“There are so many people in Delaware that really have a passion for education,” said Gary Stockbridge, former regional president of Delmarva Power and Atlantic City Electric. “And 80 percent of the stuff we all have a passion for, we all actually agree on. But so often today, people spend 90 percent of their time on the 10 percent of the ‘stuff’ that they don’t agree on — fighting. There is so much we can work together on; let’s focus on that and get stuff done.”
Therein lies the essence of The Vision Coalition of Delaware, a public-private partnership working to improve public education on a statewide level. The group represents a cross-section of state leaders, from CEOs to district superintendents, charter school leaders, advocates, and others.
In 2005, Marvin “Skip” Schoenhals, CEO, and chairman of WSFS Bank, led a steering committee that included Ernie Dianastasis, CEO of The Precisionists, Inc., to create a comprehensive and coherent education plan to help Delaware create—and deliver on—long-term blueprints for modernizing and improving the state’s public education ecosystem, a release stated. The result was the creation of the Vision Coalition of Delaware, chaired by Schoenhals, which released a ten-year plan called Vision 2015. Delaware moved on more than 75 percent of the policy recommendations set forth in the Vision 2015 plan.
The Delaware State Chamber of Commerce and its workforce development affiliate, The Partnership, Inc., will present the three men with the John H. Taylor, Jr. Education Leadership award at the Superstars in Education & Training Awards Ceremony on Monday, May 9. The event will be held at 4:45 p.m. in Wilmington University’s Doberstein Admissions Center Auditorium.
As technology and modern approaches began making their way into classrooms, the Coalition—next chaired by Dianastasis—released Student Success 2025 to help inform the priorities of the next decade. Gary Stockbridge then served as the group’s next leader from 2016 to 2021 to carry on the mission of providing the business community a seat at the table to lead on collaborative solutions to building a world-class education.
The John H. Taylor, Jr. Education Leadership Award recognizes leaders within the community who have provided sustained leadership in advancing Delaware education and who, by doing so, has also made our community a better place in which to live and work. it is named in honor of the late John H. Taylor, Jr., a former teacher and editorial page editor at the News-Journal who became president of the Delaware Public Policy Institute and served as a founding member of the Vision Coalition.
