By John Fensterwald
California Charter Schools Association chief executive Jed Wallace turned rhapsodic in a message last month to charter school operators summarizing the impact of the new school funding system on their campuses. The Local Control Funding Formula represents a landmark victory, he said, a sort of Brown v. Board of Education moment for the charter school movement.
via Irritation or two aside, charter leaders pleased with new funding system | EdSource Today.
By John Affeldt / commentary
California’s shift to a new weighted student funding model represents just the most recent example of how Democratic state policymakers here are charting a different course in education policy than the Obama Administration and Congress.
As I noted in a post last week, California and Washington have taken distinctly different approaches to achievement gaps that increasingly are most closely associated with economic inequality. Rather than focusing on firing “bad” teachers and closing schools, California has moved to direct more resources to low-income districts and increase local decision-making, with sanctions a last resort after support and technical assistance have failed.
via California moving away from Washington’s corporate education reform | EdSource Today.
By John Fensterwald
As the most sweeping change in K-12 school funding in decades, the new school finance system that took effect this month will require school officials to clear their minds of old formulas and assumptions and to think anew in constructing their budgets.
That’s the advice of School Services of California, a Sacramento-based consulting firm that is giving budget seminars around the state this week for school officials.
via A new K-12 funding system demands new thinking in building local budgets | EdSource Today.
By Kay McElrath / commentary
As we all scramble to comprehend the nuances of last month’s budget compromise, there’s no shortage of commentary as to the wisdom or lack thereof of the Local Control Funding Formula as written.
Generally I find my colleagues falling into four camps – those who claim the sky could fall if there aren’t strict limits on how local educational agencies can spend the money; those who are equally certain the sky will fall if there are strict limits on how LEAs can spend the money; those who never thought it would actually happen so haven’t been paying a lot of attention until now; and those who are pinching themselves because they never thought that they would live to see it. I guess that I would have to say that I fall into the last camp.
via Schools, districts need freedom to realize new funding system’s potential | EdSource Today.
By John Affeldt / commentary
California’s new Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) signifies a welcome shift from the “no excuses” education “reform” crowd and their D.C. dominance. Contrary to Washingtonian rhetoric about addressing poverty by getting tough on bad teachers and closing bad schools, California proposes to address poverty by, well, addressing poverty.
Indeed, the LCFF reform shifts the conversation back to a focus on the extra resources and support that low-income students and English Learners need to succeed. And rather than shutting down low-performing schools first and asking questions later, LCFF proposes to send schools that have high concentrations of low-income students even more resources.
via Goodbye Big Brother, hello local control … maybe | EdSource Today.
Less than a week after the state Legislature approved a sweeping school finance reform plan that will funnel additional funds to low-income students and English learners, the state’s finance chief says school districts will have to spend the extra funds in a way “that shows improved outcomes” among their students.
Ana Matosantos, the director of the Department of Finance, was speaking during a telephone briefing with nearly 450 participants from around the state, including journalists, school officials, finance experts and parent advocates.
After passage of school finance plan, focus shifts to implementation | EdSource Today.
By John Osborn
The Legislature on Friday passed a $96.3 billion budget plan for the state that includes a shift in how California funds schools and contains significant funding for education. Gov. Jerry Brown must sign the budget before the start of the fiscal year on July 1.
Click through our interactive graphics for budget highlights.
Scroll over graphs for additional information.
Interactive graphic of state budget highlights for education | EdSource Today.
The current Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) legislation pending before the Legislature utterly fails to reach any of the key reform goals that Gov. Jerry Brown and his advisers articulated. The bill presents the Legislature and governor with a stark choice.
The key goals of LCFF, as articulated by the governor’s astute adviser Mike Kirst and his colleagues in a seminal paper, were as follows:
The Legislature will vote today on a bill establishing Gov. Brown’s historic school funding system that punts to the State Board of Education some key decisions on how dollars for disadvantaged students must be spent and accounted for:
Senate Bill 91, the 178-page “trailer” bill containing statutory changes for Gov. Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula, was released Thursday, one day before lawmakers must vote on the $96 billion state budget that includes funding for the new system. Its provisions won’t satisfy advocates for disadvantaged children who had called for restrictions tightly tying funding to targeted students along with detailed information on how every school spends its money. But the bill also may not please districts that wanted broad district control over allocations under the LCFF. The bill indicates the solution – that extra dollars must be spent “in proportion” to the high-needs students who generate them – is somewhere in between.
State Board handed job of defining rules of new funding system | EdSource Today.
By Ted Lempert
California is about to embark on the most comprehensive reform to its school finance system in 40 years, putting local communities in the driver’s seat and making a historic investment of more than $10 billion in high-needs students. The compromise Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) to be voted on by the state Legislature by the June 15 deadline also fairly addresses the earlier “winners-losers” concern by increasing the base grant and ensuring that all districts receive additional funding.
The new funding formula also benefits all districts by increasing local flexibility. Communities will be able to craft locally determined approaches to how they will educate all students, and develop their own specific services and support for high-needs students. In addition, if a student begins to show poor academic outcomes, educators can now respond quickly to address the situation and get that student the services needed to get back on track. Districts can also look to neighboring regions that are yielding quality results for new ideas and solutions, and tailor them to meet their local needs.
After historic win, much collective work lies ahead | EdSource Today.
By Diana Lambert and Jim Sanders
Woodland school leaders want to shrink kindergarten class rosters now jammed with 30 students. Natomas Superintendent Chris Evans wants to add a week of school. And Washington Unified leaders will give raises to teachers in West Sacramento.
After Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders struck a deal this week to increase education funding for years to come, local districts are eager to expand programs for the first time since a recessionary wave of budget cuts hit schools in 2009.
via Schools eye smaller classes, teacher raises after California budget deal.
Gov. Jerry Brown blunted the expansionist tendencies of his fellow Democrats in writing a new state budget, but that doesn’t mean it’s the “balanced” spending plan that he and other Capitol politicians are claiming.
They define “balanced” as the state’s having enough revenue to pay for the 2013-14 budget’s appropriations. However, their budget ignores some very real obligations that, if recognized, would put the state many billions of dollars in the red.
via Dan Walters: Is California’s new budget balanced? Not really.
It was the morning after the evening of the last revision, and the father of the Local Control Funding Formula looked upon all that the governor and Legislature had made, and declared, “Hey, not bad.”
Michael Kirst is relishing the all-but-certain passage later this week of the comprehensive school funding reform that he co-designed. That was five years ago, and, after many twists and iterations, the final version, negotiated over the weekend by Gov. Jerry Brown, Assembly Speaker John Pérez, D-Los Angeles, and Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, ended up quite like the one published in April 2008. The framework – with base funding, a supplemental grant for every low-income student and English learner, and extra dollars again to districts with the highest concentrations of those targeted students – was in the paper that Kirst co-wrote with former California Secretary of Education Alan Bersin and then Berkeley Law Center professor and now state Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu.
In a nod to suburban districts that argued they would be shortchanged, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders negotiated a new version of Brown’s plan for school finance reform that will increase the base funding level for all students and lower the extra dollars for some high-needs students.
Late Monday, the Joint Legislative Budget Conference Committee, made up of lawmakers from the Senate and the Assembly, approved a compromise version of Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) with little discussion. The full Legislature is expected to take it up as part of the state budget later this week. Legislative leaders circulated only a one-page summary of the new version, along with a district-by-district breakdown that the state Department of Finance had prepared, but no other information on Monday.
via It’s a deal: Brown, top lawmakers raise base funding in finance formula – by John Fensterwald.
Until now, the greatest tension over Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed school finance reform has been largely among districts: a political tussle between unhappy suburban and optimistic urban school factions over how new education dollars should be divvied up. But signs of discord in Los Angeles Unified indicate that the same battles over money may eventually play out among “winner” and “loser” schools within large diverse districts – like Oakland, San Diego and San Jose – that have both high- and low-income schools.
While Los Angeles Unified as a whole will significantly benefit from Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula, which steers extra dollars to districts with lots of poor children and English learners, schools in Sherman Oaks and other relatively prosperous neighborhoods in LAUSD may not. Parents there are worried that their schools may be left behind, unable to afford essential programs and services, from summer school to physical education teachers, that other schools in the district will have.
via Funding reform worries potential ‘loser’ schools within ‘winning’ districts – by John Fensterwald.
The Senate has dropped its call for a year’s delay in implementing Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan for sweeping K-12 finance reform, making it likely a deal over Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula will be struck in the next few days, Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said Thursday.
Steinberg made the prediction during a public luncheon address in Sacramento with Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California.
via No year’s delay: Deal likely on school finance reform, Steinberg says – by John Fensterwald.
Less than a year after convincing voters to approve a multi-billion dollar tax increase for the state’s schools, Gov. Jerry Brown is on the verge of accomplishing a task that few California governors have dared to take on, let alone accomplish: reforming a school finance system that researchers and education advocates have for years labelled as inequitable, irrational and excessively complex.
Recognizing that it costs more to educate children with greater needs, Brown’s plan would funnel one in five education dollars to school districts based on the number of low-income students, English learners and foster children enrolled there.
via Reform of California’s school finance system likely – by Louis Freedberg.
Voter support is giving Gov. Jerry Brown a tailwind as he heads into negotiations over the state budget and school finance reform with the Legislature.
A new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that Californians continue to overwhelmingly back Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula, even though superintendents of suburban districts are very unhappy with the share they’d get, and Democrats in the Senate and Assembly want to change parts of it. The poll found 77 percent of all respondents, 83 percent of public school parents and 87 percent of Democrats favored it after hearing a one-sentence description that said the LCFF would give each district more than it got this year and would funnel additional dollars to English learners and low-income students. Even a majority of Republicans (57 percent) supported it. The level of support was 6 percentage points higher than in April, even though Brown’s plan has received more scrutiny.
via Poll showing strong voter support for revised budget – by John Fensterwald.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to change how K-12 schools are financed – giving more money to districts with large numbers of poor and/or English-learner students – faces criticism on several points.
One of them, often voiced by those in suburban districts, is that the current formula shouldn’t be changed until schools reach some overall measure of financial adequacy.
via Dan Walters: Does spending more boost education outcomes?.
The Assembly has produced its own version of Gov. Jerry Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula, further complicating the governor’s goal of passing school finance reform as part of the new state budget by July 1.
Taking the form of a one-page set of principles that the Assembly Budget Committee’s subcommittee on education finance approved on Thursday, with one Republican not voting (Brian Nestande, R-Palm Desert), it endorses the basics of Brown’s LCFF while suggesting complex variations to key aspects of it. The full Budget Committee is expected to adopt it Tuesday, sending it to conference committee where it must be melded with the Senate’s alternative to LCFF and negotiated with Brown.
via Assembly adds its version of school finance reform to the mix – by John Fensterwald.