Why Should Delaware Care?
In recent years, Delaware school districts have hit standstill with accessing state funds to help complete major renovation and expansion projects. But a new committee could soon be making recommendations to the state on what the school construction formula should look like.
For years, Delaware’s school districts have struggled with securing dollars from the state to pay for major renovations and expansions.
Now, school leaders are hoping that a massive influx of new construction dollars, paired with potential reforms to the way the state evaluates school capital spending, can push forward long-delayed projects.
Late last month, lawmakers included within their capital spending bill nearly $270 million for public school construction, upgrades, and renovations. The bill also requires a committee of state officials to assess Delaware’s school construction formula, and produce a report with recommended improvements by Sept. 1.
The committee also has its own $25 million fund that it could distribute directly to up to three eligible school projects in New Castle County that had sought state support over the past three years.
The changes mark one of the state’s most ambitious efforts in years to respond to concerns from school district officials who have said Delaware’s current capital funding system has left schools unable to address overcrowding and needed repairs.
It also comes after years of state education officials repeatedly rejecting capital funding requests submitted by school districts across the state.
‘Scraping pennies’
Delaware uses a school construction formula to determine the allowable square footage for construction projects. The formula also calculates how much of a project the state will fund, and consequently how much must be paid by a district through its local tax revenues.
The formula often effectively determines whether a district can embark on a project, such as building a new school, adding an expansion, or renovating a substantial portion of an existing school. If officials do want to move forward with a project, they must receive from state education officials an approval, called a Certificate of Necessity, or CN.
If the Department of Education approves a request, then the state will fund a percentage of the project cost. The district would then need to secure its local contribution through a referendum vote.
Every Certificate of Necessity request has failed in recent years, except those that are being fully funded by the school district’s local tax dollars.
If a Certificate of Necessity is rejected, school leaders typically will opt for a patchwork of repairs, rather than a major renovation.
Last year, state officials denied the Delmar School District requests for roughly $42 million to help it to purchase land and build a new school.
In February, Spotlight Delaware toured the Delmar School District and learned that some Delmar students have classes in the school’s media center because of overcrowding.
Even for school districts with approved Certificate of Necessity requests, it can be daunting for officials to complete a construction project within a set budgeted amount.
Last week, during the new school construction committee’s first meeting, a northern Delaware school district official, Sean Sokolowski, said it was difficult to receive money “up front,” then to stay within an inflexible budget while producing a building that will be sustainable for the next 50 to 100 years.
“At the end of the project, we’re scraping pennies,” said Sokolowski, the director of business at New Castle County Vocational Technical School District.
Also at the meeting, Delaware Budget Director Brian Maxwell told committee members that while their job is to suggest reforms to the school capital funding formula, they are not charged with changing how the state prioritizes Certificate of Necessity requests.
But changes recommended by the committee could help prevent school districts from running out of money after receiving a Certificate of Necessity, he said.
“What we don’t want to have happen is we approve CNs, but there’s a problem with the formula, and everybody starts to come back and say there’s not enough funding in the formula to actually fund the CNs based on how they’re being approved,” Maxwell said.
Separately, Maxwell said there are three projects eligible for the additional $25 million secured through the bond bill.
One is construction of the Brandywine School District’s new Charles W. Bush Early Education Center – a school dedicated to special education students, and entirely funded by the state.
The two other eligible projects are within the Appoquinimink School District. One is the district’s new middle school at Summit Campus, expected to open in the fall of 2029. The other is the construction of the district’s new elementary school on Green Giant Road.
Although Maxwell identified the three projects as eligible for the additional dollars, the two districts would still have to provide documentation and substantiate their request for the funding.
