Spotlight Delaware education reporter Julia Merola joins the “Beyond the Headlines” podcast to discuss the outcomes of this year’s statewide school board elections, the issues that were in play with them and what they might mean for the future of districts around Delaware.
The podcast was hosted by Editor-in-Chief Jacob Owens.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
So before we get into the actual horse races of who won what races and why around the state, I thought we should maybe start with explaining the role that our school boards play in Delaware.
Can you fill the listeners in on what powers and responsibilities these public servants have?
To start, I would say that Delaware is a really heavily focused local control state, meaning that the meat and potatoes of decisions are being made within school districts rather than at the Delaware Department of Education’s level or in the General Assembly.
So if you’re thinking about approving a budget or hiring a superintendent or holding referendums, those decisions are all made by board of education members.
Are these paid positions? Are these typically teachers or people with experience in education? Who are these school boards that we have around the state?
They’re volunteers. They’re not paid positions. Some of them are retired educators, some of them are parents, some of them are neither and are just community members who are looking to help the students in their area in whatever way they can.
I would say it’s really a mix of everything of the above.
School board elections in particular have long suffered from low turnout. But this year’s contest seemed to have really defied that trend. What did we see, and what might you attribute that change to?
I would start to say that it was certain school districts that defied that trend. Maybe it’s just where I was, but I went to Christina’s two Wilmington polls at the Maurice Pritchard Academy and the Pulaski Early Education Center, and those polls were pretty dead. I was not seeing a lot of people.
It was very quiet. But then, over in Red Clay and Appo there were definitely a lot more people and the polls were more lively.
I think that’s attributed to the fact that districts like Red Clay and Appo had a bit more going on, a little bit more controversy brewing, whereas in Christina, this was a calmer year.
Let’s maybe start with perhaps the biggest race of the day in the Appoquinimink School District that covers the Middletown-Odessa-Townsend area, where two incumbents were being challenged by four different opponents.
What happened there, and what might have caused so many residents to come out to the polls?
I think with Appo in particular, the reason why so many people came to the polls was really because of what happened last spring, which was when the district revealed that it’d failed to properly track millions of dollars that it thought were in reserves.
After that, there were calls for the superintendent and for other board members to step down. We know that they didn’t step down, and then residents saw two of those incumbent board members were running for re-election. I don’t think that they wanted them to run for re-election, hence why they were not re-elected.
I think a lot of that tension stayed there with the residents. And, at a board meeting you can really only give public comments, so the way to really make your point is at the polls, which is what they did.
So who won that Appo election?
The two winners were Britney Mumford and Elena Brenner.
Elena is a retired educator, and Britney is the executive director of DelawareKidsCAN, which is an education advocacy organization.
Among the losers – which I hate to call them but that is unfortunately the reality of a race — was Richard Forsten, who was the president of the Appoquinimink School District board.
There was also Nichelle DeWitt, who was another incumbent board member.
Then there was also Mark Heck, who was looking to take one of those seats. He’s a veteran and an ROTC instructor at the Christina School District.
He came up short in getting a seat too.
It was an interesting race all around. The incumbents actually came in dead last out of the six candidates running, so it was really a display of some of the anger that was reflected at the polls in one of the largest school districts in the state.
Turning to the largest school district in the state, up in the Red Clay Consolidated School District, which covers the greater Wilmington area, along with Pike Creek and Hockessin, the board president there faced a challenger. What happened in that race?
It was a continuation of the trend of incumbents seeing their way out and new faces coming in.
Vic Leonard, the current president of the Red Clay Board of Education, lost his race to Jenny Howard, who is a mother of four and a former educator.
There was a big conversation in the district over what would happen to McKean High School, which is where I was yesterday.
The first voter who I talked to told me that she was voting for Jenny Howard because she didn’t want to see her alma mater close and become an innovation center. The voter added that she understood the purpose of an innovation center in general, but just felt that the way the board had handled it was very rushed.
She appreciated how Jenny Howard had spoken out during public comment against the innovation center, and just felt that a lot of what Jenny Howard was saying was resonating.
So this is an example of a resident who, willingly or unwillingly, became the face of opposition to the incumbency by showing up to a meeting and making her point heard during public comment.
Give us the rundown on that McKean Innovation Center project and where it stands today.
It’s at a standstill. and that’s because last month the Red Clay Board of Education voted to postpone the Innovation Center, which would transform McKean.
They made that decision because of a large pushback from community members who were concerned about this program that currently exists at McKean called the Meadowood program. It’s a program for students who have intellectual and developmental disabilities.
It’s something I’ve heard from parents about. Parents have called it a really good program that has been really helpful for their kids. And I think that there was a lot of confusion about what would happen to that program if it were to be moved to A.I. duPont High School, w
It seemed like there were a lot of families who felt that their concerns weren’t taken into consideration, and instead the process was kind of rushed through. Then, here comes Jenny Howard, a parent who agrees with those sentiments.
She told me she wasn’t originally planning to run, and then when all of this happened, she was like, “Well, maybe, I can help change things and make sure that the board is actually listening to people.”
School boards around the state, but I think Red Clay in particular, are kind of in this difficult spot, where they have a lot of school buildings that maybe aren’t filling the capacity needs. And so Jenny is now going to be joining a school board where she’s gonna have to make some tough decisions about what to do with buildings that aren’t full of students.
I’ll note to our Spotlight Delaware readers that I’m working on a story about capacity rates, so keep an eye out for that exact topic.
But yeah, it’s definitely an ongoing conversation, especially in Red Clay, and I think it’s one that a lot of district leaders want to really tackle before any possible consolidation decision with the Redding Consortium is reached between the four districts.
You mentioned Redding. Did it feel like Redding was on the minds of voters or school board candidates?
It wasn’t something that I necessarily heard about at the polls, but some candidates brought it up on their own. Others responded after I asked them about it. I think it is a bit of an unknown.
Board of education leaders are not necessarily on the front lines of the Redding Consortium meetings. They’re welcome to attend just like everybody else, and I see plenty of board members there all the time, but they’re not on the front end of the decision-making.
I think that it’s something the board needs to at least be talking about and making a plan for students. That was a sentiment I heard a few times.
Down south in the Delmar School District, which sits along Delaware’s southernmost border, another well-known member was facing two challengers for two open seats. What happened there?
Shawn Brittingham was last sitting on the State Board of Education. He has previously served on the Delmar Board of Education, but he did not win the Tuesday race against Neil Baker and Jordan Johnson.
I honestly thought it was interesting because Shawn has a lot of experience on the Delmar Board of Education, and then almost a decade of experience on the State Board of Education.
In that district, there was a decent amount of talk about referendums and what could potentially happen with two new candidates on the board. I think it’ll be interesting to see what that board decides to do next in terms of whether they’ll have a referendum.
Fill us in again on what a referendum is, why a school district might go out for one, and how that works for the public.
A referendum is when the district comes to the voters in a community and says, “Hey, we’re looking to raise X amount of money to do things like better retaining teachers, providing better pay, maintaining programs, building schools and things like that.”
That’s where the residents come in to be able to vote on whether to raise their property tax rate to fund the money for these things.
So in Delmar specifically, there’s been this ongoing issue of there being limited capacity in their buildings with a growing number of students.
You need to be able to retain teachers who are comfortable working in these often tight spaces. There were conversations this past fall of a possible referendum in Delmar to help alleviate some of those concerns.
Ultimately, the Board of Education announced that they were not going to hold a referendum this year. Maybe in 2027, we’ll see.
I think that it was something that was on the minds of some voters, maybe not everyone per se, but I think when anyone hears that their taxes could potentially go up, it’s definitely something that they’re gonna be listening to.
Referendums have been increasingly difficult to get passed in the state of Delaware in recent years, because it’s one of the few times we get to vote on our own, on our own taxes. Is that right?
Yeah.
This is a little bit of a case where you’re farther up the food chain, voting for the people who may or may not propose such a referendum down the line. Of the two winners in the Delmar election down there, do you get a sense of whether they might support a future referendum?
It’s hard to say. We spoke to Jordan Johnson on Tuesday, and he told us, “If I feel that it’s right and we need it, then I’ll vote for it. If I feel it’s not right and we don’t need it, then I won’t vote for it.” It’s literally a 50-50, so we’ll see.
I didn’t have the chance to speak with the other elected board member, Neil Baker, but he had said that a strategic review was necessary. So again, it’s kind of like a 50-50
I know Shawn Brittingham was very pro-referendum, but as far as I know, he’s the only person who has outright said, “Yeah, I would support a referendum for these reasons.”
So perhaps the non-committal answers may have assisted in some of these races?
Possibly.
When you really look at the 2026 school board elections, do you think there will be any lessons or lasting trends?
I don’t know if I would necessarily call this a lesson, but a realization of just how much people feel that they needed pretty big changes in their schools.
If you look at Appo, Forsten has been on that board for nearly two decades.
So for people to really say, “No, we do not want you there anymore,” I think that really shows people in that district, in particular, were craving new faces.
I think the same can be said in other districts, like Red Clay. Vic Leonard wasn’t on the board for an extremely long time but, again, he was the board president.
That’s a pretty big role to play on a board. And for 60% of voters to say, like, “Nope, we prefer the other candidate,” it just shows that people really want big changes.
It’s starting to feel like at least a small but growing number of residents are really starting to pay attention to how their school districts are being governed and who is involved in that decision-making process. As we look to the future, do you think school board elections will be able to keep up this rate of engagement, or was this maybe just a reaction to an isolated incident in time?
I think it was probably a reaction.
I don’t want to think that. I want to think that we’re all gonna be more civically engaged because that is your one opportunity to actually change things.You can make a public comment, but the board doesn’t respond to that.
Who knows if they hear every single word said. They’re only human.
So really your only chance to make an actual difference is to go to the polls and vote. I would like to say Delaware is on an upward swing, but when I was at the two Wilmington polls it was really quiet, so I can’t confidently say that this is a positive trend.
I really do unfortunately think it’s just a matter of circumstance.
Well, Julia, thank you for covering Delaware’s public education system – a very challenging task with 19 different districts – and great job covering the varied races up and down the state this week.
Thank you.
