New grant fuels drive for adequate school funding 

CSBA, in partnership with a number of other education and civic organizations, has received a two-year, $800,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to support its work on the continuing campaign to increase California’s investment in K-12 public schools.

This is the second Hewlett grant awarded to the association, which has been working since 2004 to assist the broad-based effort to build awareness and support for a fundamental change in the way the state funds public schools.

The new grant will support additional outreach and coalition building as part of a multiyear effort that organizers are calling the “Adequacy Campaign.” The grant funds will also help the campaign develop sound and politically feasible policy proposals to increase school funding and devise strategies to educate and mobilize school leaders and community members in support of school funding reform.

Last fall, CSBA was awarded a planning grant to build a coalition and identify the resources needed to provide high-quality educational services to all California children and develop strategies to fund and effectively allocate those resources to public schools.

The association and its partner organizations, including the state PTA, League of Women Voters and Children Now, spent much of 2006 interviewing dozens of key opinion and political leaders throughout the state to get their thoughts on school funding and gauge their willingness to join a reform coalition. A report on those outreach interviews is scheduled for release this winter.

“We are part of a broad agenda, and ours is just one piece of the ongoing work on the adequacy campaign,” said CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin. “But thanks to foundation support, we’re well positioned to continue playing an important role in this critical project.”

Plotkin is a member of the state superintendent’s P-16 Council, which—along with the Governor’s Committee on Educational Excellence—is reviewing school finance reform issues. Another key part of the campaign is foundation-supported research being coordinated through Stanford University to determine what it costs and what reforms are needed to provide a quality education for California children.

The ultimate aim of the adequacy campaign is to move away from a system that simply provides schools a portion of the year’s available revenues, regardless of the system’s actual costs. Campaign organizers argue that it makes more sense to calculate the cost of a quality education and find the resources to provide what’s needed to help all California students meet state and federal achievement goals.