Governor Carney tours Georgetown Middle, talks Opportunity Funding
GEORGETOWN, Del. – Governor John Carney checked in on students at Georgetown Middle School on Tuesday, but he was there to check on students in specific classrooms. The Governor met with students who are a part of the opportunity funding program, which aims to help disadvantaged students and English language learners.
“We obviously have a high Hispanic population and with that we have a high population of English language learners,” David Hudson, Principal of the school, said.
That’s where Hudson says opportunity funding comes in.
“The opportunity grant has been the first opportunity that we have to provide additional funding on top of the normal unit count funding that we get for schools,” he said.
On Tuesday, Governor John Carney saw what the school was doing with that funding. He says the $60 million dollars in opportunity funding across the last three years is designed to make sure disadvantaged students are getting all the resources they need to learn.
“The goal is to get the children into mainstream classroom so that they can work on their math and English language arts and signs with the other students,” Governor John Carney said.
Because, the governor says, a successful student will turn into a successful employee in Delaware.
“We need them in the workforce, and we need to make sure that one of our goals is to make sure that every child in our state graduates from high school either ready to go out into the workforce productively, or onto higher education,” Governor Carney said.
But all of that begins in the classroom, sometimes with one-on-one instruction.
“The students get pulled out where, we call it an exploratory class, the other students maybe have gym or health or music, they get an opportunity to preview what they’re going to be doing the next day in their regular classes,” Hudson said.
But that, Principal Hudson says, wouldn’t be possible without opportunity funding.
“We’re able to go above and beyond and to add the extra teachers in the classrooms and to do these pull out rooms where they’re getting these previewing which has allowed these kids the opportunities to catch up to their peers,” he said.
Principal David Hudson tells 47 ABC the school has started putting one Spanish-speaking teacher and one English-speaking teacher in a classroom together. He says that helps students who don’t speak English as their first language.
Governor Carney tells 47 ABC he was impressed with his visit to Georgetown Middle School and their assessments into what students need to be successful.
