Op-Ed: Who Really Did It? By Janet Christensen-Lewis

In the days since the Kent County Commissioners voted to fund the new middle school, there has been plenty of celebration—and understandably so. After nearly a decade of discussion, planning and advocacy, a new Kent County Middle School will finally move forward.

In the celebration following the Commissioners’ vote I heard Democratic County Commissioner candidate Thad Bench say, “We did it.” Perhaps that was simply the exuberance of the moment. But it made me think about who really did do it—and about how quickly years of work can disappear behind the celebration that follows a successful vote.

Who really did it?

This effort did not begin during the 2026 election campaign. It did not begin this summer, and it certainly did not begin on the night the Commissioners cast their votes.

Support Our Schools was organized in 2016 by Robbi Behr, Jodi Bortz, Piers Heriz-Smith, Rebecca Heriz-Smith, Elizabeth Tussing and Françoise Sullivan. For nearly a decade, its members have organized, attended meetings, written letters, rallied supporters and kept the needs of Kent County’s public schools before the community and our elected officials.

It is also worth recognizing something readily apparent from that history: women were a driving force behind this effort. Five of the six founders of Support Our Schools were women, and women continued to occupy important advocacy and leadership roles as the middle-school effort moved forward.

Few people illustrate that sustained commitment better than Françoise Sullivan.

Françoise did not arrive at this issue when success appeared imminent. She served as a community member of the 2017–18 KCPS Six-Year Facilities Strategic Plan Committee. She served on the Kent County Middle School Educational Specifications Committee from 2021 through 2023. She co-chaired the KCPS Citizens Advisory Committee in 2022 and 2023. She became a member of the Board of Education. And when Kent County needed substantially greater state assistance to make a new middle school financially possible, she took the argument to Annapolis and testified in support of legislation that would increase the state’s share of school construction costs for counties such as Kent.

That is what sustained advocacy looks like. It means showing up year after year when the outcome is uncertain, doing the tedious work, accepting the criticism that inevitably accompanies public advocacy and continuing to make your case.

Sullivan was hardly alone. Robbi Behr, Jodi Bortz, Rebecca Heriz-Smith, Elizabeth Tussing and the many other members and supporters of SOS devoted enormous amounts of time to the effort. Trish McGee and other members of the Board of Education carried responsibility from the institutional side. School administrators, teachers, parents and ordinary citizens wrote letters, attended meetings, testified and kept the issue alive through a process that at times seemed unlikely ever to reach a conclusion.

Whatever one’s opinion of every position Support Our Schools has taken—and I certainly have not agreed with all of them—the persistence and effectiveness of its advocacy cannot reasonably be denied.

There was also substantial disagreement along the way. Many people believed Worton was a better location. Others questioned the size and cost of the proposed school or worried about the burden on county taxpayers. Those questions were part of a legitimate public debate over one of the largest public investments Kent County has undertaken.

The current Board of County Commissioners inherited a middle-school issue that had already been years in the making. Ron Fithian had been part of that earlier history through his previous terms in office, while John Price and Albert Nickerson joined the process when they took office in 2022. During their current tenure, however, all three Commissioners became an integral part of moving the project toward a final decision. They worked with our state delegation and officials in Annapolis to secure a substantially larger state contribution toward the project, while the County’s budgeting process set aside and earmarked funds to prepare for Kent County’s share. That financial planning was significant.

The Commissioners did not ultimately reach the same conclusion about whether to proceed with the project as proposed. On September 15, Price and Nickerson voted to move forward, while Fithian voted against it. But the final vote should not obscure the work the current Commissioners had done after inheriting the issue. Their work on state funding, county financing and the decisions leading to the final vote became an important part of the later stages of a process that had begun years before Price and Nickerson took office.

The four Democrats who sought their party’s nomination also entered the middle-school debate, although—with the exception of David Foster, who had been engaged with the issue earlier but did not advance beyond the primary—their documented involvement coincided with their 2026 campaigns. The positions of the remaining three differed: Sam Shoge supported moving the existing project forward, John Carroll emphasized investment in educational infrastructure, while Thad Bench advocated building the new school in Worton and redeveloping the Campus Avenue property.

Their participation became part of the final chapter of the debate. But the middle-school story had been written over many years before the 2026 campaign began.

But my point is not really about assigning credit.

It is about remembering how major civic accomplishments actually happen.

They happen because people organize. They join committees. They sit through meeting after meeting. They write legislators. They testify in Annapolis. They advocate before local officials. They continue working when there is no guarantee that they will prevail.

In the case of the new Kent County Middle School, much of that sustained citizen advocacy was led by women who began doing the work years before September 2026 and long before the current election campaign.

Political success inevitably produces a large “we.”

History should remember the people who were there doing the work over the years that made that “we” possible.