State budget: CSBA sustains focus on full restoration of funding
Published: May 22, 2013
As California’s 2013-14 state budget debate enters its final stages, CSBA remains focused on the principles laid out in a pair of influential reports it issued in April: full restoration of K-14 education funding levels that peaked in 2007-08 and, ultimately, securing per-pupil funding on par with the national average.
The debate in Sacramento falls far short of those ambitious goals, even after Gov. Jerry Brown found $4.5 billion more general fund revenue in the May Revision to the budget he proposed in January, CSBA Assistant Executive Director for Governmental Relations Dennis Meyers told the association’s Delegate Assembly when it met in Sacramento last week.
Aided by Legislative Advocate Andrea Ball, Meyers expanded on the “First Take” on the governor’s proposal that he and Ball issued within 24 hours of its release May 14. Meyers said Brown’s May Revision would add $1 billion to current-year funds to help schools prepare for tough new Common Core State Standards and the assessments that go with them, but that’s less than a third of what the California Department of Education estimates is needed for the Common Core—and it’s still billions below the funding schools received in 2007-08.
Buoyed by higher revenues than were projected in January, Brown’s updated budget proposal would also accelerate repayment of deferred funds owed to schools—by $1.6 billion more this year, reducing deferrals to $5 billion—and would add $240 million to his Local Control Funding Formula. CSBA’s “First Take” also outlines other details of the May Revision, including cost-of-living adjustments to selected categorical programs, increased Average Daily Attendance funding and local property tax adjustments.
But “the governor is not addressing restoration,” Meyers stressed.
Local Control Funding Formula
The devil is in the details, but Meyers generally welcomed Brown’s K-12 funding formula, which offers local educational agencies greater flexibility for base funding along with supplemental and concentration grants to help English learners, students from low-income families and foster youth. Page 15 of Brown’s May Revision spells out how the funding formula would be calculated: Each LEA would get a base grant “equal to the 2007-08 statewide average undeficited revenue limit upon full implementation” of LCFF—which would not occur until the 2020-21 fiscal year; supplemental grant formulas for student groups generally recognized as having unique educational challenges; and concentration grants where those targeted students “comprise more than 50 percent of enrollment.”
As Meyers and Ball’s summary says, “CSBA is heartened to see additional revenues for education,” but “we are deeply disappointed that the May Revision does not include additional funds in the Local Control Funding Formula base grant that would allow all districts to begin restoring cuts that have been made to programs and staff over the past five years. We’ll continue to advocate for this with the Legislature as the budget negotiations now move into high gear.”
Academic accountability could be toughened
LCFF’s accountability requirements for use of the supplemental and concentration grants are another issue of concern. Brown would require each district governance team to “produce and adopt a Local Control and Accountability Plan concurrent and aligned with [the district’s] annual spending plan” under the funding formula, as CSBA's summary of the May Revision reports; however, “expenditures of supplemental and concentration funds would be required to be proportional to the number of [targeted] students at each school site”—not districtwide.
County superintendents would have the authority to disapprove local plans if districts fail to meet Academic Performance Index targets set by the State Board of Education for two out of three years and if the county superintendents determined that the local plan were inadequate to meet academic obligations and improve student achievement. In addition, districts that fall short of their API growth targets for any of the targeted groups for four consecutive years would be subject to evaluation by the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team that advises districts facing financial insolvency. Upon a FCMAT determination, the county superintendent would be provided authority to make changes to the district’s plan and, if necessary, to the district’s budget, and could stay and rescind an action of the local governing board.
Like all budget issues, those requirements are subject to negotiation between the governor and the Legislature, and “I think this is going to change over the next month,” Ball told the Delegate Assembly. Alternative proposals on LCFF have surfaced in the state Senate and Assembly, and some have sought to separate LCFF from the budget process and its imminent deadlines to allow more time to review the formula’s fundamental reworking of school finance. The Legislature must pass a budget by June 15.
“LCFF is likely to happen in the budget this year,” Meyers said, but robust academic accountability provisions may be carved out for subsequent legislative action over the summer.
CSBA will remain focused on full restoration of 2007-08 education funding levels as the budget deliberations proceed, Meyers emphasized. He urged the Delegate Assembly and all of CSBA’s members to monitor the association’s Legislative News page for up-to-date information the budget process-and to respond to CSBA’s Action Alerts and take advantage of resources—such as a sample board resolution on LCFF—all of which are posted on the Advocacy Tools page.