Why Should Delaware Care?
The Delmar School District’s middle and high school was built for a capacity of just under 1,200 students. Today, it serves nearly 1,500 students. That has resulted in officials turning common spaces into classrooms, as state officials have deferred funding for a new school to mitigate that strain for two years now.
In the Delmar School District, fifth through 12th grade students share almost everything. They use the same library, they eat lunch in the same cafeteria, and they use the same sports fields.
That is because Delaware’s southernmost school district only has one building, and both its middle and high school students attend classes there.
The school was built in 2000 for a capacity of just under 1,200 students. But more than 25 years later, the community is facing a persistent problem: a growing student population, which has pushed the district over its capacity by nearly 300 students.
Because of the overcrowding, some Delmar students have classes in the school’s media center. Two classes are held at once in the auditorium. Teachers must leave their classroom during planning periods so other classes can use the space.
Delmar Interim Superintendent Michael Bleile said the district must also navigate access times to the shared lunch room and gym. School officials must determine where to move students with their already limited space if a classroom is being used for state or national testing.
Although district officials do not want the overcrowding to be the norm, Delmar Chief Operating Officer Monet Smith said it can no longer be called a “temporary inconvenience.”
“It’s compromising our teaching and learning at this point,” she said.
How do Sussex districts mitigate ongoing growth?
Overcrowded schools are not unique to Delmar. It is a problem that multiple Sussex County school districts have faced in recent years.
Officials at the Indian River School District have told Spotlight Delaware that they have needed to retrofit existing storage areas into classrooms to meet the needs of their students.
A spokeswoman for the Delaware Department of Education said there are no administrative consequences or warnings for districts whose building capacity exceeds 100%.
Some school districts aim to address overcrowding by building a new school. If districts want to build a new school, add an expansion, or complete a substantial renovation, officials must seek out state funding and get approval from the Department of Education through the Certificate of Necessity (CN) process.
But multiple Certificate of Necessity requests have failed in recent years.
Last fiscal year, the Delmar School District submitted two requests to “address documented patterns of continued student population growth,” which would allow them to purchase land and construct a new school.
If state officials approved the requests, then 80% of the project cost would be funded through state bonds. The district would have also needed to secure a 20% local contribution through a referendum vote.
The requests were ultimately rejected because funding for school districts were maxed out by a handful of large projects, including a new middle and high school in the Appoquinimink School District and two new vocational high schools.
That pattern has held over, as none of the requests made by school districts were included in the governor’s recommended budget for the upcoming fiscal year, according to the Delaware Department of Education.
Among those rejected were two repeated requests from Delmar, which again sought $1.3 million to purchase land and $32 million to construct a new intermediate school for fifth and sixth graders. That school would allow Delmar to relieve pressure on its existing Middle and High School.
Smith said the district will potentially apply for another Certificate of Necessity again in August, but says if it is rejected, it is “only going to exacerbate our issues.”
‘Scary and overwhelming’
Without a Certificate of Necessity, the Delmar School District is making adjustments where it can to address its growing student population.
The assistant principal’s office is now a classroom for students using SAT prep. The Board of Education room could soon become another classroom.
Bleile also used grant money to purchase group tables and SMART boards for teachers to hold small groups in the middle school hallways.
“What’s best for the kids is always going to be at the forefront of every decision we make,” Bleile said. “Turning [the Board of Education room] into a classroom, for example, is what’s gonna be best for kids.”
The district has also contemplated going out for an operational referendum in recent months.
In November, then-Superintendent Andrew O’Neal pointed toward overcrowding, teacher and staff salary increases, and inflation-induced cost increases as reasons for needing to increase taxes. Without those funds, O’Neal said the district may have to reduce staff or programs, postpone essential repairs and “accept our students will not have access to safe, modern learning environments that they deserve.”
Delmar received price quotes on portable trailers for classrooms as part of the potential referendum, but the cost to taxpayers was deemed too high, Smith told Spotlight Delaware.
The board announced one month later that it would not hold a referendum until 2027. If passed, the tax increase would only apply toward Delawareans, and the funds raised would only be applied to the district’s middle and high schools.
Delmar Elementary School is located in Delmar, Md., and is part of the Wicomico County (Md.) Public School District.
Students living across the Maryland-Delaware state line can also attend Delaware’s Delmar School District for middle and high school, but only Delawareans are eligible to vote in a district referendum.
Despite both the middle and high school being located in Delaware, O’Neal previously told Spotlight Delaware the financial burden of an education is still fairly distributed between residents of both states. The number of Delaware residents attending the elementary school is “pretty close” to the number of Maryland residents attending the middle and high school, he said.
The last time the Delmar School District held and passed a referendum was in 2015, when the district raised money for both capital improvements to school facilities and for operating expenses.
Until the district obtains a Certificate of Necessity and holds a referendum, it will have to continue making adjustments, like transitioning offices to classrooms, to meet the needs of its growing student population.
Smith called the thought of there being no plan or opportunity to address the overcrowding “kind of scary and overwhelming.”
“Our staff, our families, our taxpayers, our students, again, expect to have an optimal learning environment, a safe learning environment, and to not know how you’re going to ensure that in the years ahead is just really heavy,” she said.