State Board adopts LCFF rules that balance local decision-making, accountability and equity
More than 160 school governance teams testify at daylong hearing
Published: January 21, 2014
After a marathon seven-hour public hearing Jan. 16, the State Board of Education unanimously approved emergency Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) spending regulations and a template for Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAP) that maintains the balance between local decision-making and accountability while maintaining commitment to equity sought by CSBA and other public school advocates.
Members of the State Board said they were inspired and informed by the detailed, focused testimony of more than 160 school governance team members who made the trip to Sacramento to advocate for the spending regulations and template, which will guide implementation of the revolutionary LCFF school financing plan. By eliminating rigid categorical program spending and giving governance teams and local stakeholders more say in how to invest additional funding for low-income and foster students and English learners, LCFF is designed to empower local communities and level the educational playing field.
The emergency regulations and template now go to the Office of Administrative Law for review. The OAL will determine when a final five-day comment period opens.
CSBA, ACSA facilitate LEA input to SBE
CSBA worked closely with the Association of California School Administrators to ensure that SBE heard from an array of local school leaders. The resulting testimony demonstrated that local governance teams are enthusiastically preparing to implement LCFF reforms and to do right by their students, and they warned against broader regulations that could mark a return to the sort of prescriptive, top-down mandates that the funding formula replaced.
CSBA Executive Director & CEO Vernon M. Billy said it was clear that school board members and other members of local governance teams helped convince the State Board that local school leaders are already engaging communities to find the best ways to serve vulnerable students—well before the regulations take effect in July.
“Our voices were heard and we made a difference,” Billy wrote in a letter of thanks to CSBA members. “Together with ACSA, we had more than 200 school board members and superintendents attend the SBE meeting to testify and voice their support for LCFF.”
ACSA Executive Director Wes Smith, Ed.D., also applauded the successful collaboration between two of the state’s most respected educational leadership groups.
“Together, we spoke with one voice for students, and among the 334 total speakers who testified before the State Board, our united voice resonated,” Smith said. “Our partnership with CSBA to share local stories during the hearing made a tremendous difference.”
CSBA President Josephine “Jo” Lucey, a member of the Cupertino Union School Board, told the State Board that school board members are eager to “close the opportunity gap” between different groups of students. The draft rules, she said, give school leaders some much-needed local flexibility while holding governance teams to a high level of accountability for results.
Burr: ‘The testimony did exactly what I hoped’
The vote came after months of public review, discussion and study by a wide array of stakeholder groups—many of whom were sharply critical of the first draft regulations released last fall. Representatives from civil rights and other interest groups turned out in force for the SBE’s discussion of first-draft LCFF regulations last November to complain that the rules lacked meaningful guidance and accountability provisions; staff made substantial revisions in response to their concerns.
Following the November meeting, State Board Member Carl Cohn repeatedly urged representatives from local governance teams to make their voices heard when the issue returned to the SBE. At the end of last week’s hearing he said he realized the draft rules “may not be perfect out of the box,” but he added that he believed they represent an important step forward in the fight for education equity and excellence.
“I’m feeling really good about where we are and where we are going,” Cohn said.
Other State Board members said they were especially impressed by accounts from representatives from governance teams across California who provided specific examples of how their districts are embracing the transparency and community engagement components of LCFF that are key to the goal of better supporting some of the state’s most disadvantaged students.
Sue Burr was one of two State Board members who worked most closely with CDE and SBE staff and WestEd consultants to review months of public comment and craft the regulations and LCAP template. Like her colleagues on the board last week, Burr said she was impressed by the number of school leaders who spoke and by the fact that virtually every part of the state was represented.
“The stories they told about the kinds of students they’re serving, the range of needs that they have, underscored the reason why we need to build in the absolute central accountability about increasing and improving services for the students who are the most needy but providing the local context and the local flexibility to make the best decisions. I really felt that the testimony did exactly what I hoped it would, which is really inform where we’re going and reinforce the direction we’re headed,” Burr said.
She, like many of her colleagues, also thanked the dozens of students who made the trip to Sacramento to talk passionately about their educational needs. “As they rightly pointed out,” she said, “they are the reason we are here.”
What’s next
Final approval of the emergency regulations and LCAP template rests with the OAL. Once that occurs, the emergency regulations will be in place for six months. In the meantime, the State Board will begin work on permanent regulations. As CSBA Legislative Advocate Andrea Ball reports in this blog post, the State Board has asked staff to develop guidance for the LEAs on the following issues:
- Clarify intersection of current law requirements with other law, especially federal law
- Coordination of LCAP with existing school site plans: minimize duplication
- Examples of promising practices of parent and community engagement
- Clarify the requirements for charter schools and how they differ from requirements for other schools
- Update on creation of an electronic LCAP template
- Clarify the role of county superintendents of education
Staff will prepare an update for the State Board’s March 13-14 meeting.
Sign up for automatic updates from CSBA’s own LCFF Web page, where you’ll also find a link to our LCFF toolkit—an online guide that governance teams can rely on throughout the implementation process.