Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The Local Control Funding Formula, and what students really need

The California Board of Education is scheduled to vote Thursday on a set of requirements on how to spend funds allocated to school districts based on the Local Control Funding Formula. Enacted last year, the Local Control Funding Formula  will give more money to schools that have higher proportion of low income children, English learners, and students in foster care.

There's been a lot of debate about how expenditures of the money should be tracked and how results should be measured. If you want to read what the state board will be considering tomorrow, click here. Judging by the hearing in November, and by the fact that the board gave a time certain to hear the item, there's probably going to be a lot of public comment.

I also ran into this story of young people asked how they wanted to see the money spent. Surprisingly, or maybe not so, their requests have nothing or little to do with academics.


2 comments:

  1. Claudia, how does this measure impact schools that rely on ADA funding and how will it impact school districts like PG & Carmel that receive their funding based upon "basic aid" financing?

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  2. Hello Mark, the Local Control Funding Formula will also have a "base" ada funding per child, but it will also add "grants" based on the number of low income, English learners, and foster care students. The money will increase over eight years, and the idea is that, by the time the eight years have been reached, the schools that educate poor children have nearly as much money as those that have more money to play with.

    To answer your question more specifically, since Carmel and PG already receive higher amount of funds than low income schools, and they don't have high percentage of either English learners or poor students, this funding will not affect them. They will continue to receive the same amount of money they're getting right now.

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