gordon/williams letter to school supers

7/28/2019 Gordon/Williams letter to school supers

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,

March 20, 2013

We write to express our concerns about several New Castle County public schoolproblems; to seek from you and other district school officials updated facts and dataabout these problems, and to ask for your support in having the two of us, as City andCounty e.lected officials, to become involved in resolving these problems.The problems, as presented to us by a growing number of complaints from constituents,are those of (I) the alarming and increasing number of Wilmington public schoolstudents who are becoming "Drop-Outs", and (2) the perceived inequities anddisproportionate nature of the New Castle County public school student busing systems(causing massive loss of productivity dueto transportation time).In what follows, we briefly highlight the essence of these two public school problems,and our need, as the top elected officials in the two political sub-divisions which providemulti-millions of tax support dollars to our school districts, for more information. At theoutset, we wish to stress the point that we believe the dropout problem is one whichwill require new initiatives and involvement from the community at large. We areprepared to use our leadership to dramatize this problem, and to work cooperativelywith school officials and the community to find solutions.Relative to this first problem of school dropouts, we are asking that your InformationTechnology staff work with our consultants (Pritchett Associates) in further refining thedropout data numbers we have received from the State Dept. of Education. (DOE)-asummary of data submitted by the individual school districts. Unfortunately for us, theDOEstudent dropout data are broken down only by county, school districts, andindividual schools. Wilmington and its students, our primary focus, are not singled out.For example, we.have been able to verify from DOE data that during the 2010-2011


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school year] the student dropout rate in New Castle County was 61%, ( of thestatewide total) and that from this ratio, 31.1% were Black; 8.8%were Hispanic ,and21.1% were White or other. This information is helpful. However] since we areprincipally concerned at this point about our Wilmington constituents] we are askingyour IT staff, working with our consultants, to extract from your district data base thosestatistics which pertain only to Wilmington student dropouts---and to look at these datain relation to variables such as special education, census tracts, suspension/expulsions,race/gender and other contributing factors to be later determined. Also, please provideinformation relevant to the graduation rate of those students who reside in the City ofWilmington.In connection with this student dropout problem, we think it essential that we buttressour assessment of the DOEdata by interviewing a selected sample of students who havein fact dropped out of school, and who could offer personal insights and experienceswhich contributed to their decisions to drop out. On this particular point] it is to benoted that in the DOEreport, officials of only 15% of the individual schools sought toinquire through exit interviews why a student was dropping out. This means thatofficials at 85% of the schools made no attempt to determine why a student wasdropping out. We would need the assistance of local school districts in identifying thosestudent dropouts and/or their families who could be sought out for approval of theseinterviews.A second and final public school problem we have asked our consultants to address,with the cooperation of school officials] is that of public school busing within the fourNew Castle County School Districts. Throughout the Wilmington community, there is aperception that student busing is a "one way street" -namely that busing is viewed asthe outflow of urban based (Wilmington) students to suburban based schools versesthe supposedly exchange of suburban public school students being bused into urbanbased, inner city schools. The concern is that there are very few white students beingbused into Wilmington.In the mix of this debate, there is the question of whether federal court guidelines (onbusing) are being followed, and whether the Delaware enacted Neighborhood SchoolsAct (offering students the opportunity to attend schools in close proximity to theirneighborhood) is being satisfied. Complicating these questions isthe belief of many thatthere are Wilmington based middle and high school building facilities and somestudents living near these Wilmington middle and high school facilities, which someWilmington students (those now being bused) could attend, except that these schools,although located in Wilmington, exist outside of the school districts from which thoseWilmington students are being bused.


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As a partial response to these questions, we have asked our consultants to seek answersto the following questions; How many students from your school district are currentlybeing bused to and from Wilmington? What is the racial breakdown of the studentsbeing bused? What is the estimated student time being spent per day on public schoolbuses? Are there Wilmington students now being bused to suburban schools, whoconceivably could attend a middle or high school building facility in Wilmington if schooldistrict boundaries were adjusted to make this happen? What isthe estimated numberof students who would be affected by such district boundary adjustments?In conclusion, there is the question of what might be the end result of this datagathering process. It is our intent to require from our consultants a comprehensive finalproject report which would be presented to a soon to be appointed new, project CitizenCoalition which will have monitored the project data gathering phases; which willparticipate in the formulation of recommendations for the final report, and which willbe the primary advocate group for adoption of project recommendations.The final project report will embody (A) analysis and interpretation of theaforementioned data sources on student dropouts and student busing; (B) review andanalysis of previously prepared study/research reports (about schools in New CastleCounty) which are related to any of the questions and/issues noted in this letter toNew Castle County school officials; (C)presentation and assessment of data gatheredfrom personal interviews with selected student dropouts; (D) study and review ofselected research reports/journals about student dropout and student busing issuesinother places which are similar to those in New Castle County public schools. Theconsultants wilt be especially mindful of "BESTPRACTICES"n other places which haveproven to be effective in addressing the problems of public school student dropouts andpublic school busing programs (involving urban and suburban school districts). And (E)most importantly, we will expect our consultants, taking into consideration all of theabove noted factors, to prepare a set of report recommendations for action by our localschool districts, by our appointed Citizen Coalition and by the Wilmington Community.High priority will be given to those recommendations having to do with actions to betaken by the Wilmington community to help resolve the Wilmington student dropoutproblem.Our interest is multifaceted; we believe that the drop-out rate speCifically of African

American males is both contributory, aswell as rudimentary to a majority of thesociological challenges of both our City and County. These include unemployment, teenpregnancy, crime and incarceration, homelessness and others, too great to mentionhere. We believe that an improvement in reducing the high drop-out rate andincreasing the graduation rate will have positive lasting affects on all of the


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aforementioned challenges. We are therefore highly energized on jointly attacking thisissue.Thank you in advance for your consideration of our requests. We look forward topartnering with you to resolve these most urgent issues.

d)~e;j;? ~Dennis P_WilliamsMayor of Wilmington

~~p~--homas GordonNew Castle County Executive

gordon/williams letter to school supers

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