This Act requires additional reporting and disclosure related to the use of mechanical restraint and seclusion in public schools. While public school personnel cannot use mechanical restraint or seclusion on students in absence of a waiver, law-enforcement officers can. This Act requires the Department of Education to collect data from public schools about the use of mechanical restraint and seclusion, in addition to the physical restraint data that is already collected. The Department of Education shall include the mechanical restraint and seclusion data in its annual report. This Act adds a specific date by which the annual report is due. Additionally, the annual report must be submitted to certain entities, including the Delaware School Boards Association and the boards of education of school districts and the boards of directors of charter schools. This Act also adds mechanical restraint and seclusion to the parental notice requirement and special procedures and safeguard requirements that already exist for use of physical restraint. Though § 4112F defines “chemical restraint”, chemical restraint cannot be performed by anyone in a public school. Therefore, this Act does not add chemical restraint to data collection, reporting, parental notification, or safeguard requirements. Furthermore, this Act adds a definition of school resource officer (SRO) to clarify that SROs are law-enforcement officers. This Act requires the Department of Education to amend its regulations in accordance with the definitions in this Act. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual, including correctly formatting lists and revising § 4112F(d) of Title 14, the subsection addressing particular training requirements for SROs, to account for the creation of a definition of SRO. One technical correction in § 4112F(d) is changing a “shall not” to a “may not” as it applies to the prohibition against the use of SROs who have not complied with mandated training requirements. According to Rule 12 in the Legislative Drafting Manual, “shall not” should be avoided in legislative drafting. Furthermore, both “may not” and “must not” are proper ways to express a prohibition in the Delaware Code. They convey the same level of mandatory prohibition except that “may not” qualifies a verb in active voice while “must not” qualifies an inactive verb or an active verb in passive voice. This technical correction still prohibits school districts and charter schools from using an SRO who has not satisfied the training requirements in § 4112F(d). This Act takes effect on August 1, 2025.
This Substitute to HB 91 differs from HB 91 in that it further expands free breakfasts in schools participating in the federal School Breakfast Program by making them available to all students, regardless of household income, but does not expand free lunch income eligibility. The Department of Education shall reimburse a public school providing free breakfasts. The reimbursement must be equal to the federal free reimbursement rate multiplied by the total number of breakfasts that the participating public school serves during the applicable budget year minus the total amount of reimbursement for breakfasts served during the applicable budget year that the participating public school receives under the School Breakfast Program. This Act does not apply to schools participating in the federal Community Eligibility Provision, Provision 1, Provision 2, or Provision 3 special assistance certification and reimbursement alternatives. This Act takes effect immediately and is to be implemented beginning July 1, 2026.
The Delaware National Guard provides financial assistance to eligible service members for certain postsecondary education tuition and fees. Under the current education benefits program, the Delaware National Guard reimburses service members for tuition and fees the service members have already paid. But young service members often cannot take advantage of this program because they cannot afford to pay upfront for tuition and fees. This also hurts Delaware National Guard recruiting efforts because potential service members may choose to join National Guard programs in other states that do not require service members to pay upfront for tuition and fees. Keeping the Delaware National Guard fully staffed is essential to responding to state emergencies. Lack of staff also leads the Department of Defense to shift positions from the Delaware National Guard to other states that can recruit at higher levels than Delaware. This results in reduced mission capability in Delaware and less federal funding coming to Delaware. This Act amends the existing code relating to Delaware National Guard education benefits by switching from a system that reimburses service members to a system that pays certain tuition and fees, on behalf of a service member, directly to a Delaware postsecondary institution. This change allows more service members to use education benefits, which will improve Delaware National Guard recruiting and retention, and enhance the professional education qualifications of its members. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual and clarifies that the tuition assistance provided for Delaware private postsecondary institutions is based on the average tuition for state-supported postsecondary institutions. This Act is effective immediately and is implemented on July 1, 2026, to allow updates to rules, regulations, and forms for the Delaware National Guard tuition assistance program.
This Senate Joint Resolution establishes the Juvenile Justice Educational Transitions Task Force to propose a plan to ensure more successful transitions of youth from Delaware’s secured post-adjudicatory residential placement back into middle school or high school, including consideration of a new educational facility specifically targeted at transition of those youth.
The Department of Education (“Department”) currently administers the High Needs Educator Student Loan Repayment Program, the Speech-Language Pathologist Student Loan Repayment Program, and the Mental Health Services Student Loan Repayment Program. Annually, these programs help roughly 600 public school employees, including educators, speech-language pathologists, school counselors, school psychologists, and school social workers, through a single application process, by making loan payments directly to student loan lenders. But paying the lenders directly has caused 2 persistent issues: 1. Because the payments are considered taxable income, award recipients have the tax withheld from their paychecks, even though the payments go directly to the lenders. This lowers the award recipients’ take-home pay and can create confusion and hardship. 2. The process involves sending out 600 or more individual checks each year. And many checks are returned or delayed due to changes in lender information or system mismatches. To avoid these issues, the Department recommends combining the 3 different student loan repayment programs into a single program and changing the award process from a system that repays lenders directly to a system that pays stipends to public school employees through the State central payroll operation. These changes would streamline a system that already uses a single application and would do all of the following: 1. Avoid surprise tax impacts and imputed income issues. 2. Reduce administrative burden and failed payments. 3. Provide more timely and transparent support to award recipients. The suggested changes are easy to implement, budget-neutral, and could allow public school employees who previously declined awards due to the tax consequences to benefit from the financial support. This Act makes the changes recommended by the Department by doing all of the following: 1. Eliminates the separate Speech-Language Pathologist Student Loan Repayment Program, Mental Health Services Student Loan Repayment Program, and High Needs Educator Student Loan Repayment Program, and combines them into a single program under § 4163 of Title 14. 2. Shifts payment of awards from paying the lenders directly to paying the award recipients a stipend through the State central payroll operation. 3. Streamlines the process for determining financial need by allowing the Department to focus on collecting the income and loan information that is necessary to fairly allocate program funds. 4. Changes the title of § 4163 of Title 14 from the High Needs Educator Student Loan Repayment Program to the “Public School Employee Support Program for High Need Areas” because the 3 programs are now combined into a single program and the program is no longer a direct student loan repayment program. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.
This Act aligns state special education law with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and its implementing regulations, and also clarifies that a parent’s representative may obtain copies of a student’s special education records.
This Act amends the Fiscal Year 2025 Bond and Capital Improvements Act to (1) authorize local bond shares to adjust for William Penn High School in the Colonial School District. Further, this Act amends Fiscal Year 2025 Bond and Capital Improvements Act to (2) authorize the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, with concurrence of the Controller General and the Co-Chairs of the Joint Committee on Capital, to transfer any necessary spending authority from the Cultural Access Fund; (3) revise allocations to the City of Dover and Downtown Dover Partnership; (4) revise the allocation for the University of Delaware for Deferred Maintenance from Laboratories to Campus Improvements; (5) revise the State and Local share allocations for the Smyrna Roof Replacement project and authorizes School Construction Market Pressure to be transferrable between Fiscal Years 2023 and 2024 to achieve allocations; (6) adjust School Safety and Security funding from the Department of Safety and Homeland Security, Delaware State Police, Special Investigation to reflect State Bureau of Identification; (7) removes the requirement of school districts and charter schools to obligate prior fiscal year MCI funds prior to utilizing Enhanced MCI; (8) authorize the transfer of any remaining funds from Legislative Hall major and minor capital improvement appropriations to be used for the Legislative Hall Garage/Expansion project; (9) authorize the transfer of any remaining funds from the Domestic Violence Coordinating Feasibility Study to the Criminal Justice Council for Family Justice Center startup costs; (10) authorizes the transfer of funds allocated for the Scannell Readiness Center and up to $500,000 of available Minor Capital Improvements to cover the project for the Bethany Beach Training Barracks; (11) authorizes funds from Capital School District’s Certificate of Necessity (CN 2113A) to be used to support new facilities for the Kent County Community School and Kent County Secondary ILC; (12) authorize the Department of Transportation to use Community Transportation Funds for one-time reimbursements for various projects; (13) reprograms funding from the Community Redevelopment/Reinvestment Fund from Downtown Milford, Inc. to the Delaware State Fair, the Milford District Fee Public Library Commission, and Kent Sussex Industries; (14) authorize the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to perform an adaptive reuse study for the Delaware State Police Troop 7; and (15) remove the deadline date requiring Sussex County Council to adopt § 6961, Title 9 of the Delaware Code.
