps must be taken before any proposal to redistrict Wilmington schools could reach lawmakers.
“What we know for sure is that a recommendation is forthcoming, and we look forward to reviewing the proposal and hearing feedback from our constituents once it’s released,” Minor-Brown said.
The plan would need to answer many important questions, including who would lead a consolidated district, how would school boards and finances be merged, what the tax rate to property owners would be, and how school feeder patterns would be impacted.
The merger could help resolve lingering issues around unequal allocation of resources, particularly between wealthier and poorer parts of the county, but could also spark new exoduses to private or charter schools.
How did we get here?
In 1968, Delaware’s 49 school districts were consolidated into 26. However, the laws excluded the Wilmington School District. Some community members believed it was to keep Black children out of “white” suburban schools. A group of city parents sued shortly after the act was passed, claiming the law led to segregated schools.
A federal court then found the state’s Educational Advancement Act to be unconstitutional in 1974, and New Castle County was ordered to desegregate its schools again.
In January 1978, Federal Judge Murray Schwartz issued a desegregation plan that affected nearly all students in Wilmington. It required kids in the city to be bused to suburban schools for nine years, while kids from the suburbs were bused into the city for three years.
Some students were forcibly bused for more than an hour to school from their homes.
By 1981, Delaware created four districts within New Castle County: Red Clay, Brandywine, Colonial, and Christina. The goal was to assign a section of Wilmington to each district to enable equal access to high-quality teachers and resources for students.
By 2000, the desegregation order was lifted, and lawmakers passed the Neighborhood Schools Act. The act attempted to minimize transportation times for students by requiring districts to assign students to public schools closest to their homes. However, it did not account for housing segregation within New Castle County’s neighborhoods.
In 2019, the Redding Consortium for Educational Equity – named after the famed civil rights lawyer Louis L. Redding – replaced the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission to monitor the educational progress of students in Wilmington.
Today, Wilmington’s students are still bused into four school districts – Brandywine, Colonial, Christina, and Red Clay – that span from the Pennsylvania border down to the C&D Canal.
In May, the Redding Consortium voted to move forward with six potential redistricting models. The consortium then voted to narrow down the options to just three in July.