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Thursday, July 18, 2013

A new K-12 funding system demands new thinking in building local budgets | EdSource Today

A new K-12 funding system demands new thinking in building local budgets | EdSource Today:

A new K-12 funding system demands new thinking in building local budgets

July 18th, 2013 | Add a Comment | 
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This shows the distribution of additional money (in green) under the Local Control Funding Formula when fully funded. The district at left, with no high-needs students, will receive additional increases only in base funding, totaling $8,000 per student. The district in the middle, where 60 percent of its students are high-needs (about the statewide average) will receive $9,100 per student. The district at right, with 100 percent of its students high-needs, will get $11,300 per child. The orange band shows what districts will get this year, the first of a projected eight year phase-in period: $180 per student for districts with no low-income children, foster youth and English learners; $312 per student for districts with the statewide average; and $576 per student for districts with only high-needs students. (Source: School Services of California, Inc.)

As the most sweeping change in K-12 school funding in decades, the new school finance system that took effect this month will require school officials to clear their minds of old formulas and assumptions and to think anew in constructing their budgets.
That’s the advice of School Services of California, a Sacramento-based consulting firm that is giving budget seminars around the state this week for school officials.
For most of the hundreds of school officials at the Sacramento Convention Center on Tuesday, the session was their first exposure to the Local Control Funding Formula, which the Legislature passed last month with significant changes from Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal in May. With the passage of LCFF in doubt mid-June, most districts passed 2013-14 budgets conservatively, using last year’s revenues and assumptions. This year they’ll start to feel the impact of LCFF’s new formula. Next year, they’ll create their first budgets knowing ahead of time the rules and their allocations, which will vary from district to district.
The intent of LCFF is to simplify an unwieldy and illogical funding system based on decades of 
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