Matthew Albright

The News Journal

WEIC members have sent back Wilmington redistricting plan to State Board of Education.

For redistricting to happen, both the state board and the Legislature need to give their approval.

Members have only a month left to convince the education board to sign off on the plan.

They didn't blink.

With the clock running out and their plan to redistrict Wilmington schools on shaky ground, the members of the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission held firm and sent their proposal back to the State Board of Education without making a crucial, one-word change the board wanted on Wednesday.

The commission's members say they don't trust the State Board and other leaders to provide the necessary funding without an iron-clad guarantee.

Now they have only a month left to convince the board to sign off on the plan. If they can't, the countless hours of work from a huge coalition of city leaders, advocates and educators – and their hopes to make a generational change for a troubled city school system – could go up in smoke.

The State Board's authority to redistrict expires at the end of March. There is a regularly scheduled monthly meeting before then, but commission members considered the possibility of asking the board to hold a special meeting, this one in Wilmington instead of their usual chambers in Dover.

The State Board has already voted twice on the redistricting proposal, which would move Christina School District schools and students in the city limits to the Red Clay Consolidated School District.

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In January, its members sent it back to the commission to get some concerns addressed. Then, last week, they narrowly approved on Thursday by a 4-3 vote, under the expectant eyes of an army of city leaders and activists who packed the meeting room far beyond capacity to shout, plead and demand that the board approve it.

But, to the outrage of the commission's members, the board placed conditions on that approval.

Local school leaders say redistricting can happen only if the state coughs up money to pay the costs of the switch, like moving between buildings, transitioning staffs and, most importantly, finding new ways to serve inner-city students who have long had their academic lives smothered by the effects of poverty and violence. The district's property taxpayers cannot pick up the tab, they say.

Those leaders signed off on the commission's plan only after a provision was inserted that says if the state doesn't provide enough funds, the plan is canceled.

One of the State Board's conditions changes a single word in the hundreds of pages in its report, but it's a crucial one: Instead of saying the board "shall" cancel redistricting if funding isn't provided, the board only approved the plan with the caveat that the word shall be changed to "may."

State Board members said they did not want to tie the hands of future board members so they couldn't act on new information, especially about academic progress in schools. But district leaders are furious with the change because they believe it gives the state an opening to force the districts to go through with redistricting without paying for the change.

"Without district support, the plan ultimately will not see the light of day," said Tony Allen, the commissions' chairman.

State Board President Teri Quinn Gray addressed the commission's members Wednesday to try and assure them that the State Board didn't see the change as allowing the feared "unfunded mandate" and wouldn't try to leave the tab with the districts.

"We are on the same page and want the same thing. That's the bottom line," Gray said.

That message went nowhere with the commission. Many members said they simply didn't trust the State Board, citing a list of education reform initiatives with which state and local leaders clashed.

"There is a sense that people don't trust the State Board of Education. They don't trust the Department of Education, and they don't trust the governor," said Yvonne Johnson, a veteran parent advocate who is on the commission. "It's not me; it's everybody. It's a very larger number of people."

Red Clay school board President Kenny Rivera, whose district has the most at stake with redistricting, told Gray his district needed certainty.

"We don't know who the future State Board's going to be," Rivera said. "This is not a risk we can take, especially given our history."

The State Board's approval is only the first step. Should they pass it, the General Assembly would need to support it – and allot the crucial funds.

"It'll be tough for us to have the exact same plan come before us," Gray said. "But we're committed to this 110 percent."

Contact Matthew Albright at malbright@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2428 or on Twitter @TNJ_malbright.

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