Local Control Funding Formula — A View From SoCal
admin August 7, 2013 Budgets, Los Angeles, Orange County, Sacramento, San Francisco, State Education Law 0
By Deb McCurdy, special to K12NN and reposted with permission.
Students throughout California are finally getting some relief. A few weeks ago, the state legislature reached a compromise on the 2013-2014 budget, which also includes a plan for future K-12 public education funding, and Governor Brown has signed it. The compromise budget provides for about $55.3 billion in local and state revenue for K-12 education and two-year community colleges next year under Proposition 98. The original per pupil allocation, outlined in Governor Brown’s May Revise, under the new Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), has now been increased by $500 per student thanks to the advocacy efforts of many concerned education groups, including the California State PTA. The LCFF is a game changer for our students, so it is vital that its premise and implementation are well thought out.
Simply put, the LCFF allots a baseline of funds for all school districts and then adds dollars to that base, depending on the percentage of English Language Learners and economically disadvantaged students in any given school district. For South Pasadena Unified this was not entirely good news, since our percentage of students in those categories falls short of the required quota to send those extra dollars our way. So while