Yesterday, I wrote an article about Capital School District’s $330,000 loss in Title I funding, but the actual amount they lost was a little bit higher. The amount they lost, the highest loss in the state, was $338,093.00. Which school district had the biggest gain? Which charter gets the most, and which gets NO Title I funding? Find out here:
Yes, Charter School of Wilmington gets NO Title I federal funds. A public school in Wilmington! After Capital, it looks like Smyrna, Lake Forest and Seaford took pretty big hits in Title I cuts. But nothing compares to Capital, which lost three times the second highest loss. It doesn’t look like opt-out will cause a district to lose federal funds, when a new formula will do it all by itself. Last year, the Feds changed the Title I formula from basing the number of students who receive “free and reduced lunch” at their school to the number of students whose families get special services from the state which accounts for an overall loss of Title I funds for the state of $600,000.
The bulk of the losses are occurring in Kent and Sussex counties, while all of the New Castle County districts saw an increase. Does this mean poverty is increasing in New Castle and decreasing in Kent and Sussex?
The Season Of Myths 
Are Title I funds apportioned to LEAs on a per-student basis (as in $X for each qualifying student), or do schools receive more funds based on the level of poverty for each child who qualifies? I tried to approximate the per-child amount for a few districts and charters, based on the 2015 Title I funds and last year’s low-income student #s (as a proxy for the new federal formula). But that yields figures all over the map, from $575/low-income student at NCS to $1,522 per low-income student at Kuumba, with Odyssey and Aspira both over $1K per low-income child, Christina somewhat below ($931 per) and Red Clay at $868 per. Does this suggest differences in the degree of poverty among “low-income” kids at these different schools, or is the allocation more arbitrary–e.g. distributed at DDOE discretion? (!)
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There are actually many different ways the districts can allocate Title I funds to schools. I’m getting this question from a lot of folks between here and on Facebook, so I just published this: https://exceptionaldelaware.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/how-can-title-i-funds-be-distributed-in-delaware-school-districts-and-charters/
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