I truly appreciate the input so far. My original thinking on this is in line with Dick’s, that any lift generated by flaps will be negated by drag.

For arguments sake let’s say lift and drag increase equally with flap deployment but let’s also say the addition of flaps also adheres to the third factor… Decreases the stall speed. If I’m thinking this through correctly, glide ratio over distance should not improve. However I’m only trying to increase glide ratio over TIME. Shouldn't this increase if the plane flown just above stall speed?