Two-week delay in posting spending regulations for new K-12 funding formula | EdSource Today:
There’ll be no pre-holiday look at the much-anticipated spending regulations for the Local Control Funding Formula. Instead, the draft rules for California’s new school finance system will make a post-Rose Bowl appearance on the State Board of Education website on Friday, Jan. 3, state officials said Friday.
The State Board of Education had set a self-imposed deadline for Dec. 20, but staff are still working on it, taking in written ideas and suggestions from 50 meetings in the last six weeks with groups with various positions, State Board Executive Director Karen Stapf Walters said.
“We think we’re getting to a better place, but we are not there yet,” she said.
Samantha Tran, senior director of education policy for Children Now, one of the groups providing recommendations, said she saw the delay as a good sign.
“The staff of the State Board heard the concerns and comments from the field,” she said. “They’re really listening.”
The half-dozen page regulations will instruct districts on how much latitude they will have in spending extra dollars that the funding formula, called LCFF, allocates for low-income students, children learning English and foster youth, the three groups that are earmarked for additional dollars. The law creating the LCFF said that a district must increase services and programs for high-needs students in proportion to the additional dollars they bring to a district.
But that leaves a lot open to interpretation, and groups advocating for minority kids, like The Education Trust-West and Public Advocates, and groups representing school districts and