Delegate Assembly gets ‘Down to Facts’ on funding

A raft of recently released studies on public school financing and governance in California set the stage for CSBA’s Delegate Assembly meeting in Sacramento May 19-20.

K-12 education funding in California would have to rise by 40 percent just to achieve the state’s goal of getting each school’s average Academic Performance Index to 800, according to one study included in “Getting Down to Facts,” a collection of 23 separate reports on public schools that were commissioned by state government leaders and released earlier this year.

CSBA President Kathy Kinley urged the delegates to carefully consider the information from the studies in connection with their own experience as part of the governance teams that run California’s public schools.
“What should the schools of California look like? What should the schools in your own districts look like?” Kinley asked. “We at the local level know better … than the folks in Sacramento, and certainly than the folks in Washington, D.C.”

Study recommendations
Abe Hajela, a special counsel advising CSBA on adequate and equitable education funding, followed Kinley to the podium to give a detailed overview of the 1,700 pages of studies at the first of two yearly meetings of the Delegate Assembly. “It would be hard to get a different set of studies that came out better for you,” Hajela told the delegates. While various studies differed in some of their conclusions, Hajela said an overarching message was that “Most of the problems are created by the state’s micromanagement” of school governance though mandates, categorical programs and other requirements that interfere with local educators’ efforts to close the gap between high educational standards and student achievement.

Study recommendations highlighted by Hajela included:

• Better align accountability
with decision-making responsibilities, increasing flexibility at the local level
• Improve information collection—both at the state level, by following students over time and linking them to the resources they receive, and at the local level, where networks of teachers and administrators can learn from each other’s experiences
• Refine policies to attract and retain high-quality teachers and administrators, and also remove excessive barriers to dismissing chronically ineffective teachers
• Simplify school finance formulas—“something like a weighed student formula,” Hajela said, “based on the needs of the student,” such as English language learners
• Target resources to improve the outcome of students living in poverty

Hajela noted that the studies confirm once again that California ranks low in per-pupil funding, spending $630 less per child than the average of the other 49 states, and $5,500 less than New York. And those dollar-for-dollar comparisons, he noted, fail to reflect differences in costs and standards.
Following the briefing, delegates met in smaller groups to confer on how the “Getting Down to Facts” research and recommendations affect their local boards. Hours of discussion led to preliminary focus areas that will help guide CSBA’s actions as state officials respond to the studies.

‘On a roll’
CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin exhorted the delegates to carry the studies’ message back to their communities. “We have to marshal ourselves for the community engagement that has to be done,” Plotkin said. “That’s the job of each one of you in your local communities.”

Moving quickly through a list of other leaders who shape public opinion, from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials to philanthropic foundations, business organizations and the media, Plotkin warned that the perspective they convey is often skewed by their own interests or simply incorrect.

Plotkin outlined CSBA resources that local board members can draw on to improve public perceptions and to better serve their students, parents and communities, from online agenda and policy services that offer organized, easily accessible information to the association’s District and Financial Services, Governance and Policy Services and Executive Search Services and beyond.

CSBA’s Education Legal Alliance was a particular highlight.
“We’re on a roll,” Alliance Director Richard Hamilton declared in his report to the delegates. Recent legal victories in the long-running fight against Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s designs on the state’s largest school district, for reimbursement of state mandates and on other issues have helped boost membership in the Alliance. Hamilton urged more local boards to join and support the Alliance’s continuing work to save education dollars and protect local boards’ role in governance.
The Delegate Assembly will meet again Nov. 28-29 in San Diego, prior to CSBA’s Annual Conference and Trade Show.   

Related link:
Find the “Getting Down to Facts” reports @ http://irepp.stanford.edu/projects/cafinance.htm