Delaware panel advances enabling bill to prepare transition to new school funding formula

Senate Education Committee Chair Senator Laura Sturgeon, the sponsor of SB 302, told the committee the bill is designed to give the Department of Education time and legal authority to build the technical foundation for a new hybrid weighted student funding formula recommended by the Public Education Funding Commission (PEFC). She said the commission’s work is grounded in five values—adequacy, equity, flexibility, transparency and accountability—and that the measure funds systems upgrades, training and a parent-facing portal so the state can move from planning to implementation.

Sturgeon said the independent AIR report released in 2023 found Delaware’s current resource-based system is not meeting the needs of high-need students and estimated a gap “in the vicinity of $600 million to $1 billion” compared with peer states after adjusting for student need. She emphasized SB 302 is enabling legislation: "Today is about preparation," she said, noting statutory changes and funding to operate the new formula would come later. She told the committee the new model is intended to take effect in the 2027–28 school year and that a conservative phase 1 funding estimate to implement the formula without reducing funding for districts that serve fewer high-needs students is roughly $150 million to $200 million.

Denise Carter, Deputy Secretary for Strategic Initiatives at the Delaware Department of Education, told the committee the department would consolidate roughly 32 separate appropriations into three buckets (base, opportunity and operational funding) and estimated a one-time cost of about $2.4 million to $2.5 million for data and financial systems upgrades, training and other implementation work. Carter explained the proposal includes a hold-harmless protection for the first year so districts would not experience a funding cut in the transition year.

Members pressed for clarity about whether the new dollars would "hit the classroom," the timeline for ramping up funding and how equalization across local property-wealth differences would be handled. Senator Dave Lawson said he struggled to reconcile the per-pupil spending figures and asked whether the shortfall was money "hitting the ground" versus budgeted allocations; Sturgeon and DOE witnesses said the AIR estimate is intended to measure adequacy relative to need and that the legislature would phase in funding over multiple years to avoid sudden losses for some districts.

Public testimony was strongly supportive. Susan Brown, executive director of the Delaware Association of School Administrators, and Taylor Hawk of the Delaware State Education Association urged passage. Britney Mumford of Delaware Kids Can said, "This formula says we see you," in reference to multilingual learners and students in poverty. Other witnesses representing superintendents, school business officers, the League of Women Voters and charter-school advocates said the hybrid model improves transparency, focuses resources on students with greater needs and preserves local flexibility.

SB 303, the companion bill sponsored by Sturgeon, would codify the PEFC so the commission can continue refining weights and guardrails once the formula is operational. Sturgeon said phase 2 work (for example, tiering multilingual supports) will continue and that the PEFC is required to monitor outcomes and propose statutory refinements.

The committee did not take a final vote on the bills today. The chair said she will return with statutory language and budget conversations with the governor’s office, and stakeholders said they would continue to work with staff on technical details ahead of later votes.