Until at present, 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 schoolhouse factions over how new education dollars should exist divvied up. Just signs of discord in Los Angeles Unified indicate that the same battles over coin 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 depression-income schools.

While Los Angeles Unified equally a whole volition significantly benefit from Brownish'due south Local Command 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 in that location are worried that their schools may be left backside, unable to afford essential programs and services, from summer school to physical education teachers, that other schools in the district will have.

In large part, the issue is over the departure between the base of operations funding per educatee and the supplementary dollars for high-needs students that Dark-brown has proposed; suburban districts without English learners and low-income students – the targeted groups – say that the base of operations is besides low, that it volition not completely restore districts to the funding they had earlier the recession in 2007. Both the Senate and the Associates have passed alternative versions of LCFF with a higher base, though they take different approaches.

Only also at play is the extent to which districts will have flexibility in deciding how the extra dollars for high-needs students can be used – whether that money volition take to be spent exclusively on loftier-needs students at their schools (one way of preventing coin from disappearing at the district part) or whether schools and districts can use some of the money for summer schoolhouse, counselors, assistant principals or computers to benefit other students and all schools as well.

The direction should become clearer presently. Staff and legislative leaders from the Senate and Assembly are negotiating with Brown's staff on the details of the formula and the restrictions on how coin can be used. They want to cut a deal within days so that a final neb can be voted on adjacent week.

Where the money goes

Under the LCFF, Chocolate-brown is proposing 3 funding elements: base funding for all students, based on nigh only not all of what the average district got in 2007-08, plus price-of-living adjustments; a supplemental amount equaling 35 per centum of the base for every English language learner, low-income pupil and foster child in the school; and a bonus amount, chosen a concentration grant, upwardly to 17 percent of the base, for districts in which at least half of the students are high-needs.

Los Angeles Unified Board Member Tamar Galatzan during an interview by KLCS television during a meeting of the Valley Schools Task Force last month.

Los Angeles Unified Board Member Tamar Galatzan during an interview by KLCS television during a coming together of the Valley Schools Task Force terminal month.

Los Angeles Unified, with 70 pct of students classified as low-income and 28 percent English learners, would get a lot of extra dollars overall: about $12,000 per student, among the highest allocations in the land, once the system is fully implemented in an estimated vii years. Most of the 784 schools in the district would qualify for supplementary and concentration dollars, but in about 77 schools, serving about 8 percent of students, 40 percent or fewer of the students are low-income, qualifying them for no concentration dollars and fewer supplementary dollars. In San Diego Unified, it's 41 out of 222 schools. In Los Angeles Unified, schools with less than 50 per centum of students in poverty as well don't qualify for federal Championship I dollars for low-income students.

A lot is at stake. Among those awaiting discussion from Sacramento is Tamar Galatzan, an LAUSD board fellow member who represents much of the racially and economically various San Fernando Valley. Parents from her district attended a presentation at the Valley Schools Task Force on the proposed funding formula final calendar month that she organized to "start the discussion," she said.

Parents in her area are peculiarly anxious, considering their schools lost resources when the district raised the threshold for receiving federal Title I money from 40 percent low-income children attending the schoolhouse to 50 pct. They suspect the district may steer LCFF money away from them, too. "This spring our PTA was asked to fund a long list of basic salaried positions and equipment (among these, role-time classroom aides and a librarian, arts educators, engineering for students and staff)," Janet Borrus, a parent at Dahlia Heights Unproblematic School, with just nether 50 percent depression-income children in the Hawkeye Rock area of the city, wrote in an email. "Try though we might, we cannot afford to. We should not have to. Nor should our low-income students exist asked to peddle cookie dough to enhance coin for their own academic intervention."

This calendar week, Galatzan introduced 1 of two board resolutions, which volition be voted on later this month, providing guidance to Superintendent John Deasy on using the commune's LCFF funding. Galatzan'southward resolution would require that LCFF dollars for loftier-needs students "follow the kid to the school site" and asks Deasy to set up "unlike allocation models" showing how the money would follow students. Yet the resolution also would require that the allocation models "have into consideration the base level of funding every schoolhouse needs to survive and thrive – regardless of zip lawmaking, size or composition" and asks Deasy to determine what that base should exist.

Galatzan best-selling in an interview the tension of ii potentially conflicting goals of directing dollars to high-needs students who generated them under the formula and setting a level of spending for all students exceeding what Dark-brown has defined as base funding nether the LCFF.

"There must be a funding floor below which we are not going to become," Galatzan said. "We as a district must be committed to providing access to a certain level of services that every child deserves."

The other competing resolution, proposed by iii lath members, makes the aforementioned supposition, calling for a three-year commune-wide programme to restore course sizes and provide an expanded school year, enrichment programs, counselors, librarians and teacher raises. This option doesn't distinguish the specific needs of high-needs students.

Senate, Assembly approaches

Much of the feet among suburban districts and heart-class schools within poor districts would dissipate if the base funding per pupil in the LCFF were raised. Brown proposes, at total implementation, between $6,437 per pupil in grades iv-6 to $seven,680 per student for high schoolhouse. The Senate's upkeep raised this by well-nigh 9 pct – between $568 and $688 per student, depending on the class. But the Senate assumed $four billion more in state revenue by 2019-20 than the Department of Finance and raised the base of operations in role past eliminating the concentration factor – a motion Brown has rejected. Without extra revenue, raising the base would crave stretching out the implementation menstruum or reducing dollars for loftier-needs students – one selection on the table that advocates for these students would fight and Chocolate-brown hasn't indicated he'd support, said Rick Simpson, deputy main of staff to Assembly Speaker John Pérez, D-Los Angeles.

The Assembly took a different tack, offer districts an alternative to the LCFF that fully restores their funds to pre-recession levels but does non provide extra money for targeted students. Districts would cull whichever option is better. It'south non clear how much coin this new option would divert from the LCFF.

The LCFF's final financial accountability language volition exist critical. Brown'south overall view is to give school boards flexibility to make decisions while making sure that the spending programme is transparent and dollars for high-needs students are spent on them. The May upkeep revision says that supplementary dollars "should be proportional to the enrollment at each schoolhouse site" of the targeted students. It also says the concentration grants should "primarily do good" loftier-needs students. The Senate's version would impose a stricter legal status, that the actress dollars "supplement non supercede" dollars spent on high-needs students; they must provide extra services and staff.

It's a balancing act. On the one hand, schools should avoid spending that creates segregated programs that should be better put toward a schoolwide benefit, said Arun Ramanathan, executive director of Oakland-based Education Trust-West, which advocates for underserved students. But at what threshold of disadvantaged students is there enough money generated to spread around, to shift from tutoring for disadvantaged students to an extra advisor for all students?

Districts should have flexibility to use supplementary dollars to create common strategies, say, for all English learners, Ramanathan said. But base funding, not supplementary dollars, should pay for teachers' raises, he said.

Districts are anxious to restore programs and staff positions that were cut over the past v years. The danger is that money volition end upward committed long-term, at the expense of poor students for whom the new funding arrangement was intended, Ramanathan said.

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