Just weeks into the school year, some districts are struggling with a provision in California’s dramatic revision of its school financing system that calls for smaller class sizes in grades K-3.
First grade teacher Jenny Aguirre crouches next to a student in the front row of her 24-student class at Robinson Elementary School in Fresno. Credit: Lillian Mongeau, EdSource Today
The new funding formula, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in July, gives school districts additional funds if they can keep the average class size for kindergarten though 3rd grade to 24 at all of their schools, or work toward achieving that goal. At full funding under the new formula in 2021, districts that meet the target will receive $712, on top of the K-3 per-student base rate of $6,845. (These figures do not account for cost-of-living increases that will be factored annually into the new formula.)
Because full funding isn’t expected to occur for eight years, districts will receive only a portion of the new funding under the class size reduction program this year. Districts will have eight years to get their class sizes in K-3 down to an average of 24. As long as districts with large K-3 classes show steady, annual progress toward the goal they can receive their portion of the bonus funding.
But under the tight prescriptions in the new law, if average class size is above 24 in even one school, the district will lose all of its class-size funding.
“It’s difficult,” said Fremont Unified School District Superintendent Jim Morris. “In our community, it’s caused a few challenges.”
It took a three-day meeting at the district’s main office to figure out how to shift students between
