Unofficial results
| Building | For additional tax | Against additional tax |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 6,770 | 6,625 |
| Bancroft Elementary School | 189 | 42 |
| Bayard Middle School | 61 | 60 |
| Bear Library | 137 | 257 |
| Brader Elementary School | 244 | 251 |
| Brookside Elementary School | 192 | 265 |
| Carvel State Office Building | 27 | 38 |
| Christiana High School | 299 | 408 |
| Downes Elementary School | 813 | 558 |
| Elbert-Palmer Elementary School | 51 | 12 |
| First Presbyterian Church | 138 | 109 |
| Gallaher Elementary School | 164 | 213 |
| Gauger-Cobbs Middle School | 149 | 197 |
| Glasgow High School | 307 | 351 |
| Greater Newark Boys & Girls Club | 72 | 36 |
| Jones (Albert) Elementary School | 215 | 224 |
| Keene Elementary School | 241 | 319 |
| Kirk Middle School | 334 | 245 |
| Leasure Elementary School | 168 | 133 |
| Maclary (R. Elisabeth) Elementary School | 344 | 350 |
| Marshall (Thurgood) Elementary School | 381 | 333 |
| McVey Elementary School | 402 | 451 |
| Newark Free Library | 181 | 161 |
| Newark High School | 382 | 143 |
| Oberle Elementary School | 111 | 161 |
| Pulaski Elementary School | 38 | 29 |
| Quaker Hill Place Apartments | 16 | 20 |
| Shue-Medill Middle School | 276 | 506 |
| Stubbs Elementary School | 109 | 18 |
| West Park Place Elementary School | 310 | 182 |
| Wilson (Etta J.) Elementary School | 392 | 479 |
| Absentee | 27 | 74 |
The Blue show BIG wins for proper taxation; the Red show BIG wins for too low taxes. Just skimming without the aid of a calculator, one would think the NO’s won. But they didn’t. The Blues did. Their big wins came from very few polls: Bancroft, Downes, Kirk, Marshall, Newark High, and West Park… Of these, Downes, Newark High, and West Park are all centered around college areas of Newark, (areas whose residents work at the University), leaving Bancroft (downtown Wilmington) and Marshall (Rt 40 Area) and Kirk (East Newark on Rt 4) as the other big wins. These I would guess came about because of local school pushes, since neighboring schools all had votes going the other way.
Big wins for the Reds occurred in Bear Library, Brookside, Christiana High, Gallaher, Gauger-Cobbs, Glasgow High, Keene, McVey, Oberle, Shue-Medill, Wilson and the absentees…..
These would be magnets where those unfamiliar with the school system would go vote. Bear Library, Christina High, Glasgow High, Shue-Medill. Obviously if you wanted to vote against the referendum, you wouldn’t show up at your local school where you might bump into your neighbors on your street; instead you’d go to a generic place. One that was a landmark.
The others, Brookside, Gallaher, Gauger-Cobbs, Keene, McVey, Oberle, and Wilson, are all in mostly white suburban areas, often consisting of older housing built pre 1974, These neighborhoods which were once beautiful but to drive through them now, appear rundown. Their owners are not making enough to cover the upkeep of their houses. We would probably call them lower to middle class. These polling places are hard to find, and only the locals would know how to find them, and so they are indicative of the local trend in their area, which was to vote “no”.
Other polling places which all tended to be in areas where the developments are less than 25 years old, and often priced at over the $200,000 dollar range, were closely evenly split….
Which does not bode well for the economics of Delaware.. We are showing the signs of the Rust Belt.
We have similarities. We lost GM and Chrysler. We lost all 4 local banks. We lost Dupont. We lost the Steel Mill. And we are not building like we once did; we lost construction.
We are very much a Rust Belt state, at least in the North…With no new income coming in, we have to hold on tight to what little we got. As one gazed on lines at the polls one could right or wrong, use profiling techniques to pick out who was “for” and “against”. And it certainly looked like the “againsts” were out in force.
To have so many vote against investing in their district’s children was sad to see. My contingent could not believe it. “How can anyone vote to ruin children” they questioned. “What are these people, animals who eat their young?” Well, with the totals in front of us, we can see that like education itself, everything is economically driven… if you want positive outcomes for referendums, you had better fix the economic situation underlying all, first.
You can’t expect a positive outcome when you have people living below the means they need to survive…
This needs changed…
kavips 
19 comments
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March 25, 2016 at 6:03 am
jax2816
Stunning comparison. Thank you for this.
March 25, 2016 at 6:54 am
Brian Stephan
Among the existing work we have to do, we need to add emphasis to the Bear/Rt 40 corridor (my neck of the woods) going forward. Much work to be done. Much work.
March 25, 2016 at 7:03 am
jax2816
I have faith in you. Seriously. There is a core contingent of folks I’m super proud to know and work with, and you are front and center.
March 25, 2016 at 8:13 am
minnehanh
We’ll have to get some demographic analysis done on this but at first glance it looks like the schools impacted most by low income said NO but in the city where there is real poverty (probably more Section 8 housing, etc) the voters were more agreeable to saying Yes. (how much real skin in the economic game?) Looking forward if the city schools do eventually move into Red Clay we are going to have some different outcomes. Value of schools/property values etc looks to be highly tied to education, but we knew that already! you’re right, Brian, a huge amount of community work if we are going for a capital in two years! This is interesting stuff here, though. The absentees surprised me!
March 25, 2016 at 9:04 am
minnehanh
another thought: could there be some demographic distortion (less than 5% i’d guess) because you can vote anywhere. For instance if a resident lives in Newark but works at the Courthouse in Wilmington they can zip over to the Carvel Building or a city school and vote. I bet those cards we fill out with home address etc are confidential, too….
March 25, 2016 at 9:07 am
Brian Stephan
Actually, that information is not confidential. Who you are and where you voted is publicly available if you ask for it. Obviously, your actual vote is confidential. But in order to verify you did not vote more than once in different locations, that info must be available to a challenger who wants to examine it.
March 25, 2016 at 9:09 am
Brian Stephan
Also yes, there will be some ‘drift’ in voters not voting at their ‘home’ polling place. For the previous two referenda, it was relatively small, like you suggest. Will be curious to see if the pattern held.
I will say just from my cursory analysis of For and Against totals, the against tallies held steady from May 2015. We saw a sharp increase in For votes across the board, though. I’m working on getting it into graphical format so it’s easier to see.
March 25, 2016 at 9:50 am
elizabeth
Where to start? No one for as long as I can remember has talked about the depth of poverty in the Rt. 40 Corridor. (exept Kavips) We truly need to compare that to the depth of poverty in the 2.2 miles in Wilmington that CSD encompasses. I think you will find some striking similarities. Next, check the rate of home ownership both areas. I think, and it’s just a guess, but you will find a higher rate of ownership along Rt 40 than you will in the city. And if I am right, then you will also find that those who don’t own homes are more likely to vote for a tax increase over those who do, despite the poverty in which they exist. Why? b/c renters do not fully understand that their rent will be increased by their landlords to reflect the rise in the taxes. And those who receive subsidized rent are even further removed from the tax equation even though each vote carries the same weight regardless of ownership.
I am not prepared to argue we should move to a different system. Moreso, I think we need to further dial in on voting blocks by demographics. What was the outcome for each group, Hispanic, Asian, White, and Black? Both separately and collectively.
And what was the rate, both for, and against, of childless vs those with children? There are tales to be told from each of these questions that would present CSD with a much better picture of the challenges face by our district.
And on a completely different note:
Kavips, I was a transient voter this time around. I did not visit my neighborhood polling place. I came down I95 behind an 18 wheeler who was cut off by a sedan. The truck almost jack knifed and its load (of other 18 wheeler flatbeds) shifted. We followed the truck off the interstate at 896 N to be sure the driver knew his truck was in trouble. He pulled over so we kept going and wanting to get the asthmatics in the car away from the smell of burned rubber and what not that goes with the sudden and severe breaking of an 18 wheeler going 60mph, we kept on going and hit a polling place further from home.
I voted no for the last two referendums, right at home in my polling place. I can assure you that when you vote NO, there is no shiny light from heaven that follows you out of the poll. I disagree with your assumption: “Obviously if you wanted to vote against the referendum, you wouldn’t show up at your local school where you might bump into your neighbors on your street; instead you’d go to a generic place.” Your neighbors don’t know how you voted, unless you tell them.
March 25, 2016 at 10:06 am
Brian Stephan
elizabeth, I disagree with this: “No one for as long as I can remember has talked about the depth of poverty in the Rt. 40 Corridor. (exept Kavips)”
Perhaps you refer to the cyber world where no one has talked about this? Because at any number of meetings and hearings and workshops involving Christina’s community, finances, tax base, WEIC, Rt 40 corridor is talked about. In fact it’s one of most frequent refutations offered when someone laments that once Christina schools in Wilmington go to Red Clay, we won’t have to worry about poverty. (Yes, that’s actually been said out loud).
Without exit polling, I’m not really sure close we can dial in on ethnicity or familial status. We can make loose correlations using US Census estimates. Home ownership would probably be data point we could delve into the deepest.
March 25, 2016 at 11:16 am
kavips
Glad to see interest in the Bear/40 Corridor. Pockets of poverty there, as have been suggested do rival those in Wilmington proper. They tend to be in Apartments mostly. But whereas Wilmington looks impoverished, In Bear the pockets are surrounded by farms, developments, and shopping centers so the poverty is mostly hidden. DHSS records and maps would show the pockets readily.
But as for city schools being overwhelmingly in favor, Bancroft was an exception. Bayard was a virtual tie, Elbert-Palmer had a huge percentage of a low turnout which only amounted to 40 actual more votes for the referendum. Pulaski had 9 extra votes for the increase over the no’s….
Leisure which could possibly pull from the Sparrow Run (old Brookmont Farms) only had an overage of 35 in the “for’ column., whereas just down the highway, Keene was in the against column by 78 votes. Which is why I would put the success entirely in the hands of those schools who communicated to parents effectively enough to translate into action…
My observation from traveling around, was that schools along commuter feeder patterns had higher volumes during Rush Hour. This would include the Bear Library. Keene, Glasgow High School, Christina High School, Downes on Casio Mill Rd. and Gallaher off Harmony Rd.
Double checking Brian’s percentage increase table on Delaware Liberal one sees the bulk of increase (over 150%) was entirely inner city, though with the exception of Bancroft, it did little to move vote totals either way.
Actual numbers show us. 239 Bancroftians voted in 2016 than approximately (backtracking using Brian’s percents ) compared to 126 last time…. Compare that to Brader where the same number of 495 people voted in both this and the past elections to come out relatively even.. Anyone who deals with percents knows that percentage increases are higher on small totals (adding one person to one person is a 100% increase) than duplicating the same on large totals, which is nothing short of a miracle.
The point of this detail is to illustrate that it is very hard to make generalizations based only on one election cycle…
When generalizing about the impoverished, one must take into account that those disenfranchised the most by society, tend not to participate in its actions. The poor don’t vote in the numbers relative to their population. if you don’t trust your society, you tend not to participate or become a partner with those whom you do not trust. That is just one way of explaining that phenomena.
The point I first saw above which I think needs the pursuit of more detailed analysis, is the difficulty all future referenda seem to hit if those inner city schools do become Red Clay’s… Minus Bancroft’s surplus of 147 votes in the “for” column, this referendum would have failed like the last… (Someone needs to reward that team btw/ they literally saved our butts)
Missing from polite conversation (except at referendum time) is how good schools and proper financing thereof, do really benefit society bang-for-buck better than anything besides transportation improvements. There may be a good argument they are even worth more than good transportation improvements…
Therefore I see an offensive pro-active campaign needs to begin immediately to counter all those negatives that a vacuum allows to go unchallenged. If in a vacuum, someone says “look, schools are failing”,then as in every courtroom, one is immediately put on the defensive…At then end of the prosecution ones situation looks rather daunting until the defense begins its run of counter arguments. In a courtroom you have to wait for the defense. In real life, most of don’t have time to wait around so the prosecution wins by default. It is becoming clear from seeing these polling results that a loud deafening campaign extolling proper-funding’s positives, is needed to create the necessary infertile ground upon which those weedy seeds of destruction land and sprout.
Odd as it sounds now, and it will need more fleshing out to be marketable (but since we are talking among experts here for the moment i’ll just throw it out there),, what we need to do is to extol how proper school funding is far, far cheaper in the long run for all of us,than starving our school systems out of their last extra penny. i think that is certainly achievable.
Since truth lies on that side of this argument I think the outcome will be favorable. But it will take time to slowly flip contrary public opinion currently rooted deep on emotion, and light on fact. …
March 25, 2016 at 4:59 pm
minnehanh
when I taught at Bancroft it was not at all unusual for Drew employees to come across the street to Bancroft to vote. Bet they still do.
March 25, 2016 at 5:28 pm
elizabeth
Brian,
Let’s debate this:
elizabeth, I disagree with this: “No one for as long as I can remember has talked about the depth of poverty in the Rt. 40 Corridor. (exept Kavips)”
Perhaps you refer to the cyber world where no one has talked about this?
_________________
I haven’t been to your meetings. As worker bees and special needs parents, your meetings don’t fall when we can attend. But, I do read, the blogs, the paper, the CSD website, the CSD email blasts, pretty much anything that comes across my computer screen or lands in my mailbox.
But, we can argue this: Rt 40 has ugly poverty hidden behind bright and shiney school buildings (many built within the last 20 years), commercial development and farmland.
As a resident in this corridor, as you are, too, I have seen nothing in print that talks about what our CSD kids need – Rt 40 communities. If you don’t have a child in a CSD school the district does nothing to reach you were you are – at home. With one exception – the Communicator, which promptly arrived three days before the referendum extolling the virtues of a yes vote. And not a word about how this referendum will help my local corridor!
So, all the conversations in the world at all the meetings under the sun, don’t mean a thing if you are not reaching the people who are talking about.
Which is why i suggest that CSD study all the data out of this and past referendums. Kavips is right – CSD needs to start campaigning hard NOW to reach these residents. The Communicator should be something much more than it is. And don’t think that the New Journal is going to do much for you, they are as oblivious to the poverty here as are many of our elected officials.
Of those officials, one told me while campaigning a few years back: “GEE, I didn’t realize how many neighborhoods were over here. It’s been about five years since I drove down this way.” Hello??? These neighborhoods are more than five years old!
These are the challenges that CSD will have to overcome to pass that CAPITAL referendum that’s its already planning:
1) Get your hands dirty in Rt. 40. Do more for more and reach out beyond your school walls.
2) Intervene in the community on the other side of the district that seems to think that moving the City into Red Clay is going to cure CSD of poverty. Set the record straight – poverty happens in the suburbs too.
3) Stop chasing charter dollars. I am so tired of CSD administration and supporters complaining about how charters take money away from traditional schools. Come clean. The money follows the child. It never belonged to CSD. This isn’t a pro/anti charter sentiment. This is a reality. My child is worth a lot of money to whomever I choose to provide her education. If I choose charter, I accept a calculated risk. But, it’s my risk. We had two charter high school acceptances that we declined bc I didn’t like the way decision makers spoke to us. I declined our neighborhood high school for the same reason. If CSD makes me feel like a valued parent, then I might feel that it would do the same for my child and I could see supporting the district. (Keep in mind that I lived and breathed CSD for four years as a board member and gave the district far more than 40 hrs a week combating the fall-out from Joe Wise. I retired my boardsmanship b/c my family needed 100% of me.)
And do you know how CSD repaid my service? It allowed an accused child abuser to retire rather than fire her. I call her accused b/c there hasn’t been a trial. But the last accusations weren’t the first. And our family made hauntingly similar accusations when she was our child’s teacher. And my daughter, she still talks about the abuse perpetrated against her despite years of therapy. And this district, when faced with irrefutable evidence let a child abuser retire to savor her tax payer funded benefits.
You can tell me that I hold a grudge. I don’t. Even after our accusations were dismissed, I allowed CSD to educate my son. I voted yes to referendums when I could afford them and I voted no when I couldn’t. We love our neighborhood elementary school and have supported it despite no longer having children there.
The one thing I can tell you as a certain: if CSD continues to ignore all the things it does wrong, it will not overcome its negative reputation. You have Bob A., some see him as a saint. I highly recommend you use him, you extract every dollar you put into him to begin mending CSD’s fences and finances. Rather than tear the man down as some CSD board and community members are trying to do, you (in general and not you directly) need to get behind a real plan for the future of this district. Without the City, CSD may not have the capacity to pass a capital referendum. And that is truly fightening to ponder.
Maybe’ y’all might hire Kavips to be the next Superintendent. Though I haven’t a clue who he is, he’d likely get my vote.
March 26, 2016 at 3:10 am
kavips
Thanks, Elizabeth, you are a very generous person…
Brian, after dust settles can you put something up over at Del Lib one day that explodes this Rt 40 Corridor poverty thing wide open?…Not sure what you have, but if you start, perhaps we can feed off it.
Minnehanh — on the absentees, the same trend happened I think which happens in Trump primaries. Absentees are done often long before election day and those voters miss all the hype of the last minute push. They pretty much vote in a vacuum. and Trump does well on absentees since they were cast before the negatives began airing. The referendum absentees were cast before the “yes” push became prolific. That’s my guess. :
March 26, 2016 at 11:58 am
minnehanh
Looking a bit more in depth at the results it’s clear that this election was won in the city! If those schools were today part of Red Clay and everything else was equal we wouldn’t have scored a win. Big numbers at Downes and Newark Hi locations won it the suburbs but the numbers out of the Rt 40 schools were not good for us. We know that there is a lot of low income in that area, and probably proportionally more renters. They look at a referendum more economically and the more well off voters probably look at it more educationally. Taking out the seven city voting sites you remove 491 “yes” votes and 291 “no” votes, 710 altogether. About 5%. Then looking at the suburban schools and only the Rt 40 corridor schools you have 6 voting sites, with 50% having more “yes” votes (Boys’ and Girls’ Club, Leasure School, and Marshall School.) Rt 40 “Yes” votes in all locations totaled 869 votes and the “No” votes were 1239. Those are significant numbers showing us clearly where the effort has to go before we run a capital referendum. It also shows, I think, that serious thought has to be given to finding some way other than referenda to fund schools because the growing population of people negatively impacted by the economy is going to spell doom for how we do business today.
The people on the referendum committee did a great job increasing the voter turnout this time, and that was a huge help. I wonder, too, if there is a significant difference in votes from low income people (what used to be called the working poor and what I suspect we have along Rt 40) and the people who truly live lives in poverty (probably more in the city.) Lots of interesting forensic demographic/sociology study here in these numbers. But as Brian said at the beginning somewhere here, a huge effort needs to be made and that has to begin with home and community engagement. We have made a start with this vote, I believe.
March 26, 2016 at 12:03 pm
minnehanh
Something else to keep in mind: if, and that is a huge “IF” WEIC makes it through the General Assembly by June 30 the implementation will begin in the Fall of 2018 with the transfer of CSD city schools to Red Clay. The referendum that CSD just won has a projected life of 2 years which means another referendum in 2018 which would have to be a capital one for some badly needed repairs and maintenance work for our buildings, plus some operating funds to begin the educational changes we are looking at in the configurations etc for our schools, especially our high schools.
March 27, 2016 at 9:24 am
elizabeth
Minnehanh, you know I respect you and we frequently fall on the same side of issues, but… I disagree with this:
“But as Brian said at the beginning somewhere here, a huge effort needs to be made and that has to begin with home and community engagement. We have made a start with this vote, I believe.”
This wasn’t a start. CSD lost every pulling place along the Corridor except Marshall and Leasure. CSD even lost McVey and Brader, which are inside of the Corridor and halfway towards Downes.
There is a very clear line running through the suburbs. And I’m not talking Mason-Dixon 🙂
CSD must do more now and consistently to hit these voters and residents where they are – at home. But, if history tells us anything, the district will repeat the same mistakes it made in 2010, the last time it passed a referendum, the mistakes that were made on my watch. I’ve now lived on three sides of Christina, a resident before a board member, a board member, and a resident after. My board allowed itself to be so consumed with fighting DOE that we forgot about the public and the perception they were receiving. We erroneously believed that our message of fighting for kids was reaching most of the district. But, our gains were obscured by politics and our inability to successfully market ourselves. We walked away with a referendum success and let the results disappear into the wind, as transparent as cardboard. Christina hasn’t had a clear path forward in two decades. And if CSD doesn’t put one forth and then stick to it, the public will not give the district another win any time soon.
March 28, 2016 at 8:01 am
kavips
Liz. I have to disagree with a couple of your points on the effectiveness of you tenure. The children who came thorough that tenure of yours were top notch…
Furthermore, the DOE did need someone to stand up to them. No one else was going to do it.
Lastly, you also discount the effect the Republican Recession had on mentalities when it comes to spending discretionary income.
When one has the American assumption (based on the past 60+ years) that ones incomes would grow continuously until one reached a financially secure retirement, one in that environment feels more inclined to vote for a referendum.
But when one sees the opposite, declining fortunes approaching a dismal retirement, one is more recalcitrant to give up what one may in the future need to survive…
Both of those are general psychological descriptions, and can or cannot be called into play, but, they do illustrate that there are bigger things than just the running of the district, which impact whether referendums pass or fail.
The best bet for a viable future is to have a community outreach, even door to door campaign of volunteers who simply like talking to real people, and put them out there to see what happens.
Sort of like this:: “Hi, I’m a parent of the Christina School District, What’s your opinion of us? Let me tell you what we are TRYING to do…”
March 29, 2016 at 8:27 am
elizabeth
My Turn:
“The children who came thorough that tenure of yours were top notch…”
I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic or not. However, those were not my words. And those children, many of whom are still in the K-12 pipeline are no different than the peers that join them today. With one caveat – most are poorer today than they were in 2008-2012.
“Furthermore, the DOE did need someone to stand up to them. No one else was going to do it.”
I agree. And I don’t regret it. Not one iota. What I can see 4-8 years removed is that we failed to sell our message to the majority of the district, not just families, but the elderly, the poor, the disengaged. Those who have an innate passion for education glammed onto to our battle. It was frequently more entertaining than SNL (although I have never truly appreciated the comic genius of this show.) Let us now bow our head and say thank you to the powers-that-may-or-may-not-be for the Red Bull and Popcorn. But, we made a false step. We didn’t market what we were doing within the district. And we couldn’t rely on the New Journal to perform unbiased and ethical reporting. It printed the stories that its advertisers wanted and the state’s power-denizens demanded. We didn’t make the effort to reach our residents where they are – at home.
“Lastly, you also discount the effect the Republican Recession had on mentalities when it comes to spending discretionary income.”
I do not discount the effects of the recession. As far as I am concerned, the recession is alive and well, which I why you hear my voice in the wind, late at night, bemoaning “Christina, I just can’t afford you.” I retired my service to CSD bc my family was choking on poverty, the kind that comes with under-employment. And even now with two incomes, we still can’t make the ends meet. Of course, that might be my own undoing, my chosen career is in education.
I think my posts have been very affirmative of your suggestion that the district get to work now. Two years will fly by.
March 30, 2016 at 5:59 pm
kavips
For clarity, it never occurred to me there could be two meanings to this phrase,
“The children who came thorough that tenure of yours were top notch…”
until you brought it up.. For the record I was speaking straightforwardly and there are many reasons for this… One was the reading and math aides put in classrooms by the Minner administration…which effectively made a difference in a large number of lives. Kids who “get” the basics can continue to do well in their lives.
The second, I believe was the retirement of large numbers of older teachers and the replacing them with new recruits. These would have been the hires of the late seventies who were hitting their upper years. That was a big bubble and it played itself out.
And quite likely a third piece was the mentality of the Christina Board charged with bringing the district back after Joe Wise, Whereas a large number of boards are sometimes rubber stampers, this board was not and that drive I think trickled down to all teachers who felt they were part of something important too.. Fighting for the education of their children…
And there was one more, but after writing these three, I can’t seem to find the neuron on which it was stationed… If anyone wants to add, please feel free… 🙂