By Brian Gilliland

LEWES — Ever since the previous referendum failed in March, Cape Henlopen Schools Superintendent Bob Fulton has been touring the county, as he did before the previous vote, but spent time during Thursday’s regular board of education meeting to address the common threads he said he had been seeing during his travels.

“We are doing our very best to educate and to help provide talking points to many of our community members and staff so if something does come up, they know exactly what is going on because it’s complicated,” Mr. Fulton began. “It’s hard to communicate in a concise way that’s accurate with so many things wrapped in the question.”

The district’s top educator identified about six main topics for discussion including assessed vs. market value of homes, the current reassessment effort underway, current expenses and debt service, frequency of referenda, history of school district increases and overall academic achievement.

“I had a conversation with a gentlemen who was not happy with me,” Mr. Fulton said, kicking off the conversation about assessed value of local homes. Mr. Fulton said he was told he was not being truthful or transparent with the community.

“I didn’t understand why. He seemed to be saying things that didn’t make sense to me, so I called to find out why,” he said. “This person just did not have the correct information. His assessed value was one-quarter of what he thought it was.”

Assessed value is the price local governments assign to properties for tax purposes, which is different than the market value, which is the price on a real estate listing.

The tax value of commercial, agricultural and residential properties in Sussex County have not been measured since the 1970s. Current property tax assessed value of homes in the Cape District and Sussex County were set before color television was popular.

There are controls in place to keep individual tax burdens from increasing past a certain threshold, the Sussex County website explains, but it has done little to ease fears, Mr. Fulton said.

“Reassessment, that means my taxes are going up,” Mr. Fulton said, forming the basis of his argument. “That’s not true, some will go up and some will go down and we can’t control that. So we’re trying to communicate there are a lot more homes in the district with values below the average than above the average.”

The county’s website reassures voters there will be both formal and informal appeals processes if an error in valuation is suspected.

Waiting until after the reassessment to go to referendum isn’t an option for the district, which canceled a 2020 vote due to the pandemic. The last vote considering a property tax increase for the schools was in 2018.

“We’re at the point now where we really can’t wait, because if we could we would,” Mr. Fulton said.

Because of growth.

“Everything we are doing is about growth, not just at our high school but across the entire district, the current expense to increase the operating expenses is about the growth. Moving the district office and buying property is about growth so we can add on to our high school,” he said.

The people coming to Sussex are averaging about 10 classrooms’ worth of students each year, according to Cape Henlopen enrollment data. Mr. Fulton said some of those people are coming from districts where their taxes exceed $10,000 annually and increase by the thousands each year.

However, since 2006, Mr. Fulton said district taxes on an average home are less than $300.

And there are concerns about what the community is getting for the money, Mr. Fulton said.

“We need to do a better job of conveying what our kids are doing and what are schools are doing in arts, in athletic and academics,” he said.

Given the same accountability measures, Mr. Fulton said Cape Henlopen district students outperform every other district in the state. About 16 other states use the same accountability measures as Delaware, and Cape schools outperform them all, Mr. Fulton said.

However, not all stats paint the district in the same light. Mr. Fulton took issue with National Assessment of Educational Progress scores, which he said ranks local schools unfairly.

“When you hear the message from some that we’re 47th in the country on NAEP. Well, NAEP is not a reflection on our Cape kids. Our Cape kids account for about four percent of the NAEP scores,” he said.

Mr. Fulton said NAEP testing was done only in three grade levels, at three of five elementary schools in the district, and not every student within those grade levels was tested.

“That’s not a fair indication of who we are and what we are,” Mr. Fulton said.