LA schools' challenge for new funding: involving parents in how the money is spent
Annie Gilbertson/KPCC
At a town hall in Hollywood, parents and school staff gave L.A. Unified a laundry list of spending priorities.
A survey out today shows parents 80 percent of parents would be more likely to engage with school districts about policy and spending if they just felt listened to.
The report released by EdSource and funded by the California Endowment, comes in the midst of big changes in California school budgets: the state is giving districts extra money for disadvantaged kids, but it's requiring them involve parents in the early stages of deciding how to spend it.
“Parents don’t want to feel that they are just doing this as window dressing," said Louis Freedberg is EdSource's executive director."School districts can say ‘oh we did this. We met the requirements of law,’ but that parents input didn’t really have impact."
Freedberg said the survey also showed most parents haven’t even heard of Local Control Funding, as Gov. Jerry Brown dubbed the plan.
The law gives extra money to schools with lots of students who are low-income, in foster care or still learning English. With all its disadvantaged students, L.A. Unified will gain an extra $188 million.
But engaging the parents of 650,000 students has proven easier said than done. There are more students in L.A. Unified than DC, Delaware, Vermont, Wyoming and both the Dakotas combined.
L.A. Unified started with four town halls, scattered across the region, and open onlin
